Centre for Internet and Society

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

GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest

Spadika Jayaraj — 2015-12-17T16:13:03Z

At the third plenary session of GCIP15, the discussion revolved around challenges in re-articulating ‘public interest’ dimension in IP law and policy.

This post is part of SpicyIP’s coverage of the Fourth Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest.

At the third plenary session of GCIP15, the discussion revolved around challenges in re-articulating ‘public interest’ dimension in IP law and policy. The session saw an eclectic mix of speakers addressing the public interest question from various perspectives- such as copyright, human rights, international law and trade law.

Making Technology Accessible in Indian Languages

The first speaker was Venkatesh Hariharan, Director of Alchemy Business Solutions LLP and a Board Member of Software Freedom Law Center, who discussed open source policy in the Indian context. He spoke about activists’ negotiation with the Government of India to adopt open source as far as possible, to deal with India’s unique demographic of a large population which converses in hundreds of different languages. He ended on the note that while some significant battles have been won in the open source and software patents fronts, there is still a long way to go in making computers and the internet accessible to the 900 million people in India who are not conversant in English.

IP and Public Interest as Yin and Yang

The next speaker was Chunyang Wang, from Peking University. She outlined the development of IP expansion in China, and how it closely followed liberalization and the policy move to attract foreign investment. She then drew upon the conception of Yin and Yang, and compared it to the balance between IP protection and openness.

A BRICs FTA?

Anand Grover, Senior Advocate, then addressed the audience on two developments that affect the public interest in patent law in India- Product Patents and the rise in Free Trade Agreements and Bilateral Investment Treaties. He stressed on how it is important to drive home the point to governments that product patents in pharmaceuticals will lead to exorbitant monopoly pricing, while process patents will lead to relative competition. With respect to Free Trade Agreements, he outlined how having private dispute settlement measures built into FTAs and BITs is a “sinister objective” as it leads to private, opaque, unaccountable arbitration fora deciding matters of public importance such as access to medicines. To counter this development, he proposed a BRICS FTA, which will allow developing countries like India to have more leverage in trade and investment.

TRIPS Flexibilities is the Beginning, not the End Goal

Lisa Forman, a human rights lawyer spoke about the simultaneous proliferation of Human Rights instruments and constitutionalisation of health rights domestically and internationally, and the expansion of TRIPS-plus standards imposed through FTAs, etc. She noted that the former phenomenon means that activists and academics have more tools at their disposal to counter the latter phenomenon. She ended by remarking that narrowly-defined TRIPS flexibilities and exceptions is not the best case scenario, but a losing one. The more we focus on these exceptions, she said, the more we normalize existing norms.

Merging the ‘Independent silos’ of IPR and Human Rights

Justice Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi High Court ended the session with a thorough analysis of access to medicines in International Law. He drew upon the UDHR and the ICESCR and how they are viewed as “independent silos of rights” when compared to IPR. He said that the challenge in the future is to integrate the two sets of rights and read them harmoniously. He also explained provisions from the Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties and cases before the ICJ to emphasise his point.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip-day-1-session-3-challenges-in-re-articulating-public-interest

GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access

Spadika Jayaraj — 2015-12-17T16:08:16Z

The Global Congress is a confluence of academics, policy advocates and activists working in the sphere of IP and Public Interest.

This post is part of SpicyIP’s coverage of the Fourth Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest.

The stated aim is to enable participants to share research, experiences and insights in tackling unbalanced law reform and enforcement proposals. The session on Health Technology, Innovation and Access in the Access to Medicines Track was an embodiment of this stated purpose. The session began with a keynote by Justice Michael Kirby who has recently been appointed by the UN Secretary General on a High Level Panel to tackle policy incoherence between IP and Human Rights. The relationship between the two fields of law has been a recurring theme in the conference so far- it was extremely interesting to see the participants in this session orient their arguments and questions towards the approaches that this High Level Committee can adopt when attempting to resolve this policy incoherence.

Following Justice Kirby’s address, the session saw human rights academic Lisa Forman, senior advocate Anand Grover and Cambodian human rights activist Pisey Li bring their unique perspectives on the role of this committee. Forman was of the view that the Panel must take a strong and direct approach to reconciling Access to Medicines and IPR. She reminded us of the potential moral force of human rights rhetoric, which transcends beyond legal articulation. She suggested that the Panel must root their discussion firmly within the human rights framework of Right to Health, and must consider disengaging from TRIPS altogether. This tied in to her comments in one of the Plenary sessions yesterday, where she noted that repeatedly emphasizing on narrow exceptions and flexibilities in TRIPS only serves to strengthen the norms that surround TRIPS, and this is not a good outcome for human rights overall.

Anand Grover’s comments to the Panel were around Voluntary Licenses, and how the blind acceptance of VLs as any kind of solution to access to medicines is a step backwards. He also commented on how Compulsory Licenses have limited impact due to the strong pressure inserted by lobbies on developing country governments. He also expressed how there is more fragmentation within the people fighting for access to medicines today then there has been before- and this has been an impediment in fundamentally re-imagining the patent system itself. This reimagination, in his submission, is the need of the hour and must be the mandate of the UN Committee.

Pisey Li then made a powerful and emotional presentation demonstrating how activist groups are empowering groups like sex workers in Cambodia. Her plea to the UN Committee was to remember that people must be placed before profits and how changes in policy have a real impact on lives and livelihoods. She ended with a tribute to Andrew Hunter, a prominent figure in HIV activism who passed away in 2013.

The speeches were followed by a Q&A session with Justice Kirby. Questions were raised on a range of issues from the practicality of moving beyond a patent system, to the role of philanthropist foundations in the public health crisis. Surely, the Panel will benefit from the perspectives shared over this session.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/gcip-15-day-2-discussions-on-health-technology-innovation-and-access

Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright

praskrishna — 2012-04-28T04:11:01Z

To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary, the Centre for Internet and Society cordially invites you to a talk by Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh of the University of Pennsylvania on Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright on 30 January 2012 at 6.00 p.m.

When the copyright on Rabindranath Tagore's writings were to expire, his estate sought (and got) an extension in copyright term. But when the copyright on Mahatma Gandhi's writings were to expire, the trustees did not seek such an extension, in deference to Gandhi's views on copyright. On the cover of the first English edition of the Hind Swaraj, it states: "No Rights Reserved". Was Gandhi a Wikipedian at heart, and a prophet who foresaw the 'copyright wars' and had his own visions of how far free culture and free knowledge activism could and could not go?

Description

Central to modern discussions of copyright law is the conflict between copyright’s role as a market-based mechanism of cultural production and its detrimental effects on access to knowledge, free speech, and cultural creativity. So divisive is this debate in the world of copyright law today that some have characterized it as the ongoing “copyright wars”. In January 2009, when copyright in all of Gandhi’s works expired, to the absolute surprise of many, the Navjivan Trust,to whom Gandhi had transferred the copyright in his works, chose not to seek a statutory extension of copyright.

The Trust’s firm decision rested in large part on Gandhi’s unease with copyright law, and his reluctant acceptance of its benefits. Gandhi’s opinions on copyright law reveal a rather concerted attempt to grapple with the innumerable public and private trade-offs that are central to the institution, which are today seen as the very basis of the copyright wars. Much like Gandhi’s views on other issues, they reveal a pragmatism, nuance, and creative engagement, which likely emanate from Gandhi’s training as a lawyer. Instead of simplistically rejecting the institution in its entirety, Gandhi saw copyright law for what it is—an important social compromise—and sought to engage with it in a way that tracked his beliefs on other issues.

This talk will argue that the nuances of Gandhi’s engagement with copyright law hold important lessons for thinking about copyright law in society, and for managing its complex trade-offs. Gandhi’s thinking on the topic anticipated many of the modern dilemmas about the structure and function of copyright law--such as the role of exclusivity, the importance of control and integrity, and the costs and benefits of licensing revenues. And while Gandhi may not have had a clear (or unambiguously correct) solution to any of them, he almost certainly asked the right questions.

About the Speaker

Shyam Balganesh’s scholarship focuses on understanding how intellectual property and innovation policy can benefit from the use of ideas, concepts and structures from different areas of the common law. His most recent work tries to understand copyright law’s pre-requisite of “copying” for liability, as a mechanism of pluralistic decision-making that allows it to incorporate both utilitarian and rightsbased considerations into its functioning.

Balganesh received his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Articles and Essays Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Student Fellow at the Information Society Project (ISP). Prior to that he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, and received a B.C.L. and an M.Phil in Law from Oxford University.

His recent publications include: ‘“Hot News’: The Enduring Myth of Property in News,” 111 Columbia Law Review 419 (2011); “The Pragmatic Incrementalism of Common Law Intellectual Property,” 63 Vanderbilt Law Review 1543 (2010); and “Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives,” 122 Harvard Law Review 1569 (2009), among others. He is also currently editing a collection of scholarly essays on the topic of intellectual property and the common law, scheduled to be published by the Cambridge University Press in 2012.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/gandhi-freedom-and-copyright

Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India

sinha — 2016-03-16T15:23:43Z

Smartphones have emerged as the exemplar of mankind's quest for shrinking technologies. They embody the realization of a simple premise – that computing devices would do more and cost less. This realization has been responsible for modern society's profound transformations in communication, governance, and knowledge distribution.

The essay was published as part of the The Good Life in Asia's Digital 21st Century essay collection.

The launch of the iPhone in 2007 is often credited with ushering in an era of smartphones. Ever since, the world's best tech R&D has focused on increasing the capabilities of these devices. And as a result, less than a decade later, we have sub-hundred dollar smartphones. The low-cost smartphone has found an enthusiastic and insatiable market in developing countries, especially Asia. India is no exception to the Asian narrative – Micromax, Spice, and Lava (low cost smartphone manufacturers) are household names in the Indian smartphone market, which accounted for 65% of internet traffic in 2014 (Meeker, 2015).

The Indian Prime Minister, carrying the twin aspirations of catalyzing the growth of indigenous manufacturing and bridging the digital divide, launched the “Digital India” and “Make in India” campaigns last year. During his US visit, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook extended their support to the campaigns' vision (Guynn, 2011). The campaigns outline the government's elaborate initiatives to, inter alia, bridge the digital divide and build indigenous manufacturing capacity. While all these developments bode well for the indigenous smartphone, there remain some serious concerns affecting the growth of the industry – for instance, patent infringement litigations and the absence of clear legal and regulatory solutions.

From the state of the industry and its implications, it can be concluded that: first, growing access to smartphones has been influenced by their phenomenal affordability; second, smartphones are an excellent example of technology for development (UNDP, 2001) and a facilitator of access to knowledge; and third, domestic smartphone production has occurred in an imprecise legal and regulatory environment.

This essay attempts to build an appreciation for the role that smartphones are playing in development, specifically, by fostering Access to Knowledge. Conversations around development by public-interest groups and emerging industries often espouse Access to Knowledge to address concerns in international development, communications, technology, education, and intellectual property policy. Whereas the principle can be regarded as in-theworks, two theories inform us about the role of mobile phones in fostering Access to Knowledge. Lea Sheaver's theory classifies mobile as an Access-toKnowledge good. Lea enumerates the five key components of a robust Access to Knowledge framework, viz., education for information literacy, access to the global knowledge commons, access to knowledge goods, an enabling legal framework, and effective innovation systems (Sheaver, 2007). According to her, affordability of the good is the ultimate indicator of its efficacy as an access to knowledge good. Furthermore, inventions in microchip technology, electronics manufacturing, and software need to be supported by enabling legal and policy frameworks coupled with effective innovation systems.

Yochai Benkler's framework classifies mobile-devices as both informationembedded goods and information-embedded tools (Benkler, 2006). He says, “Information-embedded goods are those goods which are ‘better, more plentiful or cheaper because of some technological advance embedded in them or associated with their production,’ such as medicines, movies, and improved crop seed. Information-embedded tools, in turn, are those technologies necessary for research, innovation, and communication of knowledge” (Benkler, 2006). A smartphone qualifies as both because it can be used to obtain knowledge, and it depends on discoveries in microchip technology, electronics manufacturing, and software to function.

To date, there has been no formal, theoretical or evidentiary investigation on the emergence of smartphones as an Access-to-Knowledge good. In the following sections, I will attempt to explain the smartphone’s dependence on an enabling legal framework and effective innovation systems (Lea's components). It must be borne in mind that globally, discussions affecting access to knowledge have aimed at creating balanced and inclusive systems related to intellectual property (Kapczynski & Krikorian, 2010). Therefore, the essay will focus on: first, the relationship between constituent mobile technologies and intellectual property as a function of production/deployment of smartphones in India; and second, the relationship between innovation and access.

Creating an Enabling Legal Framework to Foster Access to Knowledge

The adage “the only lesson you can learn from history is that it repeats itself” is worth bearing in our narrative. The emergence of the smartphones industry in Asia has commonalities with the flourishing Asian piracy trade – which remains an essential access solution for low-income societies constantly barraged by expensive western media goods. The prohibitive cost of acquiring brand-name devices (e.g. Apple, HTC, Samsung, Sony) drove local production to imitate and innovate cheaper substitutes (WIPO, 2010). This occurred within the lenient and flexible intellectual property regimes prevalent in Asian countries, which continue to be constantly criticized for their failure to enact stricter intellectual property law. The hubs of smartphone production – China, Taiwan, and India – have flexible intellectual property protection law and lax enforcement measures (Centre for Internet and Society, 2012).

Concerns of intellectual property center around patent and copyright legislation, which have yet to be fully developed to address intellectual property in high-tech industries (since trademark issues remain unchanged, they will not be discussed in the essay.) As a result, constituent smartphone technologies have been shaped and governed by a blend of formal and informal rules and legal and illegal practices. This is why they are often referred to as “gray market” technologies. A smartphone in terms of constituent intellectual property can be broadly divided into hardware and software technologies. This piece will first deal with hardware, followed by software technologies.

Hardware Technologies and Their Relationship with IP Law

Presently, most Indian manufacturers import hardware from China and Taiwan, and assemble the phones in India. A few key Indian domestic players are Maxx Mobile, Intex, Spice, and Lava, whose dominance have not gone unnoticed by foreign manufacturers. A couple of these domestic manufacturers are now embroiled in patent litigation threats or infringement suits. And as litigation piles up in Indian courts, the judiciary is slowly waking up to mobile patent litigation, but is yet to rule comprehensively. To make matters worse, the jurisdiction of the Indian antitrust regulator remains unclear, and to a certain extent overlaps with the judiciary, adding to the ambiguity. For instance, when an appellate court ruled in favor of the Swedish tech-giant Ericsson, it ordered Micromax to pay a flat 1.25 – 2% of its devices' selling price to Ericsson (Lakshane, 2015). The ruling was devoid of a more rational and reasoned approach developed by courts of other jurisdictions in similar matters, which prescribed that the infringers pay damages based on the price of the patented components only, and not the retail price of the phones. This decision risks causing a significant increase in the price of phones and potentially threatens local innovation.

The Indian government's Make in India and Digital India campaigns aim to fulfill the vision of a digitally empowered India, and the 2015 Indian Union budget also targets boosting the electronics manufacturing industry. Despite these broad initiatives, there needs to be a more focused policy in place to ensure domestic companies do not get weighed down by patent related concerns. The root cause of litigation is the vesting of a majority of critical mobile patents (Standard Essential Patents, or SEPs) by a handful tech-giants. For instance, Qualcomm owns 5700 patents around CDMA technology (qualcomm.com). In another instance, the DVD format constitutes 311 SEPs for DVD players and 272 SEPs for DVD recorders (CIS, 2012). Such a dense concentration of patents around SEPs creates a patent thicket and thereby compels Smartphone manufacturers to acquire multiple licenses, and to pay high transaction costs and huge royalties to the owner. To reduce conflict and protect domestic players from being arm-twisted into paying high royalties, the government can potentially identify critical technologies and initiate the formation of a patent pool of such technologies. The concept of a patent pool mandates that the patent holders issue licenses on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory basis to interested parties. However, a nuanced and cautious approach to setting up such pools is necessary (Shapiro, 2001).

There are interesting lessons in China's steps to encourage local innovation of Smartphone hardware as well, specifically in the form of standardized technologies. The Chinese government has actively supported the development of indigenous standards to shield domestic manufacturers from royalty exposure. In fact, the China Blue High-definition Disc (CBHD) standard was built as an alternative to the Blu-ray disc and was duly adopted by the Chinese government, which reportedly caused the royalty rates for the Blu-ray format to dip. Much later, Warner Bros, Paramount, and other motion picture producers adopted the CBHD standard as well for distribution in China.

Software Technologies and Their Relationship with IP Law

Unlike hardware technology, where India is struggling to build manufacturing capacity, the success of the Indian software industry has already been realized. The software-as-a-service (SaAS) industry is led by Infosys, TCS, and Wipro in software exports. The prevailing trend in the industry since the 1980s was to assign ownership of their products to offshore clients. However, in the past decade, there has been a conscious shift by the Indian software development workforce to build products for Smartphone platforms. This is in response to the shift in local populations to accessing content and services online. Reports indicate that India has the second largest population of mobile applications developers (approx. 3 million) in the world, second only to the US (Livemint, 2015). The Indian government has recognized the potential of mobile application-based ventures and created funds to encourage app development in India (IAMAI, 2015).

Intellectual property protection around software is fairly ambiguous. A piece of code is potentially capable of gaining both patent and copyright protection. In the area of mobile application development, preliminary research findings indicate that coding occurs with an agnostic attitude towards intellectual property laws (Cassar, 2014). One of the reasons is ambiguity on a multitude of issues around the protection of software because Indian legislation on patent and copyright is frustratingly insufficient. There is a growing discontentment about long-term patent protection over software code, which could be detrimental to innovation – particularly, to the start-up segment of software industry. In more technologically advanced economies, software patenting has emerged as a scourge – last year, the US Supreme Court in Alice Corporation Pty Ltd v. CLS Bank International Et Al narrowed the eligibility of software inventions to gain patent protection. The activist discourse has shifted in favor of eliminating software patenting because of the incremental and obsolescent nature of a software invention, inter alia (Lapowsky, 2015). However, in a recent disappointing move, the Indian patent office widened the scope of patent-eligible subject matter for software-related inventions – a move that was decried by free software activists and industry alike. This widening of scope can only benefit tech-giants in building bigger patent portfolios, which is unnecessary and unhealthy for innovation by small and mid-tier entities (Sinha, 2015).

Effective Innovation Systems

Innovation ensures fresh creation of knowledge. A society cannot premise itself on the mere importation of knowledge; it must also strive to use the knowledge to meet its own local needs and environment. Innovation depends on a variety of factors – there is no singular path or factor to build an innovative and enterprising society. The patent system is often incorrectly credited with “promoting” innovation. The discourse around innovation was extremely patent-centric until studies disproved the assumptive correlation between high patenting activity and innovation. Continuing in the same vein, Lea states, “From the A2K perspective, however, relying on patents – which represent the right to exclude others from access to the innovation – is particularly problematic. Patents likely represent the segment of innovation of least value for expanding access to knowledge: improvements in the knowledge stock whose application is limited by exclusive property rights” (Shaver, 2007).

In this framework, it is also important to shed light on the growing movement of openness. Openness as a movement has been captured by various fields - Big data, software, education, media, etc. Free and Open Source Software has emerged as a key agent in information technology policy-making in India, with the Indian government adopting an open standards policy and an open software policy for its own purposes.

In the context of smartphone technologies, preliminary findings also support the shift towards openness (Huang, 2014). Industry participants have observed that openness will lead to greater benefits in private production of hardware technologies. Similarly, mobile applications developers have also voiced support of open source software (Cassar, 2014).

Conclusion

The discussion above identified a limited set of legal and regulatory concerns affecting the state of production/deployment of smartphones in India. These issues and findings are backed by preliminary research, and purport to sustain the emergence of the smartphone as an enabler of access to knowledge. The proposed solutions direct industry and the government alike to take immediate steps to fix problems impeding pervasive access to this knowledge good.

The experience of the smartphone industry with an imprecise legal and regulatory environment, akin to piracy, has thus far been a success story of affordability, quality substitution, and innovation. However, this narrative is now threatened by messy litigation, jurisdictional uncertainties between the anti-trust regulator and judicial system, SEP licensing issues, rise of software patents, inter alia. Despite these issues, the industry continues to grow. The future of access to knowledge is therefore bright, provided that stakeholders make efforts to meet the needs of this emerging industry and the public, including development and consumer interests.

References / Links / Resources

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom. Retrieved from http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php?title=Chapter_9%2C_section_3.
Cassar, S. (2014). Interviews with App Developers: Open Source, Community, and Contradictions – Part III. Retrieved from: http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/interviews-with-app-developers-open-sourcecommunity-and-contradictions-iii
Cassar, S. (2014) Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP. Retrieved from http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ambiguity-in-the-app-store
Centre for Internet and Society, Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace(2012, September). Retrieved from http://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-research-proposal.pdf/view
Guynn, J. (2015, September 28). Facebook, Silicon Valley like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/09/27/narendra-modi-india-facebook-markzuckerberg-google-sundar-pichai-silicon-valley/72936544/
Huang, M. (2014). [Open] Innovation and Expertise > Patent Protection & Trolls in a Broken Patent Regime (Interviews with Semiconductor Industry - Part 3). Retrieved from: http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ interviews-with-semi-conductor-industry-part-3
IAMAI (2015). An inquiry into India's app economy.
Kapczynski, A., Krikorian, G., (2010). Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. Retrieved from: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9781890951962_Access_to_ Knowledge_in_the_Age_of_Intellectual_Property.pdf
Lakshane, R. (2015, September). FAQ: CIS Proposal for Compulsory Licensing of Critical Mobile Technologies. Retrieved from: http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/faq-cis-proposal-for-compulsory-licensing-ofcritical-mobile-technologies
Lakshane, R. (2015, February). Open Letter to Prime Minister Modi. Retrieved from: http://cis-india.org/ a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-prime-minister-modi
Lapowsky, I. (2015, February). If You Want to Fix Software Patents, Eliminate Software Patents. Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/mention/follow-wired-twitter-facebook-rss-eff-if-you-want-fix-software-patentseliminate-software
Meeker, M. (2015). 2015 Internet Trends. Retrieved from http://www.kpcb.com/partner/mary-meeker
PTI (2015). Google aims to make India a hub for app development. Livemint. Retrieved from: http:// www.livemint.com/Industry/rwWUfp30YezONe0WnM1TIO/Google-aims-to-make-India-a-hub-for-appdevelopment.html
Qualcomm Enters Into CDMA Modem Card License Agreement with Seiko Instruments Incorporated. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2015, from https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2000/06/20/ qualcomm-enters-cdma-modem-card-license-agreement-seiko-instruments
Shapiro, C. (2001). Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard Setting. Innovation Policy and the Economy, 1, 119-150. Retrieved from: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10778.pdf
Shaver, L. (2007). Defining and Measuring Access to Knowledge: Towards an A2K Index. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 22. retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/22
Sinha, A. (2015). Comments on the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs). Retrieved from http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computerrelated-inventions-cris
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development (2001). Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2001/en/
World Intellectual Property Organisation. (2010, Dec 1-2). Media Piracy in Emerging Economies: Price, Market Structure and Consumer Behavior. Retrieved from the WIPO website: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/ mdocs/enforcement/en/wipo_ace_6/wipo_ace_6_5.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-asia-hub-the-good-life-in-asias-21-st-century-anubha-sinha-fueling-the-affordable-smartphone-revolution-in-india

FUEL GILT Conference 2015

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T08:03:15Z

Subhashish Panigrahi will be speaking at the FUEL GILT Conference 2015 to be held at Tamil Virtual Academy, Anna University Campus, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Kottur in Chennai from November 20 to 22, 2015. Subhashish will also be participating in the Mozilla L10N hackathon.

Subhashish's proposed talk "Consensus in localization in a multi-stakeholder community: Wikimedia as a case study" was accepted by the screening committee of FUEL GILT conference 2015.

About the FUEL GILT Conference

FUEL is one of the rare projects which emanated from India and is now associated with various various language communities and organizations across the world. FUEL GILT Conference is an annual event which gives opportunity to its participants to listen to experts on various topics related to localization. This conference is all about showcasing efforts being taken by Individuals and open communities at different places on topics including but not limited to Translation, Localization, Internationalization and Globalization. This is one of the largest events across globe specifically on Localization. So if you are associated with any of these industries, you are at the right place. By attending this event you will benefit in a major way.

This is the third conference, first two were conducted in 2013 and 2014, both of them were in Pune, India. This year Mozilla Corporation, Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), Pune and Red Hat are the main organizers of the event. Tamil Virtual university is hosting the event at their premises. We are sincerely thankful to all the organizations for supporting us continuously.

Mozilla Localization Hackathon

We are also happy to announce that Mozilla localization hackathon will be conducted as a part of FUEL GILT Conference 2015 on 21st and 22nd November 2015. This will be a great opportunity for all the localization community members to share the issues and challenges in continuing localization efforts, talk about current status of the work, plan for future work in coordination with localization drivers and how to grow the localization community. This hackathon, is however open for invited-only members. If you or someone known to you is associated with localization efforts of Mozilla projects and products, you may ask them to contact their locale leaders.

For more details about the event, visit here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2015

Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign

tito — 2017-06-28T09:59:29Z

You have heard about the Ice bucket challenge (and the rice bucket challenge). You may have heard about the 100happinessdays challenge (and its Wikipedia version 100wikidayschallenge). You may have heard and participated in the November no shaving challenge. Some of these campaigns are organized to increase awareness about different social issues. Now here the Centre for Internet and Society, India brings to you a campaign called Freedom In Feb.

Freedom in Feb (FiF, hashtag #freedominfeb) is a campaign to be conducted in the month of February. The objective of the initiative is to increase awareness of free content and free licenses. The name of this campaign “Freedom in Feb” was coined by Sunil Abraham, the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, India.

Event dates

The first iteration of the event will take place between 0:00 UTC on 1 February 2017 and 23:59 UTC on 28 February 2017.

Rules

The rule to participate in this challenge is simple:

The works you will create or publish in February you have to release those under free licenses such as the Creative Commons licenses or under public domain.
The content includes your blog post, writing, image on Facebook, or Instagram, or your Tweets (no “all rights reserved” please :)).
If releasing all content under free licenses is not possible, please try to release as much as content under the free licenses this February.

So, this Feb, please release your works under the free licenses, and encourage others to do so as well.

Participate

If you are interested to participate in this challenge or want to know more, please fill this form, or you can also send us an email to this address sunil@cis-india.org and/or tito@cis-india.org. Please include "Freedom in Feb" in your email subject line.

FAQ

Question: Which free license should I choose?
Answer: You can choose any free license. We suggest you to choose a license that allows remixing, and using for commercial purpose such as CC BY-SA 4.0. You may also choose a license CC BY-NC 2.0, but that’s not really free.

Question: I am a professional and depend on my works (photography, music, writing) on living. Do I need to release all my creations under the free licenses?
Answer: We understand this situation, but we request you to release as much as or some content under the free licenses or public domain.

More FAQs to be added

Keep in touch

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedominfeb/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freedominfeb
Freenode IRC: freedominfeb
Public forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/freedominfeb (anyone can post here by sending an email to: freedominfeb@googlegroups.com, but you need to join the group to view posts and other
Hashtag: #freedominfeb

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/freedominfeb

Free Software

praskrishna — 2013-07-31T08:50:41Z

To spread awareness on free software and its philosophy, Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK) in partnership with Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology, Bidadi, organized a 9-days workshop between July 20 and 28 at the Institute campus near Bidadi to focus on free software is real freedom to compute.

Click to read the news by M.K. Madhusoodan published in the Times of India on July 20, 2013. For more pictures, click here

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the workshop and made a presentation about Wikipedia for the participants on July 24, 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/free-software

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

tito — 2017-06-28T10:02:00Z

Indian Government works are not available under free and open licenses. On the other hand a large number countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela etc. have adopted the Creative Commons and other free licenses. The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain. This article promotes the idea that the Government works should be freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable.

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Free knowledge movement is a worldwide movement that creates and tries to get works under free and open licenses. It claims that knowledge is a common human property, and must be easily, freely accessible.

While discussing the topic "Access to knowledge: a basic human right", American scientist and researcher Jack Andraka feels:

Access to knowledge is, you know, a basic human right. Knowledge should not be commoditized; it wants to be free.

The Open Definition defines the term “Open Knowledge” in Open Definition 2.0 as:

"Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness."

All open content must be a) available under free licenses, b) accessible as a whole, and c) should be in open format (see more details)

A big name in the world of free content is (of course) Wikipedia, where you can use, share, remix content from the site under the Creative Commons licenses. There are many organizations, networks and groups working to get more and more content under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons (text, audio, video, image), Free and Open Source Software or FOSS (software), Open design principle (machine, engineering), Open Access (academic works) etc.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that education should be free. Right to information is also a human right and Article 27 of the declaration states:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

These are just not possible unless knowledge /information is easily and preferably freely accessible to everyone without restrictions. If the first barrier is accessibility, i.e, not having enough digital content or information or content behind paywall, then the second barrier is its openness. Just having access to some web pages is not enough, it also requires rights like free using, sharing, remixing, Unrestricted content can be utilized in the best way.

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Government websites are not freely licensed. In section 2(k) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 the meaning of “Government work” is explained:

"Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of—
(i) the Government or any department of the Government;
(ii) any Legislature in India;
. . .

Read Indian Copyright Act, section 2(c) here.

Indian Copyright Act section 17(d) informs about the “First owner of copyright” of a Government work:

in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;

Read section 17(d) here.

Section 28 is about “Term of copyright in Government works”. It states:

In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published.—In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published."

Read section 28 here

Section 52 of the act allows some “fair use” and informs how content can be used for research, education, review, criticism and some other purpose. The lengthy copyright section may be read here. However, it does not make the content free. You are not allowed to remix the work or use for commercial purpose. You can not freely use, modify, distribute it.

Now let’s have a look at a few Government websites and their license details pages.

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

(http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/website-policies)

In this website the copyright policy page informs:

Material featured on this website may be reproduced free of charge. However, the material has to be reproduced accurately and not to be used in a derogatory manner or in a misleading context. Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged. However, the permission to reproduce this material shall not extend to any material which is identified as being copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the department/copyright holder concerned.

A screenshot may be seen below:

Here-

“Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged.” -- this part of the policy is similar to the Creative Commons licenses, where the owner or author of a work must be given attribution.

but,

“has to be reproduced accurately” -- it prohibits remix or modification works,
“not to be used in a derogatory manner” -- it is unclear that what is “derogatory manner”! Can it be used for criticism?

Indian Vice President’s official website
(http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/website-policies)

This is similar to the Prime Minister’s website policy and does not allow remix, commercial use etc. See screenshot:

Indian President’s official website
(http://presidentofindia.gov.in/copyright-policy.htm)

Although the Vice President’s website allows some fair use, the Indian President’s official web portal’s license is different and does not allow to reproduce the work “partially or fully”. The copyright policy states:

This contents of this website may not be reproduced partially or fully, without due permission from The President of India, If referred to as a part of another publication, the source must be appropriately acknowledged. The contents of this website can not be used in any misleading or objectionable context.

We have shown 3 example above, but it is more or less similar in all government web portals.

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

It might be interesting to note that unlike India, a large number of countries publish their Government works under open licenses or public domain. We’ll discuss only a few here:

United States

The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain.
The White House website and third party content such as text or speeches by the first lady are licensed under CC SA 3.0 US license. U.S.
On 18 June, 2013, Barack Obama and other G7 leaders endorsed the Open Data Charter. Open Data Action plan is licensed under CC0.
Several other works such as works created by New York State Senate, works created by the State of Virginia are also under different creative commons licenses. Details may be seen here.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Open Government License (OGL) is used for Crown Copyright works published by the UK government. Since 2001, some works by the UK government were available under the Click-Use license. This license was replaced by OGL in 2010. The first version of OGL was released on 30 September 2010. OGL is compatible with the CC licenses. OGL allows to:

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information,
adapt the Information,
exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

However,

Attribution must be given to with source link, which is similar to the creative commons licenses.
Some documents such as the British passport, military insignia, property rights, including patents, trademarks, and design rights, personal information in data don’t come under OGL.

More about the Open Government License may be seen here.

France

France government’s website http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR license. The English version of the policy page may be seen here.
France government’s cultural department’s website http://www.culture.fr/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
The Culture Communication website http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/ is also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

Russian Federation

Content of the website http://kremlin.ru are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. License policy page may be seen here. Many other Russian government works are under different open licenses, details may be seen here.

Netherlands

The Dutch government official website http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ is licensed under CC 0. All content of this website is under public domain, unless any other license is specified.

Bulgaria

The President of Bulgaria’s official website https://www.president.bg/ is licensed under CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.

Croatia

Croatian Government website http://otvorenikod.nsk.hr/ is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 Croatia.

The Long list

More than 30 countries have adopted and publishing their works under the Creative Commons and other free licenses. Other the above mentioned countries, the list include countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela etc. Other than the counties, several international organizations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) endorsed the free license concept and have adopted the same. See a long list of countries using free licenses here.

Last line

It is unfortunate that the Indian Government works are not under free licenses, however it would be great if the Government rethinks and relicense their general content under the free licenses. This will help not only the movement, but the content itself can be utilized in a much better and broader way.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-knowledge-and-indian-government-work

France, Greece, India and the European Union Sign the Marrakesh Treaty

nehaa — 2014-05-02T23:23:25Z

On April 30, 2014, on Day 3 of the 27th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, a Signing Ceremony was conducted for member states wishing to sign the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to books and other reading material for the print disabled.

Read the WIPO Signing Ceremony for Marrakesh Treaty

Opening the proceedings, the Director General of WIPO, Francis Gurry called the Marrakesh Treaty “one of the greatest achievements of this Committee in the past year.” The Hon’ble Ambassador of France in his speech following that of the Director General emphasised the importance that his government placed on this treaty. Mrs. Veena Ish, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development signed the Marrakesh Treaty for the Government of India. In her address at the Signing Ceremony, Mrs. Ish placed emphasis on India’s 2012 amendments to the Copyright Act, 1957, stating that these provisions were “in complete harmony” with the Marrakesh Treaty and that India was “well poised” to implement the same. Mrs.Ish also stated that India would be ratifying the treaty “very soon.” Most importantly perhaps, Mrs. Ish reminded the Committee that appropriate mechanisms to implement this treaty would have to be put in place; and that implementing it in its true spirit would require cooperation from all member states. The Ambassador of Greece, speaking on behalf of Greece and the European Union said that they wanted the Marrakesh Treaty to serve its original purpose of benefitting persons with print disabilities.

The European Blind Union (EBU) and the Secretary General of (and speaking on behalf of) the International Publishers’ Association (IPA) also made statements at the Signing Ceremony. EBU was of the opinion that while the signature was a “major, symbolic leap forward”, the next crucial step was to ensure its speedy ratification so that it might become effective. IPA echoed previous speakers on the point that ratification and implementation were but first steps, and that access would only be achieved as a result of “collaboration between rights organizations and rights holders.”

It will be interesting to see how these member states follow up on their signatures to the Marrakesh Treaty. The treaty will only be effective 3 months after at least 20 nations have ratified it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/france-greece-india-eu-sign-marrakesh-treaty

Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised

praskrishna — 2014-07-14T05:49:48Z

The content is available online under Creative Commons License.

The article by R. Krishna Kumar was published in the Hindu on July 12, 2014, Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.

Articles from the Kannada Encyclopaedia (Kannada Vishwakosha) of the University of Mysore can now be accessed online under the Creative Commons License. The move to make content of the Kannada Vishwakosha accessible is part of the ongoing effort to enrich Kannada content on Internet.

The University of Mysore is working with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) to digitise encyclopaedic publications for which the copyrights are owned by the varsity, and to re-release them under the Creative Common License.

U.B. Pavanaja of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, who is promoting Kannada content on the Internet, told The Hindu that of the 14 volumes, digitised content of the first four volumes has been uploaded.

And, the CIS is awaiting the release of the revised edition of the other two volumes. “Each volume has about 900 pages and hence over 3,600 pages of the Kannada Vishwakosha can now be accessed. What is significant is that people seeking quality information in Kannada can now access reliable content. It is also subject to editing in real time and hence will remain updated,” according to Mr. Pavanaja. The content was digitised and uploaded with the help of students who were interning with the CIS and included three boys and five girls, said Mr. Pavanaja.

The permission for digitising the content has been accorded for the first six volumes. However, the CIS has sought permission from the varsity for digitising the content of the other volumes, including Subject Encyclopaedia.

The Centre for Internet and Society signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of Mysore in February. The varsity issued a certificate to publish the work under the Creative Common License in May.

As per the plan, the digitised content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia, Wikisource and this is expected to enhance digital literacy in Kannada language while helping in free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to students, academics, researchers and the general public. As of now, the articles have been uploaded on Wikisource and will shortly be migrated to Wikipedia also.

Besides, the CIS is trying to hold talks with Kannada University, Hampi, on digitising the Janapada Vishwakosha and make it available under the Creative Common License, said Mr. Pavanaja.

Niranjan Vanalli, Director of EMMRC of the University of Mysore, said digitisation of Kannada Vishwakosha has given a new lease of life to publications. “The 14-volume Kannada Vishwakosha was not available to everyone earlier and was confined to research institutions or libraries. But now that the content is available online, it is accessible to all those who are interested. And, what it is more is that most articles, especially those pertaining to history, art and culture, will be of reference quality and that will act as a major boost to the cause of Kannada language,” he added.

Meanwhile, the University of Mysore and CIS will celebrate World Open Knowledge Festival on July 15 at the Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies from 11 a.m. to commemorate the event.

Those interested to access the Kannada Vishwakosha online can log on to: http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-12-2014-r-krishna-kumar-four-volumes-of-kannada-encyclopaedia-digitised