Centre for Internet and Society

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T09:15:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is celebrating 5 years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its activities and accomplishments. The exhibition will be held at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, 2013.

Download all the posters exhibited during the recent exhibition here.

As a move to promote transparency, CIS is inviting the general public to be its auditors by throwing open its account books and contracts which show how it has spent the Rs. 13.13 crores received from its donors. The four-day event will see renowned artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas and Abhishek Hazra featuring their work and also giving live demonstrations.

Agenda

Open exhibition on all the 4 days from 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., in Bangalore and Delhi. The evening programmes will be held in Bangalore. Dinner will be served right afterwards.

Evening Programmes

May 20, 2013

18.00 19.00	Why did I buy a set-top box?: What we know, don't know and need to know about Digitalisation — A Talk by Vibodh Parthasarathi Why are we being asked to install set-top boxes? How will this change what we want, and pay for, on TV? Grappling with these questions, the talk will evaluate the rationale of the digital migration in cable currently underway, and the less talked about digital migration being planned for the public broadcaster. These scarcely debated and often contentious issues form the core of a recent Country Report on the Media in India, anchored by the speaker. The India Country Report, the first inter-sectoral and policy oriented study of our electronic media landscape, finds the ongoing digitalisation of cable, the infusion of digital tools in the press and the proposed digital switchover of the public broadcaster, posing varied challenges not only to journalism but to public interest at large. This report is part of a global initiative, Mapping Digital Media, examining opportunities and risks amidst the transitions to a digital media ecology across 50 countries. Video
19.00 19.30	Film Screening on Cyber Cafes of Rural India by Video Volunteers Video Volunteers in partnership with CIS have been documenting the cyber cafes of rural India. Kamini Menon and Christy Raj will do the screening of seven 2-minute films: Cyber Cafe Trends Slowly Changing in Imphal by Achungmei Kamei (Manipur) Transgender Interaction with Cyber Cafes by Christy Raj (Karnataka) Cyber Cafes Prevail Over Mobile Phones in Nagaland by Meribeni Kikon (Nagaland) Mobile Technology Threatens Cyber Cafes in HP by Avdhesh Negi (Himachal Pradesh) Cyber Cafe Visit - A Day's Journey by Saroj Paraste (Madhya Pradesh) The Challenges of Establishing Cyber Cafes by Rohini Pawar (Maharashtra) The Community Service Centre - Myth or Reality? by Neeru Rathod (Gujarat) Video
19.30 20.00	Hindustani Classical Performance by Aditya Dipankar
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 21, 2013

18.00 19.00	Screening of Sabaka A young elephant trainer in India vows revenge against the cult that killed his family. He seeks help from the local Maharajah who refuses, and he sets out alone to battle the enemy... Sabaka is a 1954 film produced and directed by Frank Ferrin starring Boris Karloff, Reginald Denny, June Foray, et.al.
19.00 20.00	Slouching towards Tlön: An Encyclopedia for the 2nd century of Indian cinema — A Talk by Lawrence Liang Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen’s Encyclopedia of Indian cinema (1994) marked an important moment for the study of Indian film history. In the two decades since its publication we have seen a rise in the academic community working on Indian film history along with the rise of various new archival initiatives online. Materials that were hitherto unavailable have also made their way into the public domain via the efforts of film historians, cinephiles and other enthusiasts. It is perhaps fitting to think about what a collaborative encyclopedia of Indian cinema for the 21st century may look like. Using Rajadhayksha and Willemen’s Encyclopedia as a base, Lawrence has been working on an online version that incorporates moving images, photographs and archival materials and his presentation will open up questions of how one thinks of an online encyclopedia as well as larger conceptual questions of the relationship between the encyclopedias, the internet and moving image archives. Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 22, 2013

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Surveillance

18.00 18.30	“The Indian Surveillance State”— A Talk by Maria Xynou The Central Monitoring System confirms that, starting from last month ‘Big Brother’ is a reality in India. But how do authorities get the tech to spy on us? Maria has started investigating surveillance technology companies operating in India. So far, 76 companies have been detected which are producing and selling different types of surveillance gear to Indian law enforcement agencies. Join us to see India´s first investigation of who is aiding our watchers! Video
18.30 19.00	Why Privacy and How? A Talk by Bernadette Langle "But I have nothing to hide!" That's what most people think. Are you sure? What about all the services you use for free, don't you think the service provider has to spend money on that, and that he needs to earn it somehow? Bernadette will show some alternatives and also how easy it can be, to put your messages in a virtual private envelope as you use to do with messages on paper. Video
19.00 19.45	Cyber Security Preview — Presentation by Laird Brown and Purba Sarkar CIS in cooperation with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, is developing a film project on cyber security in India from a civil society perspective. Laird will show the preview of the project. The preview will include an overview of the project along with a video footage from the first series of interviews. Video
19.45 20.00	Faking of Fingerprints: A Presentation by Bernadette Langle Bernadette will give a brief presentation on how easy it is to fake a fingerprint. Afterwards you can get hands-on. Fake a fingerprint yourself and take it with you to your home. Video Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 23, 2013

Kannada Language and IT

18.00 18.15	Kannada in Modern Era: A Guest Talk by Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara Dr. Chandrashekhara will be the chief guest for this session and will give a guest lecture. Video
18.15 19.30	From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada: A Talk by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja Kannada language which has a history of 2000 years and quite rich in literature started on palm leaves. Kannada advanced with modern times adopting the marvels of Information Technology. This is accomplished by successfully implementing Kannada in various facets of IT. It is being used everywhere from data driven applications to websites to hand held devices like tablets. These aspects will be brought out during the talk. Summary in Kannada: ತಾಳೆಗರಿಯಿಂದ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ತನಕ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಪಯಣ ಸುಮಾರು ಎರಡು ಸಾವಿರ ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಭವ್ಯ ಇತಿಹಾಸವಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದ ಉಗಮ ತಾಳೆಗರಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಆಯಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆಯು ಆಧುನಿಕ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಅದ್ಭುತ ಕೊಡುಗೆಗಳನ್ನು ತನ್ನದಾಗಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬೆಳೆಯಿತು. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಎಲ್ಲ ಅಂಗಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡವನ್ನು ಅಳವಡಿಸಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಇದು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಯಿತು. ಆನ್ವಯಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶವಿರಲಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಸ್ಪಂದನಾತ್ಮಕ ಜಾಲತಾಣವಿರಲಿ, ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಡಿದು ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡುವ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ಇರಲಿ –ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಡೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಳಕೆ ಆಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಕಡೆ ಒಂದು ಪಕ್ಷಿನೋಟವನ್ನು ಈ ಭಾಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನೀಡಲಾಗುವುದು. Video
19.30 20.00	Carnatic Music Performance by Nirmita Narasimhan Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

About the Speakers

Vibodh Parthasarathi	Vibodh Parthasarathi works with the Centre for Culture and Media Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is also a Board Member at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media and development policy, business history of creative industries, and governance of media infrastructure. At the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, his ongoing research addresses media policy literacy, the TV news industry and the digital switchover in India. He is the co-editor of the critically acclaimed tri-series on Communication Process (Sage).
Lawrence Liang	Lawrence Liang is the Chairman of the Board at the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a graduate of the National Law School. He subsequently pursued his Masters degree in Law and Development at Warwick, on a Chevening Scholarship. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. A keen follower of the open source movement in software, Lawrence has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written extensively on these issues and is the author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses. Lawrence has taught at NLS, the Asian College of Journalism, NALSAR, etc., and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the idea of cinematic justice at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Maria Xynou	Maria Xynou is a Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the CIS. She has previously interned with Privacy International and with the Parliament of Greece. Maria holds a Master of Science in Security Studies from the University College London (UCL).
Bernadette Langle	Bernadette Längle recently graduated in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and computer science. She is also a so-called hacktivist together with one of the oldest hacker associations of the world, the Chaos Computer Club, having a lot of influence in German politics. As one of the core-team organizer of Chaos Communication Congress in Germany she also has a lot of experience in organizing events.
Laird Brown	Laird Brown is a strategic planner and writer. His core competencies are brand analysis, public relations, and resource management. Laird has worked at the United Nations in New York; high-tech ventures in North America, Europe, and India; and, is a guest speaker at ICT conferences internationally. He is currently working on a film project for CIS on cyber security in India with Purba Sarkar.
Purba Sarkar	Purba Sarkar is an associate producer with the cyber security film project. She holds a Bachelor in Technology degree from West Bengal University of Technology. Purba worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail for 4 years before joining CIS in January, 2013.
Dr.Chandrashekhara Kambara	Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara is a prominent poet, playwriter, folklorist, film director in Kannada language. He is also the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. He is known for his effective usage of North Karnataka dialect of Kannada language in his plays and poems and is often compared with D.R. Bendre. He has been conferred with many prestigious awards including the Jnanpith Award (the highest literary honour conferred in India) in 2011 for the year 2010, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Shri by Government of India, Kabir Samman, Kalidas Samman and Pampa Award. After his retirement, Kambara was nominated Member of Karnataka Legislative Council, to which he made significant contributions through his interventions.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja	Dr U B Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

The Artists

Kiran Subbaiah	Kiran Subbaiah studied sculpture at Santiniketan, MSU Baroda and the RCA London. He was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam where he worked on art that incorporated informatics and electro-mechanics. He is also known for making videos using custom-built tools that enable him to perform multi-person film-making tasks single-handed. His art is shown extensively in India and abroad. Subbaiah is based in Bangalore and is represented by the Chatterjee and Lal gallery in Mumbai. Kiran will present the Spectator, a robot that can sense the presence of human beings around it. It tries to appreciate them as works of art.
Tara Kelton	Tara Kelton is an artist and designer. She has been living in Brooklyn, USA and Bangalore, India for the last three years. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. Kelton’s video, print, and web-based works investigate moments in which technology alters our perception of the physical world. Kelton has taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology and has recently exhibited her work at Vox Populi (USA), Franklin Street Works (USA), GALLERYSKE (Bangalore) and the India Design Forum (Mumbai). Tara will present Trace, a surveillance camera feed drawn in real-time by anonymous online workers.
Navin Thomas	Navin Thomas is a multimedia artist and a professional scrap market junkie, he spends a good quality of his precious time looking for obscure cultural misfits... after destroying most of himself in the 90's, he now spends his time restoring your mother's brother’s tin space toys and other unusual situations.
Abhishek Hazra	Abhishek Hazra approaches his art with a particular emphasis on the study of the historiography of science. He uses videos and prints that often integrate textual fragments drawn from real and fictional scenarios. He has previously exhibited and performed at Science Gallery, Dublin, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, Experiment Marathon Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Kunstmuseum Bern. Abhishek was most recently an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, Perth. It was first performed as part of Beam Me Up, curated by Reinhard Storz and Gitanjali Dang, which was acknowledged by Pro Helvetia, New Delhi and German Book Office, New Delhi. Abhishek will be presenting #cloudrumble56 (attempted to re-animate sections of the Indian parliamentary archives — specifically, the transcripts of the scientist M.N. Saha's (1893-1956) interventions — through a performance that was transmitted only through live tweets on Twitter).
Aditya Dipankar	Aditya Dipankar started fiddling with music at the age of 4 when he started learning the tabla and then went on to play it for a long time. Years later, he discovered his strong inclination towards singing. Now, under the noble guidance of Pandit Vijay Sardeshmukh (Senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva), he is trying to understand the simplicity and spontaneity in the rich tradition of Hindustani classical music.
Nirmita Narasimhan	Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at CIS and works on accessibility for persons with disabilities. She was awarded the national award for empowerment of persons with disabilities by the President of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award. Nirmita Narasimhan is a disciple of Dr. Radha Venkatachalam and renowned maestro Prof. T.R. Subramanyam. She began learning music at the age of 5 and went on to complete her Ph.D. in this subject from the Delhi University. Nirmita has been performing since 1995 and received several accolades such as the Sahitya Kala Parishad Scholarship and prizes in several competitions. She received the Gold medal in MA for standing first in the University and also stood first in MPhil. She has released a CD on Ponnayya Pillai compositions and also sung in an album of varnams. Nirmita has performed in different places in India such as Delhi, Chennai, Tirupathi and Bangalore as well as in Singapore and has also given several thematic concerts such as Eka Raga Sandhya and Pallavi concerts.
Sharath Chandra Ram	Sharath Chandra Ram (Sharathchandra Ramakrishnan) has interests in multimodal art, cognitive science, accessibility, digital humanities and network cultures. He is a faculty at the Centre for Experimental Media Arts at the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. At the Centre for Internet and Society he helped set up and manage activities at the Metaculture Media Lab : an open hackerspace and alternative platform for research and exchange. His writings and musings at CIS maybe found here: http://cis-india.org/author/sharath He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Artificial Intelligence specializing in interactive virtual environments. Previously as a Research Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences he received a special mention award at the International Conference on Consciousness (2012) held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for his work on ‘Cross modal Integration’. As an amateur radio broadcaster, he is a proponent of the free use of airwaves for relief work, education and transmission art. He has also been a development related radio journalist (PANOS @ Nepal, Voices UNDP@Bangalore), speaker at the International Ham Radio Convention (Port Blair, 2006) and as a film enthusiast has been a Press Reviewer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Locations

Bangalore

Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, Second 'C' Cross, Domlur,
2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560071,
Karnataka, India
Ph: +91 80 4092 6283
Fax: +91 80 2535 0955

Delhi

Centre for Internet and Society
G 15, Top floor
Behind Hauz Khas, G Block Market
Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110016
Ph: + 91 011 40503285

Event Brochure

Event Flier

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

National Resource Kit (PDF, PNG)
NVDA E-Speak (PDF, PNG)
International Collaborations (PDF, PNG)
Partners (PDF, PNG)
Publications (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
Inclusive Planet (PDF, PNG)

In the below video Anandhi Viswanathan gives a demo of the National Resource Kit project and Rameshwar Nagar gives a demo of the NVDA and ESpeak (Text-to-Speech) project during the exhibition.

Access to Knowledge

Broadcast Treaty (PDF, PNG)
Copyright (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 1 (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 2 (PDF, PNG)
Pervasive Technologies (PDF, PNG)

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Factsheet (PDF, PNG)
Reaching Out (PDF, PNG)
Outreach (PDF, PNG)
Bridging Gender Gap (PDF, PNG)
Press Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Education Programmes (PDF, PNG)
Team Achievements (PDF, PNG)
Visualization (PDF, PNG)

Openness

Open Access to Scholarly Literature (PDF, PNG)
Open Access to Law (PDF, PNG)
Open Standards (PDF, PNG)
Free/Open Source Software (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Blocking of Websites (PDF, PNG)
Freedom of Speech (PDF, PNG)
Intermediary Liability (PDF, PNG)
Internet Governance Forum (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Privacy Events (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
UID (1) (PDF, PNG)
UID (2) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (1) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (2) (PDF, PNG)

Telecom

Institutional Framework for Indian Telecommunication (PDF, PNG)
Growth of Telecom Industry in India (PDF, PNG)
Delicensed Spectrum (PDF, PNG)
Spectrum Sharing (PDF, PNG)

RAW Monographs

Archives and Access (PDF, PNG)
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities (PDF, PNG)
The Last Cultural Mile (PDF, PNG)
Porn, Law, Video Technology (PDF, PNG)
Re:Wiring Bodies (PDF, PNG)
Community Informatics and Open Government Data (Special Issue) (PDF, PNG)

News and Media

Media Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Organizational Chart (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/celebrating-5-years-of-cis

April 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-05-31T08:07:38Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fourth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
We at the Centre for Internet and Society celebrate 5 years of existence with an exhibition showcasing our work and accomplishments over this time. The exhibition will be held concurrently at both our Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

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

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org. CIS also invites applications for the post of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge, Pilot Projects). To apply for this position send your resume to vishnu@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

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

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

The Himachal Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
Goa Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
The Jammu & Kashmir Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
The Rajasthan Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, April 30, 2013).

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

Events Organised

Girls in ICT Day (April 25, 2013, Mitra Jyothi Auditorium, HSR Layout, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Social Media and Kannada Language for Women with Disabilities. Sara Morais wrote an event report.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Announcement

CIS Gets ITU-D Sector Membership: CIS has become a sector member of ITU-D.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

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

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

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #2: Visualising Page Views and Project Pages.

Blog Entries

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month (by Netha Hussain, April 29, 2013).
Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges (by Nitika Tandon, April 30, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, April 30, 2013).

Event Organised

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

Events Co-organised
The following events were organised in the month of March but reports were written during the month of April. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi held meetings with wikipedians:

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Kolkata Wiki Community, March 14, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia - Cuttack Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Odia Wiki Community, Cuttack, March 16, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia – Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Odia Wiki Community, Bhubaneswar, March 17, 2013).

The following event was organised in the month of April. We will be publishing the report soon:

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013 (organised by Telugu Wikipedia Community and CIS, Hyderabad, April 9 – 11, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan was one of the trainers at the Wikipedia Academy at Centre for Good Governance on April 9, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan spoke about the Access to Knowledge work in one of the sessions of Wikimedia Meeting with Media Heads on April 10, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on A2K’s plans for the growth of Telegu Wikipedia in 2013-14 at the Telegu Wikipedia general meeting on April 11, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan also gave a talk about Access to Knowledge in the digital era at the Wiki Chaitanya Vedika on April 11, 2013.

Other Access to Knowledge Updates

WIPO

CIS Intervention on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at SCCR/SS/GE/2/13 (Geneva, April 18 – 20, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in the session and spoke about the rights of the visually impaired.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. Currently, CIS is doing a project with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression.

Information Technology

IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69A Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 27, 2013).
Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, 419A Rules and IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69 Rules (by Jadine Lannon, April 28, 2013).
IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69 Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 30, 2013).
IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69B Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 30, 2013).

Resources
The below rules were published recently:

Newspaper Column

Off the Record (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 6, 2013).

Privacy

India´s ´Big Brother´: The Central Monitoring System (CMS) (by Maria Xynou, April 8, 2013).

Events Organised
Maria Xynou gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations from the privacy round tables held in Delhi and Bangalore:

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, April 3, 2013).
A Privacy Round Table in Bangalore (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Jayamahal Palace, Jayamahal Road, Bangalore, April 20, 2013).

Announcements

2nd Expert Committee meeting on draft 'Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012': The Department of Biotechnology has constituted an Expert Committee to discuss various issues of this Bill in detail. Sunil Abraham has been nominated as one of the members of this Committee. A meeting of this Expert Committee has been scheduled for May 13, 2013 under the Chairmanship of Dr. T. S. Rao, Adviser, DBT.
Chinmayi Arun is one of the international experts supporting the Internet & Jurisdiction project, a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process.

Upcoming Events

A Privacy Round Table in Chennai (co-organised with Data Security Council of India and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Residency Towers, Sir Thyagaraja Road, T Nagar, Chennai, May 18, 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.).
Consilience – 2013 (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 26 – 27, 2013).

Other Event Hosted

Or-bits.com — A Talk by Marialaura Ghidini (CIS, Bangalore, April 19, 2013). Marialaura Ghidini gave a talk abou the creation and activities of or-bits.com, a web-based curatorial platform that she founded in 2009.

News and Media

Clarify and define terms in IT rules, panel tells govt. (by Prashant Jha, Hindu, April 1, 2013).
India takes its first serious step toward privacy regulation – but it may be misguided (Privacy Surgeon, April 9, 2013).
Regulating Social Media: Unrealistic, Impossible, Necessary? (NDTV, April 11, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in a discussion on social media aired on NDTV.
Social media may influence 160 LS seats in 2014 (by Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, April 12, 2013).
Vote: Will Social Media Impact the Election? (by R. Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2013).
Untangling the web of India's 'ungovernable' Net (Deutsche Welle, April 15, 2013).
CIS in GNI Annual Report (April 25, 2013). CIS gets mentioned in GNI Annual Report. Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.
Is free speech an Indian value? (by Satarupa Sen Bhattacharya, India Together, April 27, 2013).

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

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

Upcoming Event
We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” with the support of Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details have been announced.

The following units have been published:

Internet Infrastructure (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, April 30, 2013).
Internet Service Provider – Introduction (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, April 30, 2013).

Telecom

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

Newspaper Column

Prioritizing Communications & Energy (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot, April 4, 2013).

Blog Entry

From Open Citizen Radio Networks to the Race for .RADIO gTLD (by Sharath Chandra Ram, April 30, 2013).

Event Participated

Broadband Policy Course (organised by Lirne Asia, Bangalore, April 5 – 6, 2013). Nirmita Narasimhan and Snehashish Ghosh attended the course.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

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

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2013-bulletin

March 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-04-14T11:45:29Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the third issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

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

Accessibility

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

The Lakshadweep Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, March 25, 2013): The union territory of Lakshadweep has not passed any legislation for persons with disabilities, but implements the provisions under the central laws. The benefits currently available to persons with disabilities in Lakshadweep include disability pension, unemployment allowance and grant for setting up kiosks.
The Meghalaya Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, March 25, 2013): Meghalaya is one of the few north-eastern states, which has appointed a Commissioner for Disabilities. Most of the schemes and benefits given to persons with disabilities in Meghalaya are under centrally sponsored schemes. Very few schemes are initiated by the state government.
The Uttar Pradesh Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, March 31, 2013): The Government of Uttar Pradesh has established shelter homes and vocational training centres in several parts of the states — most recently in Meerut, Bareilly and Gorakhpur. It has also undertaken to finance nearly 4340 corrective surgeries for polio across nine cities of Uttar Pradesh. It also intends to start several projects in 2013. These include the establishment of a Braille Press in order to produce Braille books, magazines and other study material.

Resources
We now have a new section on our website which contains all government notifications, RTI applications, and accessibility related resources: cases, statutes, etc. The following were published earlier this month:

Information about Schemes for Disabled Persons in Haryana We received this notification on schemes and policies for persons with disabilities from the Government of Haryana.
Haryana Government Notification (Hindi version): The notification that we received from the state government was in Hindi. We will put up the English translation soon.
West Bengal (Govt) Notifications: We received a series of notifications from the West Bengal Government from its various departments such as finance, higher education, transport, health and family welfare, labour, land and land reforms, panchayats and rural development, etc. OCR versions of the same have been published.
Lakshadweep (Govt) Notifications: Notifications received from the Lakshadweep Government including guidelines for functioning of KIOSKS, grant of unemployment allowance and special jobs to persons with disabilities, issuing identity card to persons with disabilities for availing government benefits, etc., are published. OCR versions have also been put up.

Event Participated In

A Discussion on Intercept between UNCRPD & CEDAW (organized by the Shanta Memorial Institute of Rehabilitation – Odisha, CBR Network and Mitra Jyoti, Bangalore, Karnataka, February 4, 2013): Anandhi Viswanathan participated in this event.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval, and one team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who is working from Bangalore office.

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Visualising Basic Parameters (by Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, March 26, 2013): Sajjad and Sumandro bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project. They look into the different aspects of the past and present activities of Indic Wikipedias, and divide the visualisation into three different focus areas: (1) basic parameters, (2) geographic patterns of edits, and (3) exploring the topics that receives the greatest number of edits.

Events Organised

Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa (organised by CIS, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Goa, March 7, 2013). The Access to Knowledge team was invited by Nikhil Dixit from BITS to organise a Wikipedia editing session. Nitika Tandon led the session on IP editing.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by CIS, Institution of Engineers, JLB Road, Mysore, March 24, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led this workshop.

Events Co-organised

Wiki Women's Day in Goa (organised by the Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS, Nirmala Institute of Education, Panaji, Goa, March 8, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop held on International Working Women's Day, and shares the developments in this report.
Wikipedia Workshop for Kannada Science Writers (organised by Wikimedia India Chapter, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath and CIS, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishath Conference Hall, Banashankari 2nd Stage, Bangalore, March 17, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013 (co-organised with the Telegu Wikipedia community, Hyderabad, April 9 to 11, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan is participating in this event as a speaker. A public event will be held on April 11 from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. at Golden Threshold (Sarojini Naidu's house) in Hyderabad.

Events Participated

Wikipedia Women's Workshop Bangalore 2013 (organised by Wikimedia India, Servelots Infotech, Jayanagar, Bangalore, March 8, 2013). The event was covered by Kannada Prabha on March 9, 2013. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in the event.
Wikipedia at Avenir (organised by the Wikipedia community, Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal, March 11, 2013). CIS supported this event.

Event Report from Other Organisations
Wikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA) of CSCS Bangalore to organize a day-long workshop on ‘Digital Literacy’ at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharasthra on January 17, 2013. Tanveer Hasan of HEIRA shares with us the developments in this report.

Other Openness Updates

Event Report

Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop: A Summary (by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, March 26, 2013): A workshop on public data was conducted by Sunil Abraham and Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the officials of the Government of Iraq. It was organized by UNDP Iraq in Amman, Jordan from October 18 to 23, 2012. Sumandro Chattapadhyay shares with us the developments from the workshop held over five days.

Event Participated

Open DataCamp - 2013 (organized by Open Data Camp, Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram (inside Christ University Campus), Dairy Circle, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works from the CIS office in Bengaluru.

Upcoming Events

Pig Workshop (organized by HasGeek, Alchemy Solutions, Domlur, Bangalore, 9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.): A workshop on how to use Pig for mining useful information from data. It is open to programmers who have a background in Java programming, some familiarity with Hadoop and MapReduce algorithms, and have worked with large chunks of data.
The Fifth Elephant 2013 (organized by HasGeek, July 11 to 13, 2013, NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore).

Internet Governance

Privacy

Policy

Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill (April 2012): High Level Concerns (by Elonnai Hickok, March 12, 2013). The post examines the high level concerns that CIS has with the April 2012 draft of the Bill.
Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 Analysis (by Jeremy Gruber, Council for Responsible Genetics, US, March 19, 2013). Jeremy provides an analysis of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012. He says that India’s updated 2012 Human DNA Profiling Bill offers largely superficial changes from its predecessor, the Draft DNA Profiling Bill, 2007.

The Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013: A Citizen's Draft (by Bhairav Acharya, March 26, 2013). Bhairav Acharya has drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill 2013. It contains provisions that speak to data protection, interception, and surveillance and also establishes the powers and functions of the Privacy Commissioner, and lays out offenses and penalties for contravention of the Bill. The Bill represents a citizen's version of possible privacy legislation for India, and will be shared with key stakeholders including civil society, industry, and government.

Upcoming Events

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, April 3, 2013).
A Privacy Round Table in Bangalore (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Jayamahal Palace, Jayamahal Road, Bangalore, April 20, 2013).

Event Organized

Analyzing the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 (organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, March 1, 2013): Maria Xynou shares a summary of the workshop in this report.

Events Participated In

Global Partners Meeting @ London (organized by Privacy International, London School of Economics and Political Science, March 22 – 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Malavika Jayaram participated in the event.
India’s Civil Liberties Crisis: Of Bans, Blocks, Bullying and Biometrics (organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, March 28, 2013). Malavika Jayaram participated as a speaker.
Future of Privacy in India (organized by DSCI and ICOMP, Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi, April 5, 2013). Sunil Abraham is a speaker at this event.

Blog Posts

Hacking without borders: The future of artificial intelligence and surveillance (by Maria Xynou, March 15, 2013). In this post, Maria looks at some of DARPA´s artificial intelligence surveillance technologies in regards to the right to privacy and their potential future use in India.
Driving in the Surveillance Society: Cameras, RFID tags and Black Boxes... (by Maria Xynou, March 26, 2013). Maria examines red light cameras, RFID tags and black boxes used to monitor vehicles in India.
Microsoft Releases its First Report on Data Requests by Law Enforcement Agencies around the World (by Maria Xynou, March 27, 2013). CIS presents Microsoft´s report on law enforcement requests, with a focus on data requested by Indian law enforcement agencies.
The Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2013 — Penalising 'Peeping Toms' and Other Privacy Issues (by Divij Joshi, March 31, 2013). The pending amendments to the Indian Penal Code, if passed in their current format, would be a huge boost for individual physical privacy by criminalising stalking and sexually-tinted voyeurism and removing the ambiguities in Indian law which threaten the privacy and dignity of individuals.

IT Act

Featured Blog Post

CIS Welcomes Standing Committee Report on IT Rules (by Pranesh Prakash, March 27, 2013). CIS welcomes the report by the Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation, in which it has lambasted the government and has recommended that the government amend the Rules it passed in April 2011 under section 79 of the Information Technology Act. The post was quoted in: The Times of India (March 28, 2013), The Statesman (March 28, 2013), Economic Times (March 28, 2013), Data Quest (March 28, 2013), and The Hindu (April 1, 2013).

Submissions
Bhairav Acharya, on behalf of CIS submitted comments to the Committee on Subordinate Legislation of the 15^th Lok Sabha for the following rules:

Comments on the Information Technology (Electronic Service Delivery) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 316(E) on April 11, 2011.
Comments on the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 313(E) on April 11, 2011.
Comments on the Information Technology (Guidelines for Cyber Cafe) Rules, 2011. The Rules were notified by the Central Government in the Gazette of India vide Notification GSR 315(E) on April 11, 2011.

Note: The above rules were submitted earlier but published on our website only recently.

Unique ID Project

Event Organized

Unique Identity Number (UID), National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (organized by CIS and Say No to UID Campaign, TERI, Bangalore, March 2, 2013): CIS interviewed Usha Ramanathan and Anant Maringanti. Watch the videos uploaded in this blog post by Maria Xynou. This was covered in newzfirst on March 3, 2013 and in the Hindu on March 3, 2013.

Interview

Unique Identification Scheme (UID) & National Population Register (NPR), and Governance (by Elonnai Hickok, March 14, 2013). The post examines the UID, NPR and Governance as it exists in India. A video on the UID interview Questions and Answers is published.

News and Media

Indian ID crisis unveils Aadhaar doubts (ZDNet, March 14, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
New $1 Billion RIC Project Casts Doubts on Aadhaar (AEG India, March 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Blog Entry

India's Biometric Identification Programs and Privacy Concerns (by Divij Joshi, March 31, 2013).

Free Speech and Expression

News and Media

Foreign Funding of NGOs (by Prashant Reddy, Open Magazine, March 2, 2013).
Iceland’s proposed porn ban ‘like repression in Iran, N. Korea’ – activists (RT, March 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Chidambaram to Talk Budget on Google+ Hangout (by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Responding to govt requests is a challenge for online firms: Colin Maclay (LiveMint, March 13, 2013). Colin M. Maclay, managing director of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard mentioned CIS.
Indian police set up lab to monitor social media (originally published by AFP, March 18, 2013, and also carried in Global Post on the same day). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Namaste, Mr. Eric Schmidt (by R. Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Parliament panel blasts govt over ambiguous internet laws (by Ishan Srivastava, The Times of India, March 28, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
What if the Net shut down for a few days (by Atul Sethi, The Times of India, March 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Press controls ‘send wrong message to rest of world’ (by Jerome Starkey from Johannesburg, Francis Elliott from Delhi and David Brown, The Times, UK).

Event Organized

Freedom Song: Film Screening and Discussion (IIHS Bangalore City Campus, March 21, 2013). Freedom Song, a documentary film produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust and directed by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Subi Chaturvedi was screened.

Events Participated In

Is Social Media Incredible? (organized by Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore, March 2, 2013). Snehashish Ghosh participated in a panel discussion. The New Indian Express published a post-event report.
Rethinking the Internet: The Way Forward (organized by Telecom Italia and Financial iTimes, Telecom Italia Future Centre, Italy, March 21 – 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.

Others

Events Organised

DML 2013: Fourth Annual Conference (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013). We had a special track that ran through the conference on "Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)". Noopur Raval was one of the 16 presenters that we had selected on the tracks. Nishant Shah was one of the members in the Conference Committee.

Blog Posts

WGIG+8: Stock-Taking, Mapping, and Going Forward (Fontenoy Building, conference room # 7, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, February 27, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was the moderator for the session. A summary of the discussion has been published.
What’s In a Name? — DNS Singularity of ICANN and the Gold Rush (by Sharath Chandra Ram, March 31, 2013). March 2013 being the 28th birthday of the first ever registered Internet domain as well as the exigent launch of the Trademark Clearing House disguised as a milestone in rights protection by ICANN for its new gTLD program, Sharath Chandra Ram, dissects the transitory role of ICANN from being a technical outfit to the Boardroom Big Brother of Internet Governance.
An Introduction to Bitfilm & Bitcoin in Bangalore, India (by Benson Samuel, March 12, 2013). Video of the event organized by CIS on January 23, 2013 is published in this blog post.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

Upcoming Event
We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details will be announced soon on our website.

The following units have been published:

Internet Protocols (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, March 18, 2013).
How email works, how do you get your email? Email Protocols (SMTP, POP, IMAP), SPAM/Phishing (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, March 19, 2013).
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 19, 2013).
ITU sectors — ITU-R, ITU-T, ITU-D, etc. (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 27, 2013).
World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (by Snehashish Ghosh, March 29, 2013).

Telecom

Newspaper Column

Are India's Glory Days Over? (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot, March 8, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, March 6, 2013).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Events Participated In

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video (organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al, February 28 – March 2, 2013). Nishant Shah gave the key note. Videos of the event are published.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers @ Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University

Event Co-organised

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (co-organised with Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah was a speaker at this event. He made a presentation on network ontologies.

Event Participated

Korean Trans Cine-Media in Global Contexts: Asia and the World (organized by Trans-Asia Screen Culture Institute, Cinema Studies, Korean National University of Arts, Korean Film Archive and Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University, Seoul, March 27 – 29, 2013). Nishant Shah was a speaker at this event. He spoke on "The Asian Intercourse: Reimagining the Inter-Asia moment through ‘net-porn’ in networks".

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

Support Us

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

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2013-bulletin

Video Vortex # 9 Re:assemblies of Video

praskrishna — 2013-03-04T03:44:56Z

Nishant Shah is a speaker at this event organized by the Institute of Network Cultures, Post Media Lab, Moving Image Lab, Leuphana, et.al. The event is being held at Luneberg from February 28, 2013 to March 2, 2013.

Click to see the program flyer. Also see Nishant's key note at Video Vortex

Participants

Thursday February 28th / Donnerstag 28.02.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video + Analog@VIDEO VORTEX

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Beth Coleman» , Seth Keen» , Edwin» , Thomas Østbye» , Andreas Treske» , Stephanie Hough» , Martin Katić» , Theresa Steffens» , Arndt Potdevin» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Nan Haifen» , Viola Sarnelli» , Boris Traue» , Achim Kredelbach» , Dalida María Benfield» , Renée Ridgway» , Gabriel S Moses» , Nishant Shah»

Friday March 1st / Freitag 01.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Margarita Tsomou» , Sascha Simons» , Nelli Kambouri» , Pavlos Hatzopoulos» , Joshua Neves» , Gabriel Menotti» , Filippo Spreafico» , Caroline Heron» , Jonathan Shaw» , Jan Gerber» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Elric Milon» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Sascha Kluger» , Jamie King» , Stefano Sabatini» , Peter Snowdon» , Miya Yoshida» , Boaz Levin» , Azin Feizabadi» , Kaya Behkalam» , Jens Maier-Rothe» , Jasmina Metwaly», Graswurzel.tv» , Björn Ahrend» , Timo Großpietsch»

Saturday March 2nd / Samstag 02.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Vito Campanelli» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Alejo Duque» , Lucía Egaña Rojas» , Andrew Clay» , Stefan Heidenreich» & Deborah Ligorio» , Cornelia Sollfrank»

Digital Natives

For the videos DNI-IV, visual artist Renée Ridgway and filmmaker Rick van Amersfoort interviewed digital natives from all over the world around four issues, juxtapositioning images with spoken content. The following 4 clips were specially edited teasers of the Digital Natives videos for public transport in Lueneburg. From 4 February to 4 March they run on the screens in public busses (between central station and university campus).

Renée Ridgway will show her ’collaborative meme’ in full length as part of the Video Vortex program at 16:30 on 28 February and discuss her project together with respondents Dalida Maria Benfield and Nishant Shah.

The first video, DNI addresses the construction of the digital native (DN) with comments, critiques and opinions from the interviewees, visualizing a shift in how digital natives are imaged and perceived.

The second video DNII focuses on the real vs. the digital whereby the division between physical reality and virtual reality is dismissed to build more comprehensive accounts of digital native practices.

The third clip DNIII explores the processes that produce possibilities and potentials for social change through political participation and the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social movements. What are the relationships that these technology-based identities and practices have with existing political legacies?

The last video DNIV combines connectivity, collaboration, inspiration and transformation but also reflects upon the limits of cyberspace, its borders and the eventual co-optation of technology by users.

DNI, DNII, DNIII, DNIV were commissioned by Hivos, Amsterdam and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/video-vortex-9-net-re-assemblies-of-video

D:coding Digital Natives - Seminar with Nishant Shah

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T05:21:27Z

Nishant Shah gave a talk on D:coding Digital Natives at Samhällsvetarhuset on February 26, 2013, from 1.15 p.m. to 3.00 p.m. The event was organized by HUMlab.

Read the original published by HUMlab.

Abstract

The discourse around youth-technology-change - digital natives, if you will - has been shaped by self explanatory buzzwords like participation, collaboration, mobilization etc. These words seem to hold a promise of revolutions and change without actually acknowledging material practices or complex relationships that young people have with technologies and visions of change. Trying to decode these words through case-studies from the Global South, this talk hopes to offer new frameworks through which digital natives can be studied and understood in emerging ICT contexts.

Bio:
Nishant Shah is the co-founder and director of research at the Bangalore-based research organization Centre for Internet and Society. He studies questions of governance, identity, planning and body at the intersections of digital technologies, law and everyday cultural practice.

He is a visiting researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University, Germany, and an International Knowledge Partner on 'Youth, Technology and Change' with Hivos, Netherlands. He recently co-edited the four-volume book series "Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?" that captures discourse, practice and policy as it shapes and is shaped by youth driven, everyday practices of digital technologies and is currently working on looking at civic action in networked societies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/humlab-umea-university-d-coding-digital-natives

January 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-06-11T11:56:35Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wish you all a great year ahead and welcome you to the first issue of our newsletter for the year 2013. This issue brings you an overview of our research programs, events organised and participated, news and media coverage, and videos of recent events.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org. For our Privacy project, we are seeking applications for the post of Researcher, Technology/Security Expert, Graphic Designer as well as for internships. To apply for these posts, please send in your resume to Elonnai Hickok (elonnai@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

CIS is carrying out two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. The first one is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and the second one is for developing a screen reader and text to speech synthesizer for Indian languages. We are also working with the World Blind Union to develop the Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, and assisting in the negotiations at WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Shruti Ramakrishnan has left the project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapter on Haryana:

The Haryana Chapter (by Anandi Viswanathan, January 31, 2012): The state implements the provisions under the central laws, particularly the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 and the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act 1999.

Submission / Notification

Making Public Libraries Accessible to People with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013): CIS was one of the 20 disability rights groups that wrote to the Ministry of Culture.
Government of Madhya Pradesh initiates ICT Accessibility in Public Communication (by Nirmita Narasimhan, January 31, 2013): CIS with Daisy Forum of India member Arushi in Bhopal submitted a request for a notification mandating that all communication by the Government of Madhya Pradesh should be accessible to persons with disabilities.

Report

Accessible Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, January 11, 2013): The abridged version of ITU’s report "Making Television Accessible" which was initially put up for comments last year has been updated once again.

Blog Entry

Linking Commercial Availability and Exceptions in the Treaty for Visually Impaired/Persons with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

In partnership with the International Development Research Centre we are doing a project on Pervasive Technologies examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program to support and develop free knowledge in India is now being executed by us. We are also supporting the Iraq government in developing an eGovernment Interoperability Framework:

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

New Project Director

T. Vishnu Vardhan is the new Programme Director-Access to Knowledge at CIS. Vishnu has over the last 11 years worked in various capacities as researcher, grant manager, teacher, project consultant, information architect and translator. Vishnu managed the Art, Crafts and Culture portfolio of Sir Ratan Tata Trust and also worked as Research Coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.

New Distinguished Fellow at CIS

Tejaswini Niranjana, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, and Visiting Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is joining our team as an Adviser to the 'Access to Knowledge' project. She will guide the A2K team in expanding the Indian language Wikipedias and in increasing the number of active editors through strategic partnerships with Higher Education institutions across India.

Reports

Access to Knowledge Report — September to December 2012 (by Noopur Raval, January 31, 2013): The report covers an overview of the activities done by the Access to Knowledge team under the grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation from September 2012 to December 2012.
Indic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012 (by Shiju Alex, January 21, 2013): A statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012 providing perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.

Wiki Event Reports
CIS organised a series of Wiki workshops in Goa in the month of December 2012, we bring you the reports from those events.

Note: The workshops were held in the month of December 2012 but the reports were published only in the month of January.

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction (by Nitika Tandon, January 15, 2013).
Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 19, 2013).
Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain (by Nitika Tandon, January 22, 2013).
Promoting GLAM in Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 24, 2013).
Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level (by Nitika Tandon, January 25, 2013).

CIS also organised a Wiki workshop in Ghaziabad:

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad (RKGIT, Ghaziabad, January 17, 2013).

Wiki Event Participated

Celebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 (organized by Wikipedia Club, Pune, January 12 – 13, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Wikipedia News Coverage

First Odia Wikipedia Education Program concludes at IIMC, Dhenkanal (Odisha Diary Bureau, Dhenkanal, January 27, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media (Sambad, January 30, 2013).

Wiki Events Organised

Odia Education Program (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, Orissa, January 26, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia 9th Anniversary Celebration (Academy of Media Learning, Samantha Vihar, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, January 29, 2013).

Pervasive Technologies

The Pervasive Technologies project carries out research on the intellectual property implicated in the hardware, software and content available in low-cost mobile devices.The long-term outcome of this project is to create a legitimate, legal space for these technologies to exist on the Indian market.

Events Participated

Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Market Place — A Presentation by Sunil Abraham (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15, 2012).
Fifth International IPR Conference (GIPC 2013) (organised by ITAG Business Solutions, Hotel Lalit Ashok, Bangalore, January 30, 2013): Snehashish Ghosh made a presentation on the Pervasive Technologies Project.

Other Openness Updates

Blog Posts / Columns

The Violence of Knowledge Cartels (by Nishant Shah, Hybrid Publishing Lab, January 17, 2013).
Remembering Aaron Swartz, Taking Up the Fight (by Nishant Shah, DML Central, January 24, 2013).

Interview

Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement: Prabir Purkayastha interviewed Lawrence Liang on Newsclick, January 19, 2013. The video is published.

Media Coverage

Bangalore hackers write code as tribute to Aaron Swartz (by Deepa Kurup, Hindu, January 21, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.
Event Organized Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight (CIS, Bangalore, January 19 – 20, 2013): Aaron’s collaborators such as Anand Chitipothu and A S L Devi participated in the event.

Internet Governance

With Privacy International, London we signed an agreement to facilitate the implementation of activities related to surveillance and freedom of speech and expression. In this month we have blog posts on data retention, international principles of surveillance and human rights and comparitive analysis of Indian legislation vis-à-vis draft of the International Principles on Surveillance of Communications by Ellonai Hickok, and columns by Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah:

Privacy Research

Data Retention in India (by Elonnai Hickok, January 30, 2013): The post provides an insight into the data retention mandates from the Government of India and data retention practices by service providers.
Draft International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights (by Elonnai Hickok, January 16, 2013): These principles were developed by Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and seek to define an international standard for the surveillance of communications.
A Comparison of Indian Legislation to Draft International Principles on Surveillance of Communications (by Elonnai Hickok, January 31, 2013): The principles, first drafted in October 2012 and developed subsequently seek to establish an international standard for surveillance of communications in the context of human rights. CIS is contributing feedback to the drafting of the principles.

Columns/Op-eds

Web of Sameness (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, January 18, 2013).
TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs (by Sunil Abraham, The Tribune, January 20, 2013).

Statement

Statement of Solidarity on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Internet Users in Bangladesh (by Pranesh Prakash, January 15, 2013): This is a statement on the violent attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin by the participants to the Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression.

Blog Entries

No Civil Society Members in the Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee (by Pranesh Prakash, January 10, 2013).
Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Amended ITRs (by Chinmayi Arun, January 28, 2013): The author discusses the five major questions that have been the subject of debate after the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT).

Upcoming Event

DML Conference 2013 (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013).

Event Organized

An Introduction to Bitfilm and Bitcoin – A Discussion by Aaron Koenig (CIS, Bangalore, January 23, 2013): Aaron Koenig, Managing Director, Bitfilm Networks of Hamburg, Germany gave a talk.

Events Participated

Panel Discussion on E-Commerce at NLSIU (organised by National Law School of India University, Bangalore, January 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Mobile Broadband: Leveraging for Business Transformation (Chancery Pavilion, Bangalore, January 9, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in this event.
Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression (organized by Internet Democracy Project, Voices for Interactive Choice & Empowerment and Global Partners & Associates, Dhaka, January 14 – 15, 2013): Pranesh Prakash moderated the session on "Understanding cyber security and surveillance in South Asia”.
Is Freedom of Expression under Threat in the Digital Age? (organized by Editors Guild of India, Index on Censorship and Sage, India International Centre, New Delhi, January 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist at this event.
7th India Digital Summit 2013 (organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India, Lalit Hotel, New Delhi, January 16 – 17, 2013): Sunil Abraham was the moderator for Plenary Session 3: Discussion on Social Media – Freedom, Moderation or Regulation.

Upcoming Event

9th International Asian Conference (organised by ITechLaw, February 14 – 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham will be participating as a panelist in the session on “Censorship of Online Content”.

Media Coverage

2012 in Review: Biometric ID Systems Grew Internationally...and So Did Concerns about Privacy (by Rebecca Bowe, Right Side News, January 1, 2013)
Cool Jobs | Parmesh Shahani, Head, Godrej India Culture Lab (LiveMint, January 4, 2013).
Clash of the cyberworlds (by Latha Jishnu, Dinsa Sachan and Moyna, Down to Earth, January 15, 2013 issue). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in digital age? (originally published by Indo Asian News Service, January 16, 2013 and also covered in the Business Standard, Vancouver Desi, DNA, and Tech2). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age? (by Mahima Kaul, Index on Censorship, January 18, 2013).
Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate (by Kirsty Hughes, Index on Censorship, January 22, 2013). CIS research on censorship is quoted.
Cyber security, surveillance and the right to privacy: country perspectives (by Richa Kaul Padte, Internet Democracy Project).
Surveillance Camp: Privatized State Surveillance (by Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 28, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
An innovative concept comes to the fore (Deccan Herald, January 29, 2013).

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository
In partnership with Ford Foundation, CIS was tasked to produce and disseminate modules on various aspects of telecommunications including policy, regulations, infrastructure and market. However, as on November 9, 2012 there was a change in the mandate of the project. Currently, we are working on building a knowledge repository on “Internet Access”. This new repository will cover the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access. It will also touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for such policy formulation. For this purpose we will be hosting a new website: www.internet-institute.in.
We are also organizing an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registrations and relevant details will be soon announced on our website.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum.:

Column by Shyam Ponappa

What's Needed Is User-Centric Design, Not Good Intentions (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, January 3, 2013 and Organizing India Blogpost, January 6, 2013).

Event(s) Participated

21^st Convergence Conference Conference India 2013 (organized by Exhibitions India Group, January 16 – 17, 2013, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi). Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers At Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University:

Habits of Living Workshop

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (organised by CIS and Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah will be speaking at this event.

About CIS
CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.
CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2013-bulletin

December 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-16T05:15:27Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society wish you all a great year ahead. In the December 2012 newsletter, we bring you the draft early chapters of our “National Resource Kit” project for persons with disabilities (covering four southern states); and accessibility-related comments on the Twelfth Five Year Plan; the draft research on pervasive technologies and access to knowledge that we presented at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in Brazil; our comments on the privacy implications of including RFID tags in the proposed Rule 138A of the Motor Vehicle Rules, a report on the open access lectures delivered by Prof. Leslie Chan during his tour of India, reports of Wikipedia-related workshops conducted across three cities, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Research Manager (Digital Humanities project), and Policy Associate (Access to Knowledge and Openness) and Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS received a grant of INR 54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation for Creating a National Kit of Laws, Policies and Programs for Persons with Disabilities on August 16, 2012. Anandhi Vishwanathan from CIS and Shruti Ramakrishnan from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are the researchers presently working for this project. Early draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from the readers:

The Tamil Nadu Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Karnataka Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Kerala Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).
The Andhra Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Event Organised

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15 – 17, 2012). The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was organized by Fundação Getulio Vargas, American University Washington College of Law, Columbia University, Open AIR, and ICSTD. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Pranesh was one of the moderators in the Roundtable Discussion on Priority Policy Forums, Research and Analysis Needs and Commitments.

Research for the Global Congress

For the 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest event, CIS conducted research. Jadine Lannon (based on research by Annapoornima and Rohan George and with help from Yogesh Kumar did research on documentation of phones and their patent, Amba Kak did research on copyright and mobile licensing, Vikrant Vasudev conducted research on patent pools and valuation methods, Hans Varghese Mathews did research on mathematical models of patent pools and Nehaa Chaudhuri did research on analysis of 3Gand 4G patent pools.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Event Report

Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report (by Yogesh Londhe, December 10, 2012). Event was hosted at CIS office in Bangalore. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event held in CIS office in Bangalore on December 1 and 2, 2012.

Events Participated

‘Information & Networks’ Partners’ Meeting (organised by International Development Research Centre, Canada in Rio de Janeiro, December 11 – 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke in session on Open Business and IP.

Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India (Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala, Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library and SDM Institute for Management Development, December 17 – 20, 2012).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia Project)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Events Organised

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, December 8, 2012).

Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

News / Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

Videos

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.
Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012). Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist gave a talk.

Upcoming Event

Meta Refresh (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, February 22 and 23, 2013).

Internet Governance

Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules

Comments on the Proposed Rule 138A of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 Concerning Radio Frequency Identification Tags (by Bhairav Acharya, December 3, 2012).

Columns/Op-eds

Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech (by Sunil Abraham, Economic Times, December 5, 2012).
The Worldwide Web of Concerns (by Pranesh Prakash, Deccan Chronicle, and Asian Age, December 10, 2012).
The Trouble with Hurried Solutions (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, December 15, 2012).
Tomorrow, Today (Nishant Shah, The Indian Express, December 29, 2012).

Event Organised

Meeting of the Network of Internet & Society Centers (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Center for Technology & Society, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Center for Civic Media, NEXA Center for Internet & Society and CIS, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6 – 8, 2012).

Upcoming Events

DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).

Events Participated

Second International e-Governance Conference (organized by the National Committee for Corporate Governance Electronic Iraq and the United Nations Development Programme, Rashid Hotel, Baghdad, December 2, 2012). Sunil Abraham presented on "Review of the Legal Environment in Iraq for Effective e-Governance".
Seminar/Artist Talks : "Outresourcing" with the Transmediale Collective (organised by the Berlin - Transmediale new media collective, December 3, 2012, Bangalore). Sharath Chandra Ram presented a White Paper.
World Conference on International Telecommunications (organised by ITU, December 3 – 14). Chinmayi Arun participated as a civil society representative.
Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, December 6 – 8, 2012).
Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012 (organised by Estonian Institute of Human Rights and Google). Malavika Jayaram participated as a panelist.
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp (Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, Rio, Brazil, December 13 and 14, 2012). Elonnai Hickok made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.
Economic Impact of Internet in India (organised by Aspen Institute India, December 21, 2012). Chinmayi Arun attended this event.

Blog Entries

Transcripts from WCIT-12 (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Section 66-A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Cases (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points (by Elonnai Hickok, December 28, 2012).
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary (by Elonnai Hickok, December 31, 2012).
Mining the Web Collective (by Sharath Chandra Ram, December 31, 2012).

Video

Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai (CIS, Bangalore, December 18, 2012). Preetam Rai gave a lecture.

Media Coverage

66A ‘cut & paste job’ (by GS Mudur, Telegraph, December 3, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.
Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns (by Surabhi Agarwal, December 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Debate on Section 66A rages on (Vasudha Venugopal, The Hindu, December 10, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Hacktivists deface BSNL website (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 13, 2012).
Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 16, 2012).
The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web (by Rahul Jayaram, India Today, December 18, 2012).
‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’ (DNA, December 19, 2012).
No fear of losing internet freedom till Jan 15: Experts (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
UN agrees to review agencies governing Internet (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt (The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
A note of dissent on cash transfers and UID (The Hindu, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.
The year social media came of age in India (by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Telecom

Newspaper Column

Inflation Control Through Structural Reforms (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, December 11, 2012).

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India
Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).
Market Structure in the Telecom Industry (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).

Digital Natives

Book Review

Not Just Fancy Television (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, December 8, 2012): Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Media Coverage

What does it mean to be a digital native? (by Oliver Joy, CNN, December 8, 2012).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2012-bulletin

What does it mean to be a digital native?

praskrishna — 2012-12-10T04:21:00Z

The war between natives and immigrants is ending. The natives have won.

Oliver Joy's blog post was published by CNN on December 8, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted, criticising Marc Prensky's ideas of digital nativity as borne of privilege and first-world centricity.

It was a bloodless conflict fought not with bullets and spears, but with iPhones and floppy disks. Now the battle between the haves and have-nots can begin.

The post-millennial "digital native," a term coined by U.S. author Marc Prensky in 2001 is emerging as the globe's dominant demographic, while the "digital immigrant," becomes a relic of a previous time.

The digital native-immigrant concept describes the generational switchover where people are defined by the technological culture which they're familiar with.

Prensky defines digital natives as those born into an innate "new culture" while the digital immigrants are old-world settlers, who have lived in the analogue age and immigrated to the digital world.

Although not Luddites, the immigrants struggle more than natives to adapt to hi-tech progress.

The author of "Teaching Digital Natives," whose success pushed him onto the speaking circuit, says the explosion of technology over the last 10 years is just the start of a symbiotic new world. Computers and handsets are becoming an extension of body and mind, creating a Cyborg-like population.

Prensky cites the 100-meter runner Oscar Pistorius, an athlete with prosthetic legs, as an example of how technology is used to enhance our lives. He told CNN: "For humans, what used to be this body of flesh and bone, all that is now just the center... Being human is a moving target."

The human race and its struggle to keep up with technology

Prensky says that at no time in history has technology moved so fast. Today the latest high-tech gizmos can be passe even before hitting the shop floors.

In the past -- during the post-industrial revolution era, for example -- accelerating technology has plateaued. So, with the meteoric rise of new social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype, history suggests the world is overdue for a slowdown.

But Prensky says this time, any slowdown in the digital age is a "myth," as innovation will only press forward "faster... And faster and faster."

He told CNN: "We are not going through a transition to another faze of stability, and that is the key point. People will always be behind now and that will be a stress they have to cope with."

The new norm

Connecting with one another in the modern world requires a knack for social networking and texting, which is the norm for the digital native. But for the immigrant, it can be akin to learning a whole new language.

Prensky illustrates his point with former director of the CIA David Petraeus. In November, he was embroiled in a scandal that revealed he had an affair with Paula Broadwell.

The FBI uncovered the affair while it investigated e-mails that Broadwell allegedly sent to a Petraeus family friend, Jill Kelley.

Prensky labels this naivety by immigrants as "digital stupidity" -- by assuming that when people decide to post online or send e-mails, they believe privacy is automatically applicable.

"People get frightened by change and they should be. They need courage to face the future these days, especially those who feel left behind." Prensky said. "People adapt instinctively and humans are very good at that. The young people live in the context; the older people see the changing context and struggle."

Digital poverty

As technology filters into every corner of the globe and tech cities spring up in some unlikely places from Bangalore to Tel Aviv, a new gulf is emerging to separate the digitally savvy from the disconnected: Poverty.

In India, over two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. But a United Nations report still says that mobile phones are more common than toilets, with nearly half of India's 1.2 billion population armed with a handset.

Nishant Shah, a director at the Centre for Internet and Society in India, told CNN that defining natives and immigrants by generation is a "serious concern." According to Shah, Prensky's views were formed from the "privileged" position of living in the U.S.

Shah added: "[Prensky's] observations may describe a generation gap that the U.S. faced, but if you transplant the same definition to other parts of the world, natives are sometimes indistinguishable from immigrants."

The real fear for Shah is the new hierarchies created by digital literacy and the class systems that will be shaped by access to digital technologies.

The call of the developing world

As mobile networks extend their reach and areas become increasingly urbanized, Western tech companies are seeking to tap markets with large populations.

Last year, Finnish phone maker Nokia released a range of smart phones targeted at consumers in emerging markets, particularly in Asia, to compete with cheaper Android devices.

But Shah argues bombarding a country with technology and infrastructure is not a rounded solution to the digital poverty problem.

India, for example, has connectivity and access in abundance, but the country continues to suffer from a generation of "digitally poor classes." He argues that simply providing the equipment does not help young people understand how that technology can better their lives without education and training.

Shah told CNN: "Just because young people have tech access in India, it doesn't make them digital natives." He added, "It creates digital outcasts -- people whose supposed problem of access to the world has been resolved."

Prensky, however, believes a "networked planet" is a sign developing nations will soon close the digital divide. Even those who don't yet have the technology still know that it exists, and will have it before long.

The world in 2020

By 2020, Prensky predicts people across the globe will be plugged into the "AORTA," -- Always On RealTime Access -- a term coined by Mark Anderson, the chief of the Strategic News Service -- specializing in technology news. A future in which people are constantly able to access information and news from anywhere on the planet.

Shah says that the works of science fiction may offer the most accurate insight into our futuristic society.

He said: "The presents that we live in, are the futures that our pasts have imagined."

"Let us hope that the technologies of the future will also be designed to protect that which is sacred, and that which is important in our own understanding of being human."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/cnn-december-8-2012-oliver-joy-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-digital-native

Not Just Fancy Television

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:45:14Z

Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton

The review was published in the Indian Express on December 8, 2012.

Let us begin by acknowledging that when the world was learning how to drive on the information highway, Ben Hammersley was out there, instructing us how to do it best. So it doesn’t surprise that 64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear, despite its untweetable title, is quite spot-on when it comes to describing our digital pasts, demystifying our interweb presents and preparing us for technosocial futures. Well-written, interspersed with illustrative anecdotes, reflective experiences and speculative ideas, the book looks at the good, the bad and the downright bizarre that the digital turn has introduced in our lives. Working through moments of nostalgia for things that have already become obsolete, and through experiences that morph even before we can comprehend them, Hammersley writes (or, as he suggests in his introduction — co-writes with hundreds of anonymous contributors) a book that is readable, for those seeking to understand how the digital world moves and those who want to remember their own role in shaping forgotten trends.

The book also attempts to answer some of the troublesome tensions in our understanding of our contemporary digital lives. Hammersley’s basic intention in writing the book is to show how technological shifts are not merely about changing usage patterns. It radically (and often dramatically) restructures our domains of life, language and labour. Older structures have become redundant and the new ones have not yet found their feet. There are many who attempt to think of the internet as a mere extension of older media practices. But as he says, “The internet is absolutely not just fancy television.” It is a technology that is reshaping everything we had understood about who we are and how we relate to the world around us.

However, Hammersley suggests, the ways in which the internet is rapidly transforming the world leads to a clear divide around technology literacy. The “technologically literate” are shaping the digital turn, experimenting and exploring the possibilities, but unable to fall back upon older structures of assurance to know whether the choices they are making are sustainable. At the same time, the “technologically illiterate” are still responsible for shaping a world that they are quickly losing track of.

This book clearly explains the technological, legal, cultural, social and economic shifts of the last 20 years, and how they foretell our futures, without complicating it with geeky discourses on code or theoretical bluster.

Hammersley also ensures that the book is not merely a glossary of terms. He has the most interesting anecdotes from around the world like Harry Potter fan-fiction and crowdsourced translations in Germany challenging intellectual property rights regimes, the Human Flesh Search Engines in China, which threaten to reinforce regressive mob politics while also enabling cultural vigilantes in our societies. He also goes beyond individual concerns and reflects on the larger political concerns of censorship, control and freedom, discussing with great lucidity, the complicated nuances of hacker groups like Anonymous, political effects of collectives like WikiLeaks, etc. It is an exciting mash-up of events that will make you smile at the audacity and irreverence of the players in the digital playground, but will also make you shiver as it lays bare the new authoritarian and violent regimes that emerge with digital technologies.

Instead of taking partisan positions about something as necessarily good or bad, Hammersley documents some of the practices, effects and affects of technology, to show how our world has changed. There is no explanation of why the list stops at 64 things. But it is a well curated list of social, cultural, economic and political concerns and provides a conversational account of the present and future, speculating, like an old friend on the living room couch on a Sunday afternoon.

The only criticism against Hammersley is that he is too dependent on the rules of the internet to explain the internet. The different laws that have evolved in computing and network theory, in the sociology of the Web and the economic analysis of information societies, are accepted too easily, and used as self-evident explanatory frameworks. But then, this is not a book pretending to argue for a new conceptual framework. It is a book that has set out to educate and entertain, slowly unfolding the fractured narratives of the Web from its military origins to its Arab Spring manifestations. Of the many books that are already flooding the market, trying to decode the Web, Hammersley’s list of 64 things is going to be at the top.

The writer is Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-december-8-2012-nishant-shah-not-just-fancy-television

Whose Change Is It Anyway? | DML2013

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:47:19Z

As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Nishant Shah is chair of 'Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)' track at DML2013. Here, he talks about shifts in citizen engagement in Indian politics and civics, and the underlying significance of these changes.

"More and more, you have young people who are trying to come together, not merely to express discontent, but actually take action so that they can build the kinds of futures they want to occupy."

The 2013 DML conference will be held in March 14-16, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California's systemwide Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine.

More details about the DML2013 Conference and the Call For Workshop/Panel/Paper Proposals can be found at the conference website: dml2013.dmlhub.net.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway

October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-11-08T11:42:01Z

Welcome to the newsletter of October 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis by Ujwala Uppaluri of the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Super Cassettes v. MySpace, announcement of public call for comments for reports on “Banking and Accessibility in India” and “Making TV Accessible in India”, and updates on Indic languages.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications the posts of Research Manager and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org.

HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of October: Droidcon 2012 (CIS, Bangalore, October 27 – 28, 2012).
Accessibility India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies: Public Call for Comments Banking and Accessibility in India: A Study on Banking Accessibility in India (by Vrinda Maheshwari, October 30, 2012). Making TV Accessible in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 8, 2012). Blog Entries The HathiTrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO (by Rahul Cherian, October 30, 2012). WIPO General Assemblies Approve Road Map on Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Rahul Cherian, October 11, 2012).
Access to Knowledge The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge: Analysis Super Cassettes v. MySpace (by Ujwala Uppaluri, October 31, 2012). Blog Entry ICOMM2012: International Communications and Electronics Fair (by Jadine Lannon, October 31, 2012). Event Organised A Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies" (TERI Southern Regional Centre 4th Main, Domlur II Stage Bangalore, October 27, 2012).
Openness The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Wikipedia Education Programs Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012). Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012). Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Workshops Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012). Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012). Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012). First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Event Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012). Wikipedia Press Coverage Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Team Updates The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for the New Delhi office. Shiju Alex, Program Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.
Internet Governance The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes: Column Rethinking DNA Profiling in India (by Elonnai Hickok, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol - XLVII No. 43, October 27, 2012). Analysis Privacy Perspectives on the 2012 -2013 Goa Beach Shack Policy (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2012). Upcoming IGF Events At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop: National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m). Pranesh Prakash is a panelist in the following workshop: New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m). CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops: Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.). Governing Identity on the Internet (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.). Other Upcoming Event DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012): CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central are jointly organizing the DML Conference 2013 in Chicago. Event organised The Public Voice: Privacy Rights are a Global Challenge (Punta del Este, Uruguay, October 21, 2012): Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at this event. Events Participated 3rd Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit (organised by EastWest Institute in partnership with NASSCOM and FICCI, Federation House, New Delhi, October 30-31, 2012): Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok participated in this event. Fourth Annual Legal Services Conference in India (organised by US India Business Council, New Delhi, October 11, 2012): Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on “Censorship and Content Restrictions: The Future of Internet Speech in India”. Meeting on Lawful Access by Law Enforcement (Brussels, October 3 – 5, 2012): Elonnai Hickok participated in the meeting. Video Arrested for tweeting: Legitimate or Curbing Free Speech? (NDTV, October 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this discussion aired on NDTV along with Shivam Vij, SB Mishra and Sanjay Pinto. Media Coverage On social media, Modi goes soft (by Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, October 26, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Bolstering right to remain private (by Apar Gupta, The Pioneer, October 29, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted. CIS was part of the expert committee even though not explicitly mentioned in these: Panel suggests law to protect individual privacy (Newstrack India, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Business Standard, October 18, 2012), Experts' committee moots law to protect privacy (by Saikat Datta, Daily News & Analysis, October 19, 2012), Govt panel wants curbs on phone taps (The Times of India, October 19, 2012), Privacy Act should not circumscribe RTI: expert group (by Amitabh Sinha, Indian Express, October 19, 2012), Nine-point code set out to safeguard personal information (Hindu Business Line, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Zee News, October 18, 2012). Court’s approval needed to tap phones: Panel (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, October 18, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Could better DNA testing facilities in India have saved the Talwars? (by Pallavi Polanki, October 11, 2012): CIS press statement is mentioned.
Telecom While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum: Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India CIS and Ford Foundation joined hands to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers. The following are the new outputs: Spectrum Management (by Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2012). Cable Television (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 16, 2012). Column in Business Standard The Supreme Court Delivers (by Shyam Ponappa in Business Standard, October 4, 2012 and Organizing India Blogspot, October 11, 2012).
Digital Natives Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South: Newspaper Column The Rules of Engagement (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, October 29, 2012).
Researchers at Work CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Three columns by Nishant Shah arising from these workshops were published in the month of October: Habits of Living: Being Human in a Networked Society (DML, Central, October 22, 2012). Digital Habits: How and Why We Tweet, Share and Like (FirstPost, October 12, 2012). Who’s that Friend? (Indian Express, October 23, 2012).

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2012-bulletin

The Rules of Engagement

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:48:54Z

Why the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.

Nishant Shah's column was published in the Indian Express on October 29, 2012.

Oh, sure, we are still talking about a fairly middle-class hang-out that happens largely in English and is restricted to people in urban environments who have the economic and cultural capital of access. But if you browse through your friends’ lists and compare it with, say, the network from five years ago, you will realise that the age demography has changed quite dramatically. I am not suggesting that the Web was only the realm of the young – let us face it, the people who actually created the infrastructure of the Web were not tiny tots. However, with Web 2.0 at the turn of the millennium, we have had an extraordinary focus on young people online.

But as the networks grow to include more people, there are now a lot of people online, who might not be the 16-year-old BlackBerry-wielding digital native, nor be in the “business of internet” but are finding a space for themselves, tentatively and steadily negotiating with this new space. Some of it might be because, those of us who were new kids on the block in the Nineties, are now older by a decade and are still on the block, but replaced by newer kids around the block. Some of it might be because there is an ease of access as portable computing devices grow more personal and get more people to use their smartphones as a gateway into the online worlds. But a lot of it is actually because the fold of the Web is expanding. The digital spaces of conversation are being integrated into our everyday lives and practices, replacing older forms of media and information structures and processes of social and cultural belonging.

And so, even though the penetration of the interwebz is not as rapid in countries like India as one would have hoped for, we do see a wide age group of people coming online, forming networks, and entering into conversations. I hadn’t really realised this, even though I was adding them to my social networks, that the digital immigrants are now here, and they are here to stay. It suddenly surfaced in my thoughts, because I recently heard a few narratives which made me dwell on the effort and the learning that one takes for granted but is a prerequisite for belonging to these new social spaces.

One of the first complaints I heard was about a hostility that many digital immigrants face when they start engaging with the social media. They follow the manuals. They read the FAQs. They look at patterns, and learn. And yet, even when they seem to be doing what seems to be exactly what everybody else is doing, they are often told that they got it all wrong. This is bewildering for many, because they cannot really see the difference. And the reason is that the social web is governed by a whole lot of unwritten rules and codes, which clearly are the rites of passage into the online world. These are not things that can be taught. These are not written in a guideline that tells you how to behave on Facebook or how to sift through the live-streams on Twitter. It is a fiercely guarded set of dos and don’ts which clearly distinguish between the digital natives and the digital immigrants, reinforcing exclusivity and exclusion. And when the digital immigrant violates these rules, they are often faced with a sneer, a sarcastic comment, or a dismissal as “not with it”.

The second thing I have repeatedly noticed is “calling troll” to people who do not always know these rules. Trolling is not new to the world of the internet. People who disrupt conversations and discussions by posting provocative or tangential information, by voicing hateful opinions, by passing harsh judgments, or sometimes by willfully breaking the rules of the communities, in order to seek attention and interrupt the flow of conversations are called trolls. Trolls are universally frowned upon and trolling wars often take up epic proportions because people get emotionally invested in them. Trolls are often shamed publicly, their mistakes brought into an embarrassing spot-light and ridiculed in back-channels or even in public discussions.

Calling somebody a troll presumes that the user is conversant with the rules of the game and is then breaking them, working with the idea that if you are online, you are naturally a digital native. The digital immigrants often create noob mistakes that can appear troll-like but are not intended to be so, and are often on the receiving end of a community’s hostility. And it is time, now that our online networks are growing, for us to realise that our presumptions about who is online need to change. If we are looking at an inclusive Web, we need to stop imagining that the person on the other side of the interface is necessarily like us, and develop new networks of nurture, which allows the digital immigrants safe spaces to experiment, make mistakes, and learn like the best of us. The next time, before you call somebody a troll, see if it might just be somebody learning the tricks of the trade. If they are doing something wrong, just politely point it out to them. And remember, acceptance is not only for people who are like us, but about people who are markedly unlike us.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/india-express-news-nishant-shah-oct-29-2012-the-rules-of-engagement

September 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-10-09T06:48:33Z

Welcome to the newsletter of September 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a second analysis by Snehashish Ghosh on the latest list of sites blocked by the Indian government from August 18, 2012 to August 21, 2012, a research on the issues of internet governance by Smarika Kumar, publication of a report on Accessibility of Government websites in India by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, the Access to Knowledge programme plan and updates from the Wikipedia community in India on Indic languages, updates from the Habits of Living workshop organised in Bengaluru, the events connected to the visits of international DNA experts, Helen Wallace and Jeremy Gruber in India, and introduce you to our Access to Knowledge team members.

Announcements

Office in Delhi
CIS now has an office with a five-member team for the Access to Knowledge programme in Delhi at G 15, top floor, behind Hauz Khas G Block Market, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, Ph: + 91 11 26536425.

New Team Members

Nitika Tandon: Nitika Tandon is a Program Officer with CIS. She has an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands and is a recipient of Dean's Fund Scholarship Program, Erasmus University.
Shiju Alex: Shiju Alex is a Consultant. His background is technical writing and he is interested in Indic language computing and community building for Indic language Wiki projects. Presently he works out of CIS office in Bengaluru.
Subhashish Panigrahi: Subhashish Panigrahi is a Programme Officer to CIS's Access to Knowledge programme and works out of CIS's Delhi office. His background is Business Development in Corporate Communications. He works on designing and implementing programs to provide on-wiki and off-wiki support for new editors.
Noopur Raval: Noopur Raval is working as Consultant - Communications for the Access to Knowledge team at CIS. Having previously worked in the media, she is currently pursuing her M.Phil in Cinema Studies from JNU, New Delhi.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the posts of Research Manager, Researcher/Editor, and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply for these posts send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) with three references. Archives of our bulletins can be found here. Click to read the newsletter on our website.

Accessibility

Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report (by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, September 26, 2012): This is a report on the accessibility of government websites in India. It was published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. The report consists of an executive summary, introduction, methodology, findings and recommendations and interpretation and recommendations. Examples of errors are given as appendices.

Project

Creating a National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities: An Introduction (by Anandhi Viswanathan, September 28, 2012): CIS is engaged in a two-and-a-half year project starting from August 2012 to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. This project is supported by the Hans Foundation. The Resource Kit will be brought out in both English and Hindi and disseminated to policy makers from panchayat to ministry levels throughout India. Anandhi gives an introduction to the project in this blog entry.

Blog Entries

WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year.
Breaking News on Electronic Accessibility (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): The Parliamentary Standing Committee constituted to study the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill has in its report explicitly recognized the concept of electronic accessibility and reasonable accommodation. This is the first time in the country that these two concepts have been reflected at the level of a Parliamentary Standing Committee in relation to a non-disability specific law.

Access to Knowledge

Submission

Feedback to Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 (by Pranesh Prakash, September 29, 2012): submitted its written comments on the Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 to Mr. G.R. Raghavender, Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP&CR), Ministry of Human Resource Development. Pranesh does a detailed analysis and provides recommendations on Rules 8,9,10, 29(6), 34(2), 37, 71(3), 72, 74(1), 74(6), 75, and 79 (3) and (4).

Projects

Access To Knowledge/Programme Plan: Pursuant to the announcement made on July 30, 2012 of a 22 months ‘grant’ (beginning from September 1, 2012 to July 31, 2014) of upto INR 26,000,000 and as reflected in the FAQ accompanying the announcement, the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program will become a project of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS. The prime objective is to support the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects and supporting India-focused efforts to improve the quality of India-relevant content on Indic languages and English Wikimedia projects.
Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace (by Jadine Lannon, September 25, 2012): Jadine Lannon gives an introduction to the new A2K research initiative. Pervasive technologies have flooded the Indian market and are changing the ways in which the average Indian accesses knowledge but very little is understood about these technologies, particularly when it comes to their legality. CIS hopes to do a research that aims to understand how pervasive technologies interact with Intellectual Property laws and what can be done to protect these technologies from being labelled “illegal” and eradicated from the Asian market.

Event Participated

Meeting of the Global Network on Flexible Limitations and Exceptions (organised by American University Washington College of Law, Washington D.C., September 12 to 15, 2012).

Internet Governance

Featured Research

An Introduction to the Issues in Internet Governance (by Smarika Kumar, September 23, 2012): Smarika provides a detailed analysis to the issues that we face in Internet Governance today. She tries to canvass the controversies in the areas of internet governance that broadly focus around the institutional structures to govern the internet, discusses the evolution of these models against the historical background of internet governance and then proceeds to present the criticisms of each of these models with an emphasis on the interests of the regular internet user.
Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II (by Snehashish Ghosh, September 25, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”). This analysis was re-posted by Medianama on September 26, 2012.

Columns

The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Chronicle, September 16, 2012): “The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.”
SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech (by Chinmayi Arun, Hindu Business Line, September 1, 2012): If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.

Media Coverage

Censorship makes India fall two places on global internet freedom chart (by Dilnaz Boga, Daily News & Analysis, September 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

Pitroda seeks to put govt information in public domain (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 25, 2012): “One government bureaucrat available on Twitter for a fixed period doesn’t make up for the non-existence of the government on social media…they (government) should be available all the time.” — Sunil Abraham.

Govt plans inter-ministerial panel on Internet policy (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 19, 2012): ““The thumb rule with governance, be it international or national, is that coordination policy formulation bodies is a good idea, but we can’t damn or praise them over the process...We have to see what coordination results out of the body.” — Sunil Abraham.

Mind of the millennium teen (by Atul Sethi, The Times of India, September 16, 2012): “We live in accelerated times...The breathlessness of our times is evident in everything — from the kind of movies we make to the ways in which our news and information travel. At the end of the day, our younger generations are also products of our times.”— Nishant Shah.

China outranks India in world’s first ever web index (First Post, September 6, 2012): ““The Internet today doesn’t work according to the idealistic principles of openness, and democracy of information that Berners-Lee envisioned for it, and in India in particular, although the Internet has helped us rethink what the government can do, the attitude is that that Internet can only be used in ways that the government sees fit.” — Nishant Shah.

Need a standard strategy to deal with Web issues: Chandrasekhar (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

Political war on the web (by Kunal Majumder, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “The fact remains none of the blockings were politically motivated.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Government to hold talks with stakeholders on Internet censorship (by Shalini Singh, The Hindu, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

The state. And the rage of the cyber demon (by Shougat Dasgupta, Tehelka, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “While some people may see Twitter as akin to friends talking in the pub, others use the service as a bulletin board.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Watch out for fettered speech (by Rohit Pradhan, Business Standard, September 1, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Events Organised

DNA Profiling Bill
International DNA experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States visited Bengaluru and Delhi and shared their experience in DNA sampling and gave feedback to the DNA Profiling Bill. Meetings were conducted with lawyers and the plaintiff in the Pascal Mazurier's rape case and with VR Sudarshan and Hormis Tharakan. There was a coverage of the event in Kannada media. Public lectures were organised in Bengaluru and Delhi:

UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes (organised by CIS and Alternative Law Forum, September 24, 2012): Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States gave a public lecture.
The DNA Profiling Bill: Developing Best Practices (India International Centre, New Delhi, September 27, 2012): International experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States gave a public lecture. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.

Blog Entry

A Public Meeting on DNA Profiling Bill in Delhi (by Elonnai Hickok, September 29, 2012): Elonnai has blogged about the public lecture delivered by Dr. Helen Wallace, Jeremy Gruber and Dr. Anupuma Raina.

Upcoming IGF Events
At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop:

National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.

Sunil Abraham will be a panelist in the following workshop:

New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m).

CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops:

Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.).
Governing Identity on the Internet (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.).

Events Participated

Second Freedom Online Conference (organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications, Republic of Kenya in partnership with the government of Netherlands at UN complex in Gigiri, Nairobi, September 6 and 7, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on Access to Internet: Challenges and Opportunities.
Multi-stakeholder Discussion on India’s Position in UN for Internet Governance UN Committee for Internet Related Policies (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, New Delhi, September 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Seventh Meeting of the Group of Experts on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting. This was the final meeting of the series.

Talk

Talk at Yale University (New Haven, September 19, 2012): Pranesh Prakash gave a talk on censorship, intermediary liability, and the way forward.

Video

Internet Governance Plenary (August 28, Tokyo, Japan): Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator.

Openness

Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex, September 25, 2012): Shiju Alex provides a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. He provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.

Workshop Reports
Although most of the following workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the report for all of these was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring these.

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012. Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. Long-term Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani also joined this workshop. The event was covered in the Tribune, Hindustan Times, Punjab Infoline, and YesPunjab.com.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012. Veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani came forward to spread the message of Punjabi Wikipedia among Punjabi speakers.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012): The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012. Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh led the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.
Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian. The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.
Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012): This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur. Prof. Ashwin Kumar from the Department of English, Tumkur University and Kannada wikipedians, Om Shiva Prakash, Hareesh, Tejus and Pavithra played vital roles in organising this workshop. Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. About 30 participants including students and teachers participated in this workshop.

Blog Entries

Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012): Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.
Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad! (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012): A series of Wikipedia meetings were organized in Hyderabad on September 29 and 30, 2012. These workshops were a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community. There was coverage about this event in the Hindu on September 28, 2012.

Event Organised

Thinking with Data@CIS (CIS, Bengaluru, September 16 – 18, 2012): The course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies was screened in CIS office.

HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of September: Cartonama Conference (TERI Complex, Bengaluru, September 22, 2012). The event was organised by HasGeek with support from CIS.

Digital Natives

Newspaper Column

One. Zero. (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, September 16, 2012): “The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak.”

Pathways to Higher Education

The Pathways Project to Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and CIS. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in nine undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India. Training workshops were organised in the month of September at Xaviers in Mumbai on September 6, 2012 and in Newman College, Thodupuzha from September 17 to 20, 2012. Each workshop had 25-30 undergraduate students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They were trained to use digital technologies in order to think through problems of social justice.

Researchers at Work

From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects is a global collaborative project to renew the conceptual power of networks. It concentrates on changing the habits of living. The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University is an important locus.

CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Jadine Lannon and Alok Vaid-Menon live blogged about the event:

Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Introduction (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Globalising Lady GaGa (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Deepak Menon on Water in India (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: On Technology and Affective Indian Feminism(s) (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Radhika Gajjala Lectures on e-Philanthropy (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Joshua Neves on Media Archipelagos (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Finding and Funding the Masses (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Akansha Rastogi's Performance on Exhibition Space
(by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Wendy Chun on Friends (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Namita Malhotra on Amateur Pornography (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).

Telecom

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Associations Regulating Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): Broadcast regulation in India is currently an intricate web, with multiple agencies involved in formulating and implementing policy, drafting and enforcing legislation.
Optical Fibre (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): This unit tells us what is optical fibre, the types of optical fibres, how does an optical fibre work, fibre-optic relay system, and why are optical fibres uses in telecommunication systems.
Direct to Home (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit tells us about Direct to home television, its history, how it works, the programming, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in this module.
Cable Television (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit brings you the history and evolution of cable television in India, talks about other cable based services, cable television digitization rule and the end consumer in India.
Private FMs (Commercial, Campus and Community Radios) (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 24, 2012): This unit introduces us to AM and FM, tells us the role of private FMs including what is a community radio and what is a campus radio.
Types of Radio Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 28, 2012): This unit tells us what is radio broadcasting, takes us through the history of radio broadcasting in India, explains what is AM and FM in the Indian context.
A History of All India Radio and Its Operations (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 29, 2012): This module gives us a picture of the history of All India Radio and its operations.

Newspaper Column

Changing Our Game (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, September 5, 2012): “Adopting 'co-ordination models' like the Stag Hunt could reduce contention and improve outcomes.” This was re-posted in Organizing India blogspot.

Event Participated

Insights India 2012 (organised by MACH, Bangalore, September 26 – 28, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh and Srividya Vaidyanathan participated in this event.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2012-bulletin

Habits of Living Thinkathon — Day 2 Live Blog: Radhika Gajjala Lectures on e-Philanthropy

Jadine Lannon — 2012-10-09T05:40:08Z

The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought.

Today, Radhika Gajalla gave a lecture about a body of work which she called as "Emerging forms of Surrogacy, E-Philanthropy and Digital Globalization through Online Micro-transactional Platforms". It looks at online micro-transaction platforms. She ran us through some of the history of micro-finance theory, from Yunis' methods of female empowerment to micro-finance as a profit-generating activity, and the newer online micro-finance platforms like KIVA, microplace and CARE's online micro-finance portal.

Radhika also spoke about labor organization and supply chains forming for handicraft micro-enterprises in India. She identified two categories of platforms that entrepreneurs could use: sites that link buyers directly to producers, like Etsy and Ebay, and mirco-finance websites that solicit (usually Western) donors. In some cases, resources like Ebay cannot be used in India (or couldn’t in the past) because of barriers like the banning of paypal, and there is more demand for the micro-finance platforms from lenders (Westerners); these forces have worked to make the empowered entrepreneur a much more legitimate and accessible image for lenders.

Consequently, Radhika begins to identify the politics of imagery on online micro-finance platforms, and identified two aspects of the images common on these online platforms: the empowered receiver (who is being directly empowered by the loans) and the empowered giver (who is being made to feel good by being enablers for these receivers). The images being used by the MFIs are strategically used to create the sense of connection or the belonging to mutual networks with the lenders — an example of this is individuals in the West who weave seeing a picture of an Indian weaver and want to fund her not just because they interpret her as poor but also as a fellow weaver. This philanthropic model of giving also uses guilt relief as a motivation — the return on the loan is the relief of guilt.

In the participant discussions, it was pointed out that the images also spur lending through the promise of improving lives. Also, this concept of using moral responsibility to prompt giving can be paralleled with the movement in Western business spheres of social responsibility.

Another participant brought up the idea of mobilization, and asks us to think about what mobilizes individuals or groups to give in to these micro-finance organizations? Is it really hope, or is it shame? To what extent can these really motivate us?

Further, participant interaction caused us to wonder if, on websites like KIVA, both lenders and receivers become nodes and entry-points into new networks, or even the sites of new network creation.

As for my own thoughts, I was particularly interested in a point that one participant made on the expression of poverty in the images on KIVA: they do not showcase destitution. While they are images of poverty, they are also images of hope — the colours are bright, the subjects are smiling. Are these images much more powerful as motivators for Western donations because Westerners are desensitized to images of destitute poverty? Or are they just more accessible to Western viewers?

While destitution suggests a rigidity of causal structures that cannot be altered by either the subject or the viewer, the image of the smiling Indian woman standing in front of the spinning wheel expresses the concept that poverty is escapable using the inherent tools and skills possessed by the subject, to the only thing missing that is capital — an idea that is much more accessible to the Western donor. It is also possible that the movement in international aid and development media from images of destitution to images of hope impresses upon the donor that there has been progress in the Global South, possibly progress that can be attributed to actions of Western development initiatives, which legitimizes the donation by implicating that improvement is possible and currently taking place.

Continue to follow our live blog of the Thinkathon for more thought-provoking discussion!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-radhika-gajjala-lectures-on-e-philanthropy

One. Zero.

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:50:32Z

The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak. So sophisticated is this network of digital infrastructure that we forget how our languages of connection are constantly being transcribed in binary code, allowing for the information to be transmitted across the web.

Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on September 16, 2012

Indeed, we have already reached a point where we don’t even need to be familiar with code to perform intimate functions with the machines that we live with, as they respond to us in human languages. While this human-machine duality has been resolved with the presence of intuitive and interactive interfaces that allow us to seamlessly connect to the person(s) at the other end of a digital connection, there is another binary that still remains at the centre of much discussion around all things digital.

This is the duality of the Real and the Virtual. In geekspeak, this particular separation has been coded as a divide between RL (Real Life) and VR (Virtual Reality). This separation between the two is so naturalised that it has become a part of our everyday imagination where things that happen online are ‘out there’ and ‘an escape’ whereas things that are offline, are ‘real’ and ‘believable’. However, as digital technologies become pervasive and ubiquitous, these lines between RL and VR have blurred. Especially with new technologies of augmented reality and simulated layers like Google Goggles or even location-based services on your smartphone that help you navigate through the offline world, it is becoming difficult to clearly say what is online and what is offline.

There are two questions that help demonstrate this blurring of boundaries very clearly. The first is an existential one, something that doesn’t crop up often in conversations, but suddenly haunts you on at 2 pm on an idle Thursday: Who are you, when you are online? A famous cartoon on the web had two dogs sitting on a connected computer, their paws on the mouse, and telling each other, ‘On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog’. But in the hyper-connected world that we live in, everybody knows exactly who we are, even as we ourselves are confused about where our bodies end and where our digital extensions and avatars begin. Things that we do in RL affect and shape the ways in which our avatars evolve on social networking sites. The interactions that our avatars have with other digital objects map back on our understanding of who we are and how we dress our bodies. Even when we are not connected, our avatars interact, constantly, not only with other avatars in the system, but also machines and artificial intelligence scripts, and robots and networks, masquerading as ourselves even outside our knowledge. We might be tagged, liked, shared, transmitted and morphed; we might be photoshopped, reduced to a tweet, condensed to a status message, embodied in an avatar on our favourite role playing game, or hovering as a signature to emails. These are all parts of us, but they are not just extensions of us. These are things that not only stand in for us but also shape the ways in which we understand ourselves and how we connect to the world.

The second question crops up regularly in digitally mediated conversations. When your parents call you on the cell phone, or your friend messages you on the Blackberry, or your colleague pings you on Skype or your IRC buddies see you on a chat channel. As our modes of access have become mobile and devices of access have become portable, we can never really clearly answer the question, ‘Where are you right now?’. It is a question worth dwelling on. Where are you when you are walking down a street, using GPRS data on your cellphone, and a friend uses a Voice Over IP service like Whatsapp to ask you, ‘Where are you right now?’. Are you on the street? On your phone? On an application? Located somewhere on a server? Bits of data on a high-speed optic fibre, zooming across the ionosphere? Depending upon who is asking the question, you would be able to and in fact have to give a different answer about where you are when you are online.

This blurred duality might be seen as confusing, taking away the assurance of our body and our geography from everyday practices. In fact, one of the reasons why the digital revolution has been so well received is because these technologies facilitate an almost seamless transfer of ideas, emotions and connections across the different realms of RL and VR, offering us new ways of thinking about being human, being social, and being connected. The strength of the digital is in this coupling together, of the hitherto irreconcilable realms of our life in messy and enchanting ways, giving us new opportunities to think about who we are and where we are in our quotidian lives.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/www-indianexpress-com-one-zero

Centre for Internet and Society

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

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