Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated Odisha day

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T06:21:38Z

Odisha Day 2014 was held on March 29, 2014. A report was published in FullOrissa News on April 2, 2014.

Click to read the original story here.

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated “Odisha day” today at Jayadev Bhawan. Inaugurating this event eminent linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak said, ‘Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language an culture’. He also discussed about the efforts being laid for bringing Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. Majority of the Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easily accessible. He discussed about the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts.

Odia Wikipedia has been trying to popularize use of Odia language in the Internet since 2002. Available at or.wikipedia.org it is now 6000 articles rich and growing. More than 470,000 visitors visit Odia Wikipedia every month which also gives it the status of the largest Odia encyclopedia on the Internet. To enrich the online encyclopedia and getting more books digitized, Wikipedians organized a two day event at Jayadev Bhawan. Along with Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak, Professor Udayanath Sahu, The Odisha Review’s editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar’s editor Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher Subrat Prusty, Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS)’s principal Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa’s chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty along with the trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik and senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash.

11 books of eminent Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were released in Creative Commons 3.0 license that will allow anyone to reuse and even make commercial use of the content with attribution. KISS will be digitizing these books by training their students. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia community for releasing and digitizing these books. Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty from the Institute of Odia Studies and Research also fomally released three books in Creative Commons licenses: Two Odia ones-”Bhasa O Jatiyata” and “Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” and an English book “Classical Odia”. Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from OdiaLanguage.com, a new Odia input tool, free softwares and offline Wikipedia. It was declared that the Odia WikiSource project will be active soon and would be available at wikisource.org.

Odia Wikipedia administrator Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech and hosted the event. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and shared the vision for the Wikimedia movement. Active Odia Wikipedians Ansuman Giri, Diptiman Panigrahi, Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, Jnanaranjan Sahu, Sasanka Dash, Aditya Mahar and Srikant Kedia coordinated the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/full-odisha-april-2-2014-odia-wikipedia-community-celebrated-odisha-day

Cultural Interests vs. Modernization: Robert Shapiro on IPR & Innovation in India

samantha — 2014-04-03T10:54:08Z

Last Friday March 28, 2014, prominent economist and chairman of Sonecon, llc, Dr. Robert Shapiro, lead a discussion on the roles of IPR and FDI in innovation. Within his research findings, Shapiro argues for India to adopt a stricter IP regime in order to attract higher rates of FDI in pharmaceuticals and other industries, and in turn, to spur a more successful economy.

The closed door round-table discussion had been organized by policy research and advocacy organization, T he Takshashila Institute, and hosted by Cobalt, a recently opened co-working space in Bangalore. The event's speaker, Robert Shapiro, has advised U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and U.S. Vice President Albert Gore, as well as AT&T, Exxon-Mobil and Google, on economic policy and security matters. Recently he co-authored an economic research paper, titled, How India Can Attract More Foreign Direct Investment, Create Jobs and Increase GDP, which can be accessed here.

Within this paper, Shapiro and Dr. Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute argue that the most effective way for India to attract “further investment and job creation for improving the innovation environment in India” is by respecting the intellectual property rights of foreign investors—specifically within the pharmaceutical sector. The main points made by Shapiro within his session and research paper will be looked at closer to follow.

FDI to spur innovation

Shapiro started the session by introducing the controversy over the role of innovation in economic processes. Contrary to the belief that the majority of economists share—that innovation happens outside the economy incidentally “because someone happens to have a bright idea”—Shapiro suggests that innovation plays a much more integral role within an economy, and even goes as far as considering innovation the most powerful underlying factor (possibly more so than education). Shapiro asserts that without innovation, “every economy has to stall out,” and what prevents this is new capital changing productivity and growth rates; and in India's case: through foreign direct investment (FDI).

With reference to China's manufacturing sectors, Shapiro depicts the immense benefits stemming from FDI. As a direct effect, he states that not only do new technologies come in but new ways of financing and management are brought in as well. The bulk of the impact of FDI, however, is an indirect function, resulting from a “spillover effect” at a regional level as more and more companies begin to adopt the ways of the new enterprises. The impact of innovation, however, is an exclusive function of how effectively it is applied. In order to maximize foreign investment, Shapiro stresses the need to eradicate any barriers to new businesses so that they may adopt and adapt to the new incoming technologies.

On several occasions within his address and the accompanying discussion, Shapiro had asserted India as being an outlier in terms of FDI, with emphasis on India's FDI rates being half of those of Malaysia and Thailand (countries implied to be incomparable to India in an economic sense). He admits that he does not understand the reasons for this discrepancy, as standard economic factors alone cannot explain this; such as a country's market size, availability of labour, and quality of infrastructure (despite India's room for improvement here).

In order to understand India's FDI rates then, Shapiro offers the importance of considering the political factors at play to the same extent as the economic ones (if not, more) with some of such factors being: the state's attitudes towards property rights, bankruptcy regime, levels of corruption, and the enforcement of contracts and intellectual property rights.

And it is supposedly here, at this last factor, where the central issue lies for India.

IP as a product of cultural decisions

As new ideas continue to dwarf the value of physical capital, economies are increasingly composite of these intangible assets (intellectual property)—such as patents, copyright, software and name brands—or at least within the US economy anyway. These intellectual asset-intensive economies are not limited to industries such as pharmaceuticals, software, and IT hardware (as one might initially suspect); rather, those of media, automobiles, beverages and tobacco and other consumer goods. In 2011, Shapiro states, half of US industries equalled or exceeded the three former industries in intellectual assets. These industries, which had formerly been sectors based on production, have now outsourced their production schemes to India and China.

Shapiro explains these economic trends as a function of a repeated set of choices in support of American values of growth, prosperity, and individualism. He continues in saying that cultural values are also important to consider when trying to undergo modernization. A country with more traditional values would be wrong to strive to modernize at the same rate as that of the US, for example. In such a case, modernizing at a much slower rate is advisable, and if this is unfavourable, Shapiro alternatively suggests that “you can sometimes change culture by changing the law.”

But how are US and Indian industries comparable, then, if India's economy is arguably a platform for production of US-owned intellectual assets? What are the odds that Indian companies will actually own their resulting innovations stemming from foreign investments? Presumably not very high.

And what sets of choices has India made to reflect its own sets of cultural values and principles in contrast to those of the US?

Consequences of a weak IP regime and over-regulation

Within his recent research paper, Shapiro recounts Indian laws related to IPR over the years and how the country's weak international IP regime has paved the way for its thriving generic pharmaceutical industry. Through enforcing restrictions on patent filings, shorter patent terms, and compulsory licensing, the Indian Patent Office enabled the manufacturing of domestic pharmaceutical products without having to pay outgoing royalty (or to a lesser degree) in promotion of increased access to medicines for Indians at much more affordable prices.

Shapiro argues that this disregard for foreign IPR discourages foreign companies from wanting to enter the Indian market in the future for fear of imitation products coming about to their detriment. Shapiro argues that if India adopted stronger IP rights and enforcement, FDI to the country's pharmaceutical industry would increase drastically; more so, if India adopted an IP system comparable to the US, FDI flows could even rise by 83 per cent per year, making it a centre for innovative pharmaceutical R&D. Just as well its access to new innovative drugs would increase by 5 per cent, contributing to a higher life expectancy and a larger work force (Shapiro, p. 3, 2014).

An IP regime comparable to the US and Europe, Shapiro suggests, promotes both endogenous and exogenous growth while bringing about competitive markets “with pockets of monopolies throughout.” Such [patent] regimes have evolved over decades and “simply work well,” he states. Also, in requiring patent applicants to publish all secrets—that which makes the invention novel—others are given the ability to benefit from such knowledge.

So then, is India wrong in making decisions in accordance with its own set of cultural values and principles if they are not necessarily in accordance with those of the US?

Arguably not. However, as Shapiro demonstrates, such decisions may bare consequence in India's pursuit to modernize as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that is not exactly in compliance with Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) standards. India may also be missing out on greater importation of technologies if foreign companies fear that their products will be imitated by local companies. According to Shapiro, India's services sector (including banking, insurance, outsourcing, R&D, courier and technology testing services) contribute to 60 per cent of the country's GDP, yet have declined in FDI for several reasons including the country's weak IP regime, as well as government regulations capping the maximum investments of foreign companies (Shapiro, p. 37, 2014).

Which brings us to the notion of market deregulation as a mechanism of promoting FDI. Shapiro suggests this to be essential for India to enable a more even playing ground for new and emerging players to compete. A regulatory issue arises when new companies are up against companies receiving government subsidies. In this way, such regulations may also prohibit companies from reorganizing to implement new technologies or practices, undermining the spillover effects that FDI can bring about.

IPR adoption vs. innovation

Shapiro stresses the importance in not only allowing companies to implement new technologies, but to encourage them to do so as well. A common mistake developing countries make, he says, is trying to be the source of innovation: “Although it's nice to be the source of innovation, what is more important is to adopt innovation of others.” In response, a contribution to discussion made by a fellow attendee commented on the inclination of developing countries to first duplicate, then adapt, and then innovate for themselves.

So what is India left to do then? How do Indian companies navigate along the fine line distinguishing between adopting new technologies and duplicating them? And if innovation is so integral to a country's economy, will merely adopting and adapting to emerging foreign technologies suffice for the country's economy? Or can India only progress away from “duplication” with stricter IPR enforcement?

While citing studies based in Europe, Shapiro illustrates the relationship between IP regimes and inventions. The study's findings displayed that while there is no relationship between IPR and occurrences of inventions, there is correlation between IPR and the kinds of inventions. Jurisdictions with strict IP laws and greater IP protection were likelier to bring about inventions with significant business value, while the inventions of other jurisdictions without IPR did not entail the same level of business value—one cannot simply reverse-engineer a food invention for study, he says.

This is not as to say that Indian companies cannot innovate. “India has a lot of innovators,” Shapiro says, “but they're in California and New York and Washington.” Even in these hubs for innovation, the Indian demographic is highly disproportionate, and estimated to be 20-40 per cent of the workforce, suggesting the potential of Indians in terms of innovation. Shapiro poses the question: “Why are they leaving?” and stresses the importance in India understanding this phenomenon.

The modernization tradeoff

Is the departure of some of India's innovators another consequence of the country's path to modernization whilst maintaining cultural values? Just as some foreign pharmaceutical companies may stay far away from the Indian market?

If so, is India truly better off in striving for redemption from under the close watch of the US and in pursuit of foreign direct investment? What opportunities or cultural values might be abandoned within the domestic market in favour of foreign bodies, then? And more specifically, what would a stricter IP regime mean for the future of the generic pharmaceutical industry, and in turn, the cost of access for medicines that are presently only affordable through the bypassing of international IP standards?

Just as Shapiro gives importance to the consideration of political and cultural factors at play within one's economy, it is, then, essential to look beyond what the US wants for India economically to factor in what India wants for its own economy and the cultural and political reasons for such. I think we can both agree on the significance of India considering the consequences of resulting economic decisions (i.e., regarding market regulating and IP enforcement) from proxies inclusive of Indian consumers, as well as international bodies to the extent of the global systems that India is implicated in.

But what about the question of innovation for India's economy? In the tradeoff between innovation (and prosperity) versus duplication (and accessibility), is a country of 1.2 billion people with different cultural values and economic needs really fair game to be idealized as “comparable to the US” in terms of its economic laws? Economist Robert Shapiro seems to think so.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cultural-interests-v-international-economy-robert-shapiro-on-ipr-innovation-in-india

Odia Wikipedia to Digitise 14 Books

praskrishna — 2014-03-31T14:29:43Z

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day (Utkal Divas) on April 1, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for digitisation of 11 books of eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

This article was published in the Pioneer on March 30, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

According to Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge) of Centre for Internet and Society Bengaluru Subhasis Panigrahi, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) would take up the digitisation project where KISS students would type them on WikiSource, a sister project of Wikipedia.

These books include children’s literature, travelogues and biographical essays penned by Dr Mohanty.Digitisation of three more books, two in Odia Jati, Jagruti O Pragati (on people and culture of Odisha) and Bhasa O Jatiyata in Odia (based on research on Odia language), and an English book Classical Odia (on the literary heritage of Odia) will be also be inaugurated on this day.

All these digitised books will be made available on the Internet with open access through free licences. More than 5,000 pages will be digitised in these two projects.Several public and private organisations have started making serious efforts after Odia got the classical language status recently.

To discuss the need for many new tools and technological advancement, a seminar will be held at Jayadev Bhawan here on March 29. Prof Udayanath Sahu and writers Asit Mohanty and Dr Lenin Mohanty will discuss about spell check for Odia, use of Odia language in the media and tools for typing in Odia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/daily-pioneer-state-editions-bhubaneswar-odia-wikipedia-to-digitise-14-books

An Article on Kannada Wikipedian H R Lakshmivenkatesh

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T08:28:04Z

Karnataka Sangha Mumbai published an article on Kannada Wikipedian H.R.Lakshmivenkatesh in its March 2014 edition.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was instrumental in highlighting this fact and making people of Mumbai come to know about this. The article can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/an-article-on-kannada-wikipedian-hr-lakshmivenkatesh

Odisha Day 2014: Coverage in Sambad

praskrishna — 2014-04-11T12:32:39Z

Odia newspaper Sambad covered the Odisha Day 2014 and published a report on March 31, 2014.


Above: Scanned version of the report published in Sambad on March 31, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sambad-march-31-2014-odisha-day-2014

India Access To Knowledge/Draft Work plan July 2014 - June 2015

vishnu — 2014-04-08T09:51:27Z

One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in South-Asia and in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008 when Jimmy Wales visited Bangalore. From September 2012 it has been actively involved in growing the movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Based on the 18-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed its Work Plan for July 2014 to June 2015.

This was originally published on Wikimedia blog

This work plan consists of 21 plans across 6 verticals. These are:

7 Language Area Plans: CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts in four focus language areas plans during the last year and has been successful in reaching most of its goals. In 2014-15 we will further deepen our engagement in these four language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu). Further, this experience and the learnings from it will be leveraged to work on three more large Indic language Wikipedia projects, which are Bangla, Hindi and Marathi. We have developed a detailed plan for each of these language areas, which can be seen here.
3 Community Strengthening Initiatives: We propose community strengthening initiatives that will further grow the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated community, both qualitatively and quantitatively. These initiatives, focussing on building capacity and nurturing leadership in the Indic communities, will ensure that growth is sustained beyond the CIS-A2K program. A detailed plan for each of these initiatives is available here.
8 Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects: These stand-alone projects will have clear deliverables in a limited span of time, and will help us understand how to take up bigger initiatives in the respective language. All the stand-alone projects are more fully described here.
Creating Movement Resources: Once CIS-A2K began actively working with the Indic Wikimedia communities, it soon realized that unlike in English there were not many Wikimedia-related resources available in Indic languages. During the last year we produced some resources which were mostly unplanned outcomes. However, we feel there is an urgent need to create movement resources in Indic languages like a Creative Commons (CC) handbook; a Copyright handbook; training manuals; video tutorials, etc. See our plans for concerted efforts to create resources for strengthening the Wikimedia movement in India and in Indic languages here.
Publicity, Research and Documentation: Many of the Indic Wikimedia projects in spite of being in existence for more than 10 years have not received adequate publicity. Also, the Wikimedia movement in India could benefit from more systematic research and documentation. CIS-A2K will put in more intensive efforts into Publicity, Research and Documentation of the Wikimedia movement in India during this year as per the plans discussed here.
General Support and Service to the Movement: CIS-A2K deeply believes in extending support and service to the Wikimedia volunteer community in India. This has been one of the important aspects of our work so far. We have honoured up to 100 requests of all sizes that we received from the Wikimedia volunteer communities across all Indic languages. This page gives more details about the proposed work.

The work plan includes details of aims, objectives, programme activities and expected outcomes. Most of the language area plans were put together in active consultation with the respective Wikimedia language communities. Various inputs and ideas contributed, opportunities provided, and challenges thrown at the CIS-A2K program during the last year by the Wikimedia communities in India, our institutional partners, Executive Committee (EC) of Wikimedia India Chapter (WMIN) and the Wikimedia Foundation's Grantmaking Team have significantly informed our work plans.

Introduction

Background to CIS-A2K Program

The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to CIS in Bangalore, India to expand their A2K programme in India. The grant was released over a three phase period - first in September 2012 (₹ 11,000,000), second in June 2013 (₹ 7,500,000) and third in December 2014(₹ 7,500,000). The purpose of the grant was to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand the Indic Wikimedia projects and associated communities. In addition, the grant was aimed at generating improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

CIS-A2K created an Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) that is being successfully implemented. Most of the projected outcomes against the plans have already been met. There have also been many unplanned outcomes. CIS-A2K has periodically been sharing its work openly with the Wikimedia community in India, WMIN and WMF's Grantmaking team. See all our reports and newsletters here.

Objective

The objective of the CIS-A2K is to catalyse the growth of open knowledge movement in South Asia and in Indic languages. Within the Wikimedia universe CIS-A2K specifically strives to further grow the Indic and English Wikimedia projects and communities by a) supporting and serving the Wikimedia communities; b) building institutional partnerships; c) bringing more content under free license; d) designing and executing projects with community participation; e) strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers; and f) fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.

Context

It is important to understand the two broader contexts in which CIS-A2K program operates, which underpins the implementation of this work plan.

Linguistic Diversity of India: India is known for its linguistic diversity. India is home to several dominant languages and also several small languages which are facing extinction. Due to the large number of languages that exist in India, the country has more than 20 different language Wikipedias. Each Indic Wikimedia language project is different from the others in terms of community structure, speaker base, literacy level, technical knowledge, existing documentation, language corpora and challenges in the cyberspace, etc. Hence, each Indian language has its own strengths and challenges which are quite different from each other.

Since each Indian language is so distinct, we cannot apply a ‘one-size fits all’ approach; hence CIS-A2K early on adopted the strategy of creating a detailed plan for each language. During 2013-14 we chose five (of which only four could be executed) Indic languages for focussed intervention and developed [plans]. This strategy did pay off and we have now decided to work on seven languages. It is important to note that we are cautious about not massively scaling up this strategy and our choice to work on seven language areas is well informed. However, we have planned to execute some stand-alone projects in other Indic languages and will provide need based support to other Indic Wikimedia communities.
Institutional Context: The A2K program is housed at CIS Bangalore. CIS is an almost 6 year old non-profit organisation [with offices in Bengaluru and New Delhi] focussing on interdisciplinary policy and academic research. CIS conducts policy research in the following areas - accessibility, access for knowledge [including free/open source software, open content, open standards, open access and open data], internet governance [including privacy and freedom of speech and expression], telecom [limited to shared backhaul and shared spectrum]. CIS produces academic research focusing on digital natives and digital humanities.

CIS shares the same values as Wikimedia and the free and open source software community. CIS believes Wikimedia's objectives of disseminating free knowledge to each and every individual. There are certain advantages the A2K program has because of its location within CIS. Some of these include: a) opportunity to leverage the strong network CIS has developed with various free culture / openness movement stakeholders in the past 6 years of its existence; b) the advantage of having an office space in a city which is the hub of the openness movement in India; c) readily available administrative and support staff and systems that saves a lot of A2K staff's time; d) cross-pollination of ideas and work done in other CIS programs and vice-versa; e) organisational principles like subsidiarity, war on meta-work, post-facto accountability, and amorphous institutional boundaries give the A2K team members amazing programmatic agility; and f) the right kind of ecosystem for free knowledge work[1] There are also some disadvantages: a) CIS being a non-chapter or Wikimedia volunteer-driven entity faces very valid questions about legitimacy, representation and "voluntary sector" vs. "volunteer" dichotomy; b) a section of the community view CIS-A2K as a competitor to WMIN for financial resources which undermines trust-building and consequently threatens synergies between WMIN and A2K c) CIS has to be conservative about attributing Wikimedia growth and community growth to A2K initiatives as it can be misconstrued as credit-grabbing.[2]

Methodology

Process

This work plan is put together based on an extensive engagement with various stakeholders of Wikimedia movement in India. These include a) some Wikimedia volunteers across Indic Wikimedia projects; b) WMIN Executive Committee; d) Institutional Partners of CIS-A2K; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff. Some of the language area plans were shared with that particular language Wikimedia community for feedback over the Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists and social media groups. Each plan document has a list of contributors who have contributed in developing the plan.

Structure

There are 21 diverse plans within this plan. During the work planning exercise we realized that this diversity is both a good feature and a potential bug. We were concerned about making these plans intelligible. So we have worked very hard to come up with a standard template for all plans. Thus a cursory glance may give the impression that some plans look similar, but they are not. However, you may see repetitions in strategies across plans. Also in some plans we had to deviate from the template. Moreover, it is less productive to compare one sub-plan with another sub-plan as each plan was developed taking into consideration a) specific strengths and opportunities that CIS-A2K program could build on; b) particular needs for support to which we could respond; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions.

Granularity

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised if required. The intention of this work plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. Thus this "plans within the plan" structure was essential to evolve a sense of granularity of the CIS-A2K team’s work along with micro-level outcome and impact metrics. This will give us the flexibility to amputate a plan, if it fails, without affecting the rest of the plans. We also believe that this granularity in plans will give a focussed direction for the CIS-A2K team and the volunteers who will collaborate with us in the implementation.

Mapping Plan to Budget/Mission Level Transparency

Each plan has an independent budget and is closely mapped on to the implementation plan. An attempt is made to correlate why we are spending a certain amount on a certain activity. Thus all these budgets are very optimally planned and the overall budget is an assimilation. CIS-A2K believes that this will give mission level transparency to our work and provide a clear structure of accountability to the movement.

Annual Work Plan July 2014-June 2015

Language Area Work Plans

CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts in four focus language areas plans during the last year and has been successful in reaching most of the proposed goals. In 2014-15 we will further deepen our engagement in these four language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu). Further, this experience and the learnings from it will be leveraged to work on three more large Indic Wikipedia projects, which are Bangla, Hindi and Marathi. We have developed a detailed plan for each of these language areas, which is given below.

Some of the key factors that determined the selection of languages areas have included:

Deepening the work. We have decided to continue our work in the language areas chosen last year as we believe that we need to deepen our work to ensure that the momentum we have built will be sustained even after our exit.
Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and expansion of that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities informally, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later stage. We respect the community's decision and express our willingness to work with newer language areas in a subsequent phase.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit or at least read the discussions in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

Community Strengthening Initiatives

CIS-A2K proposes to undertake three community strengthening initiatives that will further grow the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated community, both qualitatively and quantitatively. These initiatives, focussing on building capacity and nurturing leadership in the Indic communities, will ensure that growth is sustained beyond the CIS-A2K program.

Nurturing Mediawiki and Tech Talent in Indic Communities: Through this initiative CIS-A2K aims to make the Indic Wikimedia communities relatively more self-reliant in addressing minor technical issues through nurturing and building community level technical leadership. This could go a long way in reducing excessive dependency on the Engineering resources and will help the Indic communities in building strong technical liaison with the Media Wiki global community and the WMF Engineer team. The detailed plan is available here.
Wikimedia Train the Trainer Program, CIS-A2K: The program will help build capacity and enable community members to conduct outreach sessions independently or with minimal support to introduce Wikipedia to prospective editors in their respective Indian languages. See here for a detailed design of this initiative.
Wiki-Data India Marathon: Wikidata India Marathon will be a month long travelling event (or a set of events) across India. The primary objective of this marathon will be to introduce Wikidata to various Indic Wikimedia communities and show how it can be used and what benefits it has. For more details see here.

Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects

Many project ideas came up as potential opportunities and as unplanned outcomes of our work during the last year. Based on an internal evaluation and thorough due-diligence we have short-listed some projects that could have high rate of success and learning. We propose to take up 8 such projects as stand-alone Wikimedia projects during this work plan period. These stand-alone projects will have clear deliverables in a limited span of time, and will help us understand how to take up bigger initiatives in the respective language.

Med GLAM Project at Calicut Medical College: The main objective of this project is to create, curate and make openly available images from the Department of Pathology, Calicut Medical College (CMC) for the benefit of medical and para-medical students and staff of CMC specifically and for the larger medical fraternity across the world, using free/open knowledge database Wikimedia Commons.
Wiki Loves Public Art (India): This is a photography competition that seeks to get photographs of works of public art on Wikipedia. The competition is modelled on Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) which has been running successfully since 2010. We plan to execute this in active collaboration with WMIN GLAM SIG.
100 Books on Gujarati Wikisource: The main objective of this project is to add significant content to Gujarati Wikisource using OCR. This project will be executed in collaboration with Gujarati Wikimedia community, WMIN Chapter, Forbes Gujarati Sabha (which will provide access to copyright free Gujarati content to be put up on Gujarati Wikisource) and The Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.
Urdu Wikipedia Education Program at MANUU: This project aims to roll out Wikipedia Educational Programme aimed at the students of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.
Odia Wikisource as OER: This project aims to make Odia Wikisource a live project. Towards this three things will be done by CIS-A2K. First, to get a major Odia author's (Dr. Jagannath Mohanty) content re-released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and to host it on Odia Wikisource. Second, with the help of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences undertake a project whereby the students will type and proof read the books on Odia Wikisource, which could be used as OER across various educational institutions. Third, the digitized children's literature in Odia will be freely distributed across the government schools in an offline form. This project is inspired by the Malayalam Wikimedia community's efforts of introducing Wikisource in schools as part of the IT at Schools program in Kerala.
Making the Tulu Wikipedia Live
Making the Santali Wikipedia Live
Telugu Wiki Bus: This pilot project aims to create massive awareness about Indic Wikimedia projects in smaller cities and towns. This is modelled on the Google bus program and will be implemented in the Telugu speaking region of Andhra Pradesh.

Creating Movement Resources

Once CIS-A2K began actively working with the Indic Wikimedia communities, it soon realized that unlike English there are not many Wikimedia related resources available in Indic languages. During the last year we produced some resources, which were mostly unplanned outcomes. However, we feel that there is an urgent need for concerted efforts to create resources to strengthen the Wikimedia movement in India and in Indic languages. We strongly believe that creating these movement resources will go a long way in growing and strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers beyond the limits of CIS-A2K program. Some of the activities in this plan have a larger fit with the larger institutional work of CIS in the domain of Intellectual Property Rights and Openness.[3] We will collaborate with the legal expertise within CIS in executing some of these activities. A detailed plan of activities under this initiative along with a budget can be seen here.

Publicity, Research and Documentation

Many of the Indic Wikimedia projects in spite of being in existence for more than 10 years have not received adequate publicity. Many of the long time Indic Wikimedia volunteers have, during our interactions, expressed the need to increase the publicity about the Indic Wikimedia projects so that there is increased public awareness. CIS-A2K has left no stone unturned to get print and electronic media publicity for Indic Wikimedia projects and communities duirng 2013-14. Because of our efforts there were about 100 news items the print media[4] and about 10 programs on electronic media[5] in the last year.

Also the Wikimedia movement in India could benefit with more systematic research and documentation. It should be noted that CIS has been doing research about the Wikimedia movement way before the Access to Knowledge program got a grant from Wikimedia Foundation. Researching on various elements of the Wikimedia movement is not something new for CIS and the team will continue its efforts in this direction. In addition to action research, we undertook systematic documentation of the movement during the last year. More intensive efforts will be put in Publicity, Research and Documentation of the Wikimedia movement in India during this year as per the plans discussed here.

General Support and Service to the Movement

CIS-A2K deeply believes in extending support and service to the Wikimedia volunteer community in India. This has been one of the important aspects of our work. We have honoured up to 100 requests of all sizes that we received from the Wikimedia volunteer communities across all Indic languages. Most of these requests are listed here and here. CIS-A2K also receives requests over e-mail and some community members do reach out to us over mobile phones to place requests. In general the quick response time of CIS-A2K to these requests has been appreciated by many of the community members. We would like to continue with our efforts in supporting and serving the Wikimedia community in India and maintain the quick response time. CIS-A2K has actively consulted with the Wikimedia India Chapter (WMIN) before supporting most of the community requests, especially when it involved allocating funds for large community events like Tamil Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebrations. We also ensure that supporting community events is done in a transparent manner. However, we would need to review our methods and further streamline systems of support, which will be worked up on during this year. This page will give more details about the proposed work.

Learning and Evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Wikimeda community, the A2K programme had put together some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work during the last year. We have included some more metrics for evaluation this year.

Evaluation Tools

Quarterly growth of no. of articles
Quarterly growth of no. of total editors
Quarterly growth of no. of new editors
Quarterly growth of no. of active editors
Quarterly growth of no. of very active editors
No. of page views
No. of articles < 2 KB < 5 KB
No. of new tools/gadgets made available during a time-slice
No. of mentoring interactions
No. of bugs filed and resolved
No. of edits (Article, Other mainspace edits)
Print and electronic media mentions

Reports

We will undertake quarterly and annually review of its work using the above evaluation tools. The team will also report the successes and learnings to the Wikimedia India & the global community. In addition to this the A2K team will actively review progress of each language area plan in collaboration with the respective Wikimedia community. Based on this feedback we will undertake mid-course corrections, should there be a need. This will be openly shared on the respective plan discussion pages on Meta. In addition to this, A2K will continue to publish monthly newsletter informing the larger community of the various activities A2K has undertaken in a certain month and is planning to undertake in the upcoming month. Towards the the end of the grant, A2K will share an impact report encompassing analysis of all year long work done by A2K. To summarize following reports will be published in the year of 2014 - 2015:

Quarterly Report 1 (July 2014 - October 2014)
Quarterly Report 2 (November 2014 - February 2015)
Quarterly Report 3 (March 2015 - June 2015)
Impact Report (July 2014 - June 2015)
Monthly Newsletters

Monthly Review and Learning Sessions

CIS-A2K conducted many weekly learning sessions to critically reflect on the successes and failures of our work internally. We had also used these weekly sessions to learn about new developments (tools, policies, etc) in the Wikimedia universe. However, this could not be sustained for a long period. We will take measures to revive this and make it a monthly exercise, which we will try to record or screen cast on CIS website. Simultaneously we will use this to do a monthly review of the progress of the various plans and discuss about the upcoming month's events.

Budget

As stated above in the methodology section, each of the 21 plans have an independent budget, which is closely mapped on to the implementation plan. Below we have give a concise picture of the budget requirements against the 6 verticals. As part of the WMF's grant to CIS, we have received Rs. 15,000,000.00 or US$ 242,178.00 during the last year. The proposed budget of Rs. 18,406,454.00 or US$ 297.831.00 is about 23 per cent more than the previous year's grant.

Sl. No.	Budget Item	FDC (INR)	FDC (US$)	Other Sources and in kind support (INR)	Other Sources and in kind support (US$)
1	Language Area Plans	Rs. 7,466,440.00	120,813.05338	Rs. 2,100,000.00	33,979.70279
2	Community Strengthening Initiatives	Rs. 2,610,400.00	42,238.3886	Rs. 200,000.00	3,236.16217
3	Stand Alone Wikimedia Projects	Rs. 2,584,300.00	41,816.06949	Rs. 2,495,000.00	40,371.12308
4	Creating Movement Resources	Rs. 1,188,000.00	19,222.80329	Rs. 2,400,000.00	38,833.94605
5	Publicity, Research & Documentation	Rs. 780,000.00	12,621.03247	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
6	General Support and Service to the Movement	Rs. 636,000.00	10,290.99570	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
7	Other Expenses	Rs. 1,468,000.00	23,753.43033	Rs. 2,964,000.00	47,959.92337
	Total before Institutional Development	Rs. 16,733,140.00	270,755.77331	Rs. 10,159,000.00	164,380.85745
8	Institutional Development (10%)	Rs. 1,673,314.00	27,075.57733	Rs. 0.00	0.00000
	TOTAL BUDGET	Rs. 18,406,454.00	297,831.35064	Rs. 10,159,000.00	164,380.85745

Other than item no. 7 and 8 the entire budget will go towards the programmatic implementation of the plans. The staff costs are not separately listed here as we see the CIS-A2K team as a programmatic investment and each of the team member's time is budgeted against a specific activity or plan. We propose to raise Rs. 10,159,000.00 or US$ 163,380.00 other sources and in-kind support towards executing this work plan. A detailed budget analysis is available here. Please See this google spreadsheet which gives a micro level picture of the Budget against each of the planned activity.

Giving Feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here.
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.

For Bangla plan here.
For Hindi plan here.
For Kannada plan here.
For Konkani plan here.
For Marathi plan here.
For Odia plan here.
For Telugu plan here.

For feedback on Community Strengthening initiatives, please write on discussion page of the respective project page.
For feedback on Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects, please write on discussion page of the respective project page.
For feedback on Creating Movement Resources, please write here.
For feedback on Publicity, Research and Documentation, please write here.
For feedback on General Support and Service to the Movement, please write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnu at cis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please write to us and we can set up a telephone/Skype call.

Notes

[1]. CIS supports the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University through a fellowship and participation on the advisory board; CIS supports the open data community through support for the founders of Data Meet; CIS is supporting venue costs for some of Cyber Security and Privacy Foundation's outreach programmes; CIS has supported the last edition of the Goa Project; CIS allows various groups to use its Bangalore and Delhi offices for meetings such as Null Con Bangalore, Bitcoin Delhi, Arduino, Dojo, Crypto Party and Maker Party communities. In the past, CIS has hosted Inclusive Planet India and Has Geek at its Bangalore office.

[2]. See the discussion in this TechCrunch article. Also see this blog which inspired TechCrunch to do a feature about the growth of Indic Wikipedia projects.

[3]. Openness initiative at CIS

[4]. All the four foucs language areas during the last year's plan received significant print media coverage because of CIS-A2K's efforts. In addition, even the mainstream English print media did stories on indic Wikimedia projects, which was unprecedented.

[5].There were 6 television programs and 1 radio program on Telugu Wikipedia and 2 television programs and 1 radio interview on Kannada Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/india-access-to-knowledge-draft-work-plan-july-2014-june-2015

WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 3 of 3)

nehaa — 2014-04-01T09:48:59Z

From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th session. This blog post (Part 3 of 3) summarizes Day 4 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.

Many thanks to Varun Baliga for putting this together, and to Alexandra Bhattacharya of the Third World Network for her notes and inputs.

Day 5 – 26th SCCR

The agenda for the final day of the 26th SCCR was set as limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities.

Trinidad and Tobago, speaking on behalf of the GRULAC group of nations, supported the idea of an international convention on this agenda. It was of the opinion that such an instrument would work for the benefit of the economic development and socioeconomic enablement of millions of people in the GRULAC region. Algeria, speaking on behalf of the African Group, emphasized the digitalization of education, research and living across the world and the impact that this has on the right of peoples of all nations to access knowledge. Responding directly to sustained opinion from the developed world of the absence of a need for an international convention, Algeria spoke about the need for balance and uniformity in regulations. This balance between the right to access knowledge and to protect intellectual property is often achieved through the concept of limitations and exceptions. This balance also requires uniformity because conflicting cross-border norms in our digitally borderless world would render the ameliorative effects of limitations and exceptions moot. Further, the Berne Convention has proved to be of minimal help since interpretations have emerged of its dissonance with the tools needed for distance education. Therefore, in order to cover the digital dimension of limitations and exceptions, an international treaty is critical. In the words of the Algerian delegate, “We know that the balance between Intellectual Property rights and public interest are generally translated by exceptions and limitations. Unfortunately in the area of education and scientific research, national legislation does not seek this balance in a uniform and comprehensive manner.”

The delegate also responded to concerns about the text proposed by the African Group. The proposal, he said, was a text-oriented tool to find an apt balance. Further, it was also imbibed with a certain degree of flexibility to allow for its adaption to the needs of development as understood by nations, various kinds of copyright protections and various treaties in literary and artistic property. Furthermore, the African Group wished for this text, if adopted, to move on the principle of consensus and expressed a willingness to incorporate any constructive concerns that delegates may have in order to stay true to the ideal of consensus-based diplomacy.

A number of developing and developed countries supported the need for greater discussion at the international paradigm on the topic of limitations and exceptions, and also the swift adoption of an international instrument in this respect. Kenya and the Islamic Republic of Iran put their weight behind the African Group, emphasizing similar values of digitalization of information and communication, right to access knowledge, public interest and need for an international instrument. Tunisia also supported the notion that an international instrument would lead to the harmonization of standards and benefit the international community. China came out in strong support of further negotiations. Russia noted that it was in support of a single document for limitations and exceptions that covers within its ambit the entire gamut of protections discussed at this forum. Further, it also supported the contention of the Japanese delegation that the international instrument should not include contentious issues such as instance liability.

It is also pertinent to note that Japan, on behalf of Group B, came out against the idea of a treaty based approach to the negotiations, much preferring “constructive work on principles and updating of studies by the Secretariat”. The European Union submitted that the extant international copyright framework was both adequate and ideal for the needs of both the digital and analog world of education, research and needs of persons with other disabilities. The EU proceeds to draw a distinction between the needs of educational and research institutions and persons with other disabilities vis-à-vis needs of persons with visual and print impairment. In drawing this distinction, it seeks to achieve principled coherence across its support for the Marrakech Treaty and its opposition to any treaty on limitations and exceptions. It expressed concern that the working document was not an accurate reflection of the views of those countries that were of the opinion that present negotiations should be confined to the sharing of national experiences. Given the diversity in domestic regulations, any international treaty should seek to achieve domestic regulatory harmony and then proceed, assuming that the need argument fails to hold water.

The Indian delegate submitted that the discussions were in furtherance of earlier deliberation on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. There was a dire need to understand libraries and education not in a parochial, institutional sense but in a broad and enabling manner to meet the needs of developing and least developed nations. Both the material and transmission should be covered in order for distance learning to be enabled in any meaningful manner. Further, it was also of the opinion that an expansion of ISP liability is needed, citing the IT Act in support of this.

At this point, the developing nations made their voice heard in opposition to the fundamental premise of the ongoing negotiations – that an international treaty is a worthwhile goal to work towards. Poland, on behalf of the CEBS Group, commecnced his statement by taking cognizance of the importance of educational and research institutions and activities in our society and economy. The delegate recognized the existence of the knowledge triangle of education, research and innovation. Proceedings from this premise, it was the view of the CEBS Group that the best way to hone this innovation is by establishing a robust and strong system of intellectual property. Further, it went on to draw the link between the critical activities of distance learning, collaborative research with the activities of publishing and other aspects of the creative sector. Copyright policies therefore have to also take into the account the economic and social effects of not enabling access to research. The CEBS Group argued for a balanced copyright approach. It went on to support the idea of each WIPO member incorporating enabling limitations and exceptions within their domestic copyright regimes through a mutual sharing of best practices and national experience using multilateral for a such as this one. It was of the belief that modern copyright systems should provide for efficacious licensing mechanisms that are flexible, supportive and enabling to education, research and teaching activities as well as the needs of persons with other disabilities. Supporting the values emphasized by the developing world does not necessarily require the adoption of a binding international instrument. It concluded that the need to develop a comprehensive understanding of limitations and exceptions should not come at the flexibility that is conventionally afforded to WIPO member states to determine their own educational, research and teaching policies and norms to enable the lived experience of persons with disabilities.

The United States started by submitting their own document – SCCR/23/4 – on objectives and principle for limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. The US chose to further the CEBS submission by underscoring the potency of the extant copyright regime – Berne Convention 1886 and WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996. Both have a balance between copyright and education and have the promotion of education, research and teaching as their stated goals. Therefore, notwithstanding the contention that they are anachronistic given the digitalization of information and communication, it is possible to accommodate contemporary needs within existing regimes. The US stated that it was of the opinion that finding common ground on principles and an examination of the diverse national treatment of the issue of limitations and exceptions would render a more productive, positive solution than foisting a treaty or international legal instrument on the domestic regimes of WIPO members. It was of the opinion that this would “permit progress by promoting steps forward on shared goals and principles while enhancing international understanding and maintaining flexibility at the national level. We do not support work towards a treaty.” It also went on to voice concerns about the inclusion of controversial and broad areas of protection within the rubric of the treaty – topics such as public health and ISP liability were causing much consternation to the delegate of the United States. A plethora of reasons were advanced by the US that articulated its layered opposition to this entire process. There was a concern that given fundamental differences of opinion, inclusion of contentious protection would be pernicious to the negotiation itself. It was also of the opinion that a lot of the provisions had only incidental relevance to the central question of education and rights of persons with other disabilities would distract the nations from the purpose of the proposed international instrument. This proliferation of protections would in turn harm the considerable economic, social and political capital invested in the negotiation process.

Senegal affirmed the idea of an international agreement on limitations and exceptions. It believed that the contemporary is far removed from the world in which the Berne Convention and extant international copyright regime was conceptualized. Therefore, Senegal was in favour of a flexible international instrument that responded to digitalization and was proactive rather than reflexive. Sudan also threw its weight behind the African Group proposal and offered a scathing critique of the exclusivist tendencies of the contemporary copyright regime. It called for “efforts to break the current situation faced by certain countries in communication or in building the infrastructure and bridging the digital gap.

Columbia, on the other hand, spoke about the need to understand if there is a lacuna in the present international copyright regime and understand the implications of adding to existing corpus of limitations and exceptions.

At this juncture, the Chair opened the floor for contributions from civil society representatives. Knowledge Ecology International focussed its submissions on three foci – specific exceptions, three-step test and the corporate system. KEI acknowledged the raft of protections for limitations and exceptions within existing copyright structures but articulated the need for specific exceptions. Further, it reasoned out the incompatibility of the Berne three-step test with the needs of contemporary knowledge creation, research and access. Transplanting the Berne Convention to this context would render it moot and have far-reaching pernicious consequences on the international community’s reactions to dire questions of access particularly in the developing and developed world. KEI acknowledged the underlying premise of US/EU/Group B objections to an international instrument by pointing out the difference in national treatment of limitations and exceptions. As a response to this legitimate concern, it suggested that complimentary confidence building measures such as a multi-stakeholder platform work alongside the treaty negotiations so as to ensure that it is an inclusive process that alienates no stakeholder.

IFRRO came out in strong support of the position against an international treaty. It stated that in pursuit of limitations and exceptions, one must not lose sight of the legitimate rights that creators have over their work. Diluting that principle would do harm to the idea of copyright and by extension creative and innovative thought. In support of this contention, studies were cited that showed a causal link between IP protection and income of authors.

The Centre for Internet and Society underscored the value of universal access to education and knowledge. Information and communication technology in the contemporary carry the tantalizing prospect of the realization of this ideal without excessive expenditure. It is also critical for this access question to be all-inclusive, for “formal and informal institutions and for environments and in digital and non-digital formats”. The experience of developing and least developed nations is a feeling of exclusion from the silos of knowledge in the west and it falls upon the international community to disrupt these silos to ensure equitable access to knowledge and, as a consequence, power. Individuals in these countries not only have to spend more on each book but have to spend a higher proportion of household income on it vis-à-vis Western households. The present international copyright framework lacks the ability to facilitate the realization of this ideal for three reasons. First, the myopic and complex compulsory licensing provisions in the Berne Convention. Second, the incompatibility of the three step test to contemporary limitations and exceptions. And finally, the need for harmonization of national practices and facilitation of cross-border exchange of information and knowledge.

On being called on by the United States, Ecuador and Egypt, it was decided that the Secretariat would study the possibility of a study on the ambit of copyright and related rights as also limitations and exceptions for persons with disability and from the perspective of learning concerns. It was also decided that the Secretariat would update regional studies on limitations and exceptions for educational, research and teaching institutions.

The next session, SCCR 27, would focus on a discussion on exceptions and limitations with a focus on libraries and archives.

Draft Conclusions

The draft conclusions to this year’s SCCR was put up by the Chair for comments by all members. Belarus and CEBS fully supported the text and praised it for its balanced approach. The United States also supported it but requested an edit to Paragraph 6 Line 4 – a ‘to be defined’ in parenthesis after the words ‘on demand transmissions’. India expressed gratitude that everyone’s views were taken into account in the draft conclusions and asked for two edits. It stated that parts of the discussion on Article 9 were absent from the text. Further, the words beneficiaries in the draft conclusions was included when it had no definition in the document. Finally, it suggested that the word last line in paragraph 5 be changed to might or may. The Chair responded to India’s concerns on paragraph 5 by directing attention to the word ‘if’ in the text. Ecuador and Brazil both supported India’s opinion that the word should be may or might and not should. India submitted that this is not simply an editorial or cosmetic change but one that reflected a substantive issue. Ecuador also stated that countries might in the future want to include internet transmissions and the word should conditions the negotiations, lending it a restrictive air. Brazil also stated that it was crucial for the text to be both balanced and reflective of every stakeholder’s concerns. India stated that this was a demand from two or three groups. The lack of consensus on this point implies that the word should be may and not should. The EU, US, Japan, Switzerland and Poland (on behalf of the CEBS) supported the text in toto- a tacit snub to India’s suggestion. Italy stated that the word ‘if’ in the text provides the kind of flexibility that India is seeking and that altering the word should to may would rob the provision of meaning and be grammatically grotesque. Looking for alternatives, India also requested that the words ‘at least’ be deleted in order for some aspect of its concerns to be taken into account. Belarus characterized the text as entirely factual and accurate portrayal of the negotiations that took place-gave its support to the entire text. The Chair then offered an explanation of the terminology and showed how the wording allowed for both possibilities of inclusion and exclusion of transmission over the internet.

Indian then turned attention to the lack of a definition to the word beneficiaries. The Chair acknowledged India’s concerns and accepted the US suggestion to add the words ‘to be defined’ after both beneficiaries and on demand transmissions. Brazil also suggested traditional broadcasting/cablecasting or broadcasting/cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense as possible ways to word the text. The EU requested the Chair for some language suggestions on how best to resolve this. The proposals (and not issues, after a request from India) on Articles 5,6,7,9 and 12 were added to the annex. After the incorporation of all these concerns and compromises, the Chair approved this section.

Libraries and Archives

On the limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives, the United States made two suggestions. First, that the word may be removed from paragraph 18 as it detracta from the nature of the deliberation on that point. Second, the inclusion of the phrase “other proposals submitted” in paragraph 21. Brazil stated that it stood for the draft conclusions to be a clear picture of the positions adopted by WIPO members. In this light, it called for the inclusion of the names of member states that wished to discuss national laws in paragraph instead of the nebulous phrase ‘some member states’. He also requested a clarification on the last line of paragraph 16. Trinidad and Taboga indicated that it was adopting a flexible approach; it supported the suggestions by the US and Brazil but were also willing to work with the text.

The European Union wanted the word ‘also’ to be removed from paragraph 14. It also suggested that the final sentence of paragraph 16 be “these studies will serve as information and work resources for the committee”. Ecuador agreed with the US working document. It was of the opinion that the document should better reflect a spirit of compromise. On limitations and exceptions for museums, given the study reflected in the plenary for persons with other disabilities – there was a discrepancy between the discussions and the text. One was with the understanding that it was subject to the availability of resources while the other implied that it was mandatory in nature. The EU wanted licensing to be included in the text. The US thanked Ecuador for working out a compromise on the language and accepted it. Algeria expressed its desire to stick to the language proposed by the Chair on paragraph 13.

The Brazilian delegate called for flexibility on paragraph 14 in light of the proposal by the EU delegation on the point of discussion on national laws. The United States responded that it didn’t quite follow the position being adopted by the Brazilian delegate on paragraph 14 and much preferred a return to the text originally adopted by the Chair. Egypt pointed out the possible confusion that could emerge between paragraph 16 and 21, and in light of this expressed a willingness to engage in a full scale discussion on proposals from Canada and the EU. The EU responded directly to paragraph 14 in particular. It spoke out against the idea of listing the WIPO members that asked for a discussion on national laws as this would be against WIPO practice both in other parts of the same document as well as in other deliberations. EU stated that it saw no need to list out WIPO members and stood firmly against it. Brazil responded with a modicum of alarm at the opposition to the simple proposal to introduce the elements of precision in a document that is meant to be factual. It is far better for readers to understand the precise picture rather than having a general understanding of issues. Italy, Belarus and Greece threw their collective weight behind the EU opposition to this. All stated that this would be highly inappropriate and would amount to the singling out of the EU and other nations that took a stance, something that they didn’t see a need for. The US proposed a compromise where instead of naming the member states, ‘some member states’ would be used. Brazil said that this term was not just nebulous but could give the wrong impression to future delegates of the precise number of states that wished for discussion on national laws. Ecuador played the role of the voice of reason and stated that the progress of negotiations shouldn’t be hampered because of such a cosmetic set of differences. There was no need for the level of precision that was exemplified by the naming of WIPO members. Instead, it stated that it advocated for a general references to nations that asked for a discussion on national laws. This general reference was supported by Algeria and finally adopted by the Chair as a compromise between the opposing factions. On paragraph 16, the Chair called for the part on limitations and exceptions on museums to be deleted with the understanding that there would be an update by Professor Kenneth Cruz that would include all aspects of this issue. On paragraph 14, the Chair was in favour of the compromise suggested by the United States. It stated that in using the word ‘some’ no particular number or indication thereof was intended and that caveat was always there; instead what was only meant through the word ‘some’ was that the number of was more than one. Asked for Brazil to show some flexibility in this situation. Egypt raised the important issue of not conflating the fundamental disagreement on the nature of the proposed instrument and the desire to have discussions on national laws. It stated that in case both were being included, they be mentioned in separate paragraphs because a conflation would lead to misplaced conclusions being drawn.

Deliberations on paragraph 16 ensued and the Chair clarified that on paragraph 16, the first and third sentence were being retained while the second was done away with. Ecuador asked for thereto be no confusion between studies on limitations and exceptions and those on museums. Its objection does not extend to the latter. The Chair suggested that all references to museums be deleted. Algeria wanted the words on preparation not being delayed to be retained and applied to all studies being proposed. US agreed with the Chair’s proposal but added that perhaps a separate study on limitations and exceptions on museums be included. Algeria insisted that this principle be applicable to all studies and not just studies on museums. The Chair stated that a separate study on limitations and exceptions for museums be included with the understanding that this would not delay general discussions on limitations and exceptions. The last sentence was also retained. With this, deliberations on this topic were closed.

Limitations and Exceptions For Educational and Research Institutions and for Persons with Other Disabilities

The European Union delegate stated that it was in support of the inclusion of the point on licensing as an appropriate point in the text. Sharing Algeria’s concern, it also called for the deletion of the word ‘understood’ in paragraph 23. Algeria had earlier raised a problem with the use of the word ‘understood’, preferring the phrase ‘agreed on’. The EU also called for the text to be accurate reflection of the negotiations. Brazil responded to the concerns of the EU delegate by stating that he would not be in support of a suggestion that this document not be the basis for future work on this topic. Ecuador supported Brazil’s point on this being a text-based negotiations and that this should be the basis for future deliberations. Brazil also expressed a bewilderment at the EU insistence of the inclusion of the point on licensing. It asked for its relevance in an agreement on educational institutions; a clarification was sought from the EU. The EU responded that it was of the opinion that we’re dealing with related subjects that deserve equal treatment. In this context, since licensing was included in the previous agreement, it must also be reflected in these conclusions.

Egypt supported the Chair’s language in paragraph 23. Further, it went on to attempt a compromise by suggesting that this text be not the basis for future text-based work but a basis. This would lend the issue a degree of much-needed flexibility. The US, on the side, supported the EU on including licensing schemes. The EU responded favourably to the compromise suggested by Egypt and said that a text where the word the is replaced by a is one that is agreeable to the EU.

The Chair outlined the three issues as

The word ‘the’ in Item 27
The inclusion of the point on licensing and the tussle between the EU (arguing for inclusion, supported by the US) and Brazil (against the inclusion).
The point of this being the basis for future text-based negotiations and the compromise suggested by Egypt and accepted by the EU.

A compromise was worked out on licensing where the words “but other delegations do not see it that way” be included as a rider. Differences on points 1 and 3 were also ironed out as the Egyptian compromise was accepted. On this point, the third section was approved and deliberations came to an end.

Other Matters

It was announced that the reports of the Stakeholders’ Platform – SCCR/26/5 and SCCR/26/7 – be put up on the web page. Finally, suggestions were wielded and discussed for future meetings of the SCCR.

It was agreed that SCCR 27 would be dedicated to the protection of broadcasting organizations (two-and-half days), limitations and exceptions (two days) and conclusions and discussions on future work (half a day).

Additional Links

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-26-session-consolidated-notes-part-3

ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ ଓ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର: ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପୁସ୍ତକ ଏଣିକି ମୁକ୍ତରେ ମିଳିବ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T06:28:19Z

ଭୁବନେଶ୍ବର (ମାର୍ଚ୍ଚ ୨୯): ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ ତରଫରୁ ଆଜି ଭୁବନେଶ୍ବର ଜୟଦେବ ଭବନଠାରେ ଓଡିଶା ଦିବସ ପାଳିତ ହୋଇଯାଇଛି। ଆୟୋଜିତ ଉତ୍ସବରେ ମୁଖ୍ୟ ଅତିଥି ଭାବେ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଡ. ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ଯୋଗଦେଇ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାକୁ ବିଶ୍ବସ୍ତରରେ ପହଞ୍ଚାଇବା ପାଇଁ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆର ଉଦ୍ୟମ ପ୍ରଂଶସନୀୟ ବୋଲି ମତବ୍ୟକ୍ତ କରିଥିଲେ । ସମସ୍ତଙ୍କର ମିଳିତ ଉଦ୍ୟମ ହିଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ଓ ସାହିତ୍ୟକୁ ସମୃଦ୍ଧ କରିପାରିବ ବୋଲି ସେ ଆଶାପ୍ରକାଶ କରିଥିଲେ ।

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାକୁ ବହୁଳ ଭାବେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇବା ସହ ଡିଜିଟାଇଜେସନ କରିବା ଲକ୍ଷନେଇ ୨୦୦୨ ମସିହାରୁ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ ନିରବଚ୍ଛିନ୍ନ ଉଦ୍ୟମ କରିଆସୁଛି । ଅନ୍ୟ ଭାଷା ପରି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଜ୍ଞାନକୋଷକୁ ବୃଦ୍ଧି କରିବା ଓ ଡିଜିଟାଇଜେସନ ମାଧମରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାକୁ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇବା ପାଇଁ ଏହି ଦୁଇଦିନିଆ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକ୍ରମ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହୋଇଛି ଏହି ଉତ୍ସବରେ ଭାଷାତତ୍ବବିତ ପଦ୍ମଶ୍ରୀ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ଯୋଗଦେଇଥିଲେ। ଅନ୍ୟମାନଙ୍କ ମଧରେ ଉତ୍କଳ ବିଶ୍ବବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟର ପ୍ରଫେସର ଉଦୟନାଥ ସାହୁ , ଓଡିଶା ରିଭୁର ସଂପାଦକ ଡ. ଲେନିନ ମହାନ୍ତି, ଓଡିଶା ଭାସ୍କରର ମୁଖ ଶ୍ରୀଯୁକ୍ତ ପ୍ରଦୋଷ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ, ଭାଷା ଗବେଷକ ଶ୍ରୀଯୁକ୍ତ ସୁବ୍ରତ ପୃଷ୍ଟି ,କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚ୍ୟୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇନ୍ସେସର ଅଧକ୍ଷ ଡ. ମଦନ ମୋହନ ସାହୁ, ମାଣିକ ବିଶ୍ବନାଥ ଦାତବ୍ୟ ସ୍ମୃତିନ୍ୟାସର ଅଧକ୍ଷା ଶ୍ରୀମତୀ ଆହ୍ଲାଦ ମୋହିନୀ ମହାନ୍ତି, ସ୍ମୃତିନ୍ୟାସର ସଂପାଦକ ବ୍ରଜମୋହନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ଓ ଏହାର ପରିଚାଳନା କମିଟି ସଦସ୍ୟ ଅଧ୍ୟାପକ ସରୋଜକାନ୍ତ ଚୌଧୁରୀ ଓ ଶିଶିର ରଂଜନ ଦାସ ଯୋଗ ଦେଇଥିଲେ ।

ଏହି ଉତ୍ସବରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଶିଶୁ ସାହିତିକ ଡ. ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ ମହାନ୍ତିଙ୍କ ୧୧ ଖଣ୍ଡ ପୁସ୍ତକର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ କିସ ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀଙ୍କ ଦ୍ବାରା ଖୁବ ଶୀଘ୍ର ଆରମ୍ଭ ହେବ ବୋଲି ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ ତରଫରୁ ଘୋଷଣା କରାଯାଥିଲା। ଏହି ପୁସ୍ତକସବୁ ଉଇକୁପିଡିଆରେ ବିନା କପିରାଇଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାହେବ। ଡ ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ ମହାନ୍ତିଙ୍କ ପତ୍ନୀ ତଥା ମାଣିକ ବିଶ୍ବନାଥ ଦାତବ ସ୍ମୃତିନାସର ଅଧକ୍ଷା ଶ୍ରୀମତୀ ଆହ୍ଲାଦମୋହିନୀ ମହାନ୍ତି ଏହି ପୁସ୍ତକ ଗୁଡିକର ପ୍ରକାଶନ ପାଇଁ ଉତ୍ସବରେ ଲିଖିତ ଅନୁମତି ଦେଇଥିଲେ। ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅଧ୍ୟୟନ ଓ ଗବେଷଣା ସଂସ୍ଥା ତରଫରୁ ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ଓ ସୁବ୍ରତ ପୃଷ୍ଟିଙ୍କ ସଂକଳିତ ଆଉ ତିନୋଟି ବହି ମଧ୍ୟ ମୁକ୍ତ ଲାଇସେନ୍ସରେ ଉନ୍ମଚିତ ହୋଇଥିଲା । ଏହା ସହ ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପ କରିବା ପାଇଁ ଅନୁବାଦ ହୋଇପାରୁଥିବା ସଫ୍ଟଓୟାରକୁ ଅତିଥିମାନେ ଉନ୍ମୋଚିତ କରିଥିଲେ। ଖୁବଶୀଘ୍ର ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯିବ ବୋଲି ଉତ୍ସବରେ ଘୋଷଣା ହୋଇଥିଲା। କିସ ତରଫରୁ ଏହି ବହିଗୁଡିକର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ସଂସ୍କରଣ ଏହାର ମୁଖ୍ୟ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟନିର୍ବାହୀ ଅଧିକାରୀ ଶ୍ରୀଯୁକ୍ତ ସୂର୍ଯ୍ୟକାନ୍ତ ମହାନ୍ତିଙ୍କ ପରାମର୍ଶରେ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯିବ।

ଉତ୍ସବ ଆରମ୍ଭରେ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆର ସହ ପରିଚାଳକ ମୃତ୍ୟୁଞ୍ଜୟ କର ସ୍ବାଗତ ଭାଷଣ ଦେଇଥିଲେ। ପରେ ସେଣ୍ଟର ଫର ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଏଣ୍ଡ ସୋସାଇଟିର ଶୁଭାଶିଷ ପାଣିଗ୍ରାହୀ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ ସମ୍ପର୍କରେ ସଂକ୍ଷିପ୍ତ ବିବରଣୀ କରିଥିଲେ। ମୁଖ୍ୟ ଅତିଥି ଦେବୀପ୍ରସନ୍ନ ପଟ୍ଟନାୟକ ନିଜ ବକ୍ତବ୍ୟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାକୁ ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ମାନ୍ୟତା ମିଳିବାକୁ ନେଇ ହୋଇଥିବା ପ୍ରଚେଷ୍ଟା ବିଷୟରେ ଆଲୋଚନା କରିଥିଲେ। ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ଅନେକ ପୁସ୍ତକ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ହେଉନଥିବାରୁ ପାଠକଙ୍କ ଜ୍ଞାନ ଆହରଣ ପାଇଁ ଏହା ଏକ ବିଶାଳ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ବୋଲି ସେ କହିଥିଲେ । ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷାର ପତ୍ରପତ୍ରିକାକୁ କିପରି ସଂରକ୍ଷିତ ରଖାଯାଇପାରିବେ ଓ ପ୍ରାଚୀନ ପୋଥିକୁ ଲୋକମାନେ ବ୍ୟବହାର କରି ସେ ସମୟର ସାହିତ୍ୟ ସହିତ ଜଡିତ ହେବା ସମ୍ପର୍କରେ ପ୍ରଚେଷ୍ଟା କରିବା ଉଚିତ ବୋଲି କହିଥିଲେ ।

Read the original published in Odishan on March 30, 2014 here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishan-march-30-2014-odisha-2014-coverage

11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource

subha — 2014-04-06T05:01:14Z

This blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.

Click to read the post republished on DNA on March 30, 2014. The original posted on Wikimedia Blog can be seen here.

In Kannada poetry, Vachana Sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing that evolved in the eleventh century and flourished in the twelevth, as a part of the “Lingayatha” movement. More than 259 Vachanakaras (Vachana writers) have compiled over 11,000 vachanas. 21,000 of these verses, which were published in the 15-volume “Samagra Vachana Samputa” by the government of Karnataka have been digitised. Two Wikimedians, along with a Kannada linguist and author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy, are involved in the Unicode conversions, corrections and writing preface for these verses. The entire work is now available as a standalone project called “Vachana Sanchaya” and ready to enrich Kannada Wikisource.

This project was started a year ago when Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash was trying to help Professor O.L. Naghabhushana Swamy and Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra access the vachana (verses) of Vachana Sanchaya. Swamy had trouble using publicly available content on Vachanas since the data was in ASCII standard and searching the text was a huge problem. I (Pavithra Hanchagaiah) started to help gather information about vachanas and document it in Unicode by writing scripts for open source software. Further discussions were made to get thousands of vachanas in the form of a database, so that they could be made easily searchable with an index. This demanded that we build a platform supporting all these activities, which would help the linguistic researchers, students and members of the general public who have an interest in reading and studying Vachana literature. With this idea, Omshivaprakash started designing the model, and his colleague Devaraju started building it. In the meantime I was running various scripts to fix errors in conversion of ASCII text to Unicode, confirming that the data was ready to consume by the modules developed for concordance. We spent weekends and holidays executing this project from home. With the constant feedback and guidance from Mr Swamy and Vasudendra, we learnt how concordance of text is used by researchers and what would make it easier for them to research on Vachana Sahitya. Omshivaprakash worked on the architecture of the platform, decided the infrastructure requirements – free and open source software technologies were used to keep the platform active while managing the entire project. I provided critical hacks for digitization and gave feedback through suggestions.

Working System

Currently, the system has around 200,000 unique words in its repository. Vachana Sanchaya is meant for research rather than just a repository of text on the web. While you search the words on our system, you can see who has used the word in all Vachanas. To make the research more readable, we highlight the text searched in each Vachana that would be displayed. To repeat the search for a specific Vachanakara (poet) you just need to click on his name on the graph on the results page. We have used MediaWiki’s jquery-ime input tool architecture that helped us provide a feature to directly enter Kannada text in Unicode for searches. So just type, and get results!

Public Response

We are glad to see people accessing vachanas from our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ channels. There have been approximately 500,000 pageviews to our site in the first few months of our platform’s public launch. Interestingly, commonly searched Kannada words like “ಕರ್ಮ”(Karma en:Work/Deed) , “ಸತ್ಯ” (Sathya -en:Truthfulness ) and “ನದಿ” (River) have resulted in quick and easy results.

Plans for the Future

Our system is extensible with respect to adding new feature – we have a review desk for researchers to help us with the review of content. Later we will also be adding required references to Vachanas from various research works that have been done around this literature. The content is available to the public through OpenData API and will be distributed as public domain through Wikisource once the review work is complete. This will open up the system for students, developers, researchers and anyone interested in working around building linguistic tools for Kannada and other Indic languages. This system is meant to evolves around other works rather than having to change and re-invent the wheel for more such projects. Vachana Sahitya will further help us to initiate Natural Language Processing (NLP) projects if more researchers get together to tag the words, glossary etc in the coming days. We can also fulfill the need of various language tools like spelling and grammar checker for users through crowd-sourcing the development. The next projects under the “Kannada Sanchaya” are Sarvagnana Vachanagalu and Dāsa Sanchaya which are in the pipeline with initial phases of work underway. Our idea is to extend this platform from Vyasa to Muddanna and possibly the contemporary literature work available in the public domain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-march-30-2014-rohini-lakshane-11th-century-kannada-literature-now-on-wikisource

Emphasis on developing vernacular encyclopaedias

praskrishna — 2014-04-15T10:22:04Z

emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias.

This article published in the Hindu on March 30, 2014 quotes Rehmanuddin Sheikh.

It is imperative to make efforts to develop encyclopaedias in all vernacular languages, S. Rehmanuddin, programme officer, Centre of Internet Society - Access To Knowledge, said.

In a guest lecture on Telugu Wikipedia organised by the Computer Science department in JNTU College of Engineering, Pulivendula, he explained the way Wikipedia works - the wiki model and the Wiki mark-up language.

Students were also told about the workings of the media wiki framework, which forms the backend of Wikipedia and several similar projects.

Head of Computer Science, A. Suresh Babu, explained that the guest lecture was organised to enlighten CSE students about Wikipedia, the largest encyclopaedia ever.

It is the biggest multilingual textual source with over three crore articles in 287 languages including Telugu, students were told.

It has over four million articles on various topics ranging from arts to mythology and science to advanced computing, he added.

He explained to the participants about Media wiki API that would help them understand web services and create applications based on the API data.

IT will help them to create data-driven projects in future, he said.

Automation of tasks in the form of running bot scripts were also demonstrated during the lecture.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-30-2014-emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias

Community Capacity Building Workshop at KIIT University

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:22:17Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team is organizing a workshop for community capacity building at KIIT University on March 30, 2014.

Experienced Wikimedians and Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K mentored the community about community building strategies and outreach. They had a discussion about the further steps with students (graduating batch) of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal who took part in the Odia Wikipedia Education program. Finally there was a discussion on CIS-A2K's Odia language work plan for Wikipedia and WikiSource.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/community-capacity-building-workshop-at-kiit

Odisha 2014: Coverage in Odisha Samay

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:48:13Z

Odisha Samay published a report of the Odisha 2014 event on March 30, 2014.


Above: A scanned version of the report published in Odisha Samay on March 30, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishasamay-march-30-2014-odisha-2014-coverage

Odia Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:29:02Z

The article was published in the Telegraph on March 29, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi spoke about the Odia Wikipedia plan.

Odia Wikipedia community recently celebrated Odisha Day at Jayadev Bhavan. Inaugurating the event, linguist Debiprasanna Pattanayak said that that most of the Odia publications were not available on the Internet and readers were devoid of easy access to those. He discussed the process of digitisation for preserving valuable books that are out of print.

Odia wikipedia has been trying to popularise use of the language on the Internet since 2002. The aim of the gathering was to enrich the online encyclopaedia and get more books digitised. Eleven volumes of works of Jagannath Mohanty were released on the occasion.

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences will digitise these books by training their students.

Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode font designed by www. odialanguage. com.

Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read out the annual report and the vision of Odia wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-telegraph-march-29-2014-odia-wikipedia

Odia Wikimedia community celebrated Odisha day, bringing 14 copyright free Odia books

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T12:25:46Z

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated “Odisha day” today at Jayadev Bhawan. Inaugurating this event eminent linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak said, 'Collaborative effort and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language an culture'.

This was published in Odishadiary on March 29, 2014.

Odia Wikipedia has been trying to popularize use of Odia language in the Internet since 2002.

To enrich the online encyclopedia and getting more books digitized Wikipedians are organizing a two day event. Along with Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak, Professor Udayanath Sahu, The Odisha Review's editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar's editor Pradosh Pattnaik, language researcher Subrat Prusty, Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS)'s principal Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa's chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty along with the trust's secretary Brajamohan Patnaik and senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash.

11 volumes of eminent Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were released in free Creative Commons licenses. KISS will be digitizing these books by training their students. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia community for releasing and digitizing these books. Guests released a DVD containing a new Odia Unicode free font designed by OdiaLanguage.com, a new Odia input tool, free softwares and offline Wikipedia.

It was declared that the Odia WikiSource project will be active soon. Odia Wikipedia admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts being laid for bringing Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. Majority of the Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easily accessible. He discussed about the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm lead manuscripts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-march-29-2014-odia-wikimedia-community-celebrated-odisha-day-bringing-14-copyright-free-odia-books

Odia Wikipedia Brings 14 Copyright Free Odia Books and a Free Odia Font

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T06:18:22Z

Odia Wikimedia community has celebrated "Odisha Day" today at Jayadev Bhawan.

Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society read the annual report and shared the vision of the Wikimedia movement.

Read the complete story published by Odishabarta on March 29, 2014 here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/odishabarta-march-29-2014-odia-wikipedia-brings-14-copyright-free-odia-books-and-free-odia-font