Centre for Internet and Society

May 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:59:29Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of May 2012! In the current issue, we bring to you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, and media coverage:

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:

Copyright Amendment Bill

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012
Pranesh Prakash
There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era. The analysis was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012.

Op-ed in Indian Express

Copyright Madness (Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala, Indian Express, May 22, 2012): India’s Copyright Act allows owners of content the right to prevent infringement through the use of injunctions, but these injunctions have to be narrowly construed and applied only to specific instances of infringement. This is to say, take down the infringing video, not the whole website, and don’t intimidate the host. When injunctions threaten freedom of speech and expression, then free speech should necessarily trump copyright claims — and the courts cannot be used as convenient shopping forums for maladies that don’t exist.

Call for Participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Event Participated

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles (Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany, May 14 and 15, 2012). The event was organised by the University of Minnesota and Max Planck Institute. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

News & Media

Will the Copyright Law Help the Starving Artist?:(by Margherita Stancati, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2012): "The singers and producers of...unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars."
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers? (FirstPost, May 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article.

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:

Blog Entries

Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled by Rahul Cherian.
An FAQ on the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2012, for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities by Dr. Sam Taraporevala and Rahul Cherian.

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:

Article in the Indian Express

Cancel the Subscription (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Indian Express, May 8, 2012): It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available... In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

Event Organised

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi (National Museum, New Delhi, April 20, 2012): The event was organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society. Sunil Abraham was a panelist and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation.

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications: 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 August 15, 2012. The focus areas for the present fellowship programme include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. The duration of the fellowship will be for about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

Events Participated

Internet at Liberty 2012: Promoting Progress and Freedom (Newseum, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest Washington, D.C., May 23 – 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a speaker in Plenary IV, Debate 3: In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?
Meeting on Internet Governance (Conference Hall No. 4009, Dept. of Electronics & Information Technology, CGO Complex, New Delhi, May 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in this meeting.

Op-ed in Down to Earth

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures (Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, May 31, 2012): The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Columns by Nishant Shah

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You! (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, May 22, 2012): When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.
The Private Eye (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 14, 2012): As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online.

Video

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet: Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012. The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV and featured on YouTube.

Letter

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in ITU’s WCIT (by Center for Democracy and Technology): Academics and civil society groups wrote to the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications process.

Blog Entry

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom (by Sunil Abraham): This blog entry is based on a presentation made in the Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Media Coverage

Why this blocking di? (by R Krishna, Daily News & Analysis, May 27, 2012): “Unlike the Calcutta High Court order in March this year, which specified the 104 websites that should be blocked, a John Doe order doesn’t mention any specific website. In some cases, the websites are being blocked without any evidence (of copyright infringement). Courts need to be informed of what people with John Doe orders are doing. We need to be specific about what can be blocked and what can’t be.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Daily News & Analysis

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Urges PM To Withdraw India’s Proposal For UN Committee On Internet-Policy (by Anupam Saxena, Medianama, May 16, 2012): An interview that Medianama had with Pranesh Prakash is cited in this blog post.
MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions (Times of India, May 18, 2012): “The IT minister has promised to hold consultations but the ideal way to do so would have been to scrap the rules and start from scratch... It's not only about language in these rules. There is a problem with provisions like the one that empowers intermediaries to remove content without notifying the user who had uploaded the content or giving users a chance to explain themselves.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Times of India.

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, May 18, 2012): “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Legally India.

Vimeo Ban: More Web Censorship (by Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012): “Shutting websites merely on the basis of suspicion amounts to private crackdown on free speech of the web...Why didn’t the telecom ministry repeal or object to the move, knowing that the court didn’t spell out the websites to be blocked?”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Wall Street Journal.
Taming the Web, are we? (by Javed Anwer, Economic Times, May 13, 2012): "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery."
Sunil Abraham quoted in the Economic Times.

Cordon tightens: Rajya Sabha nod to harsh IT rules (Anil Sharma and Aishhwariya Subramanian, Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2012): "The trouble with Indian government's proposal to address issues such as network neutrality, privacy and freedom of expression, is top-down. Unlike other countries where internet policies have always been developed with consultation with other stakeholders, here the government imposes its will."
Sunil Abraham quoted in Daily News & Analysis.
"It is an ironical situation where India is not following domestically what it is proposing internationally." Pranesh Prakash quoted in the same article in Daily News & Analysis.

Empires: Individuals in Search of Society (Marc Lafia, Huffington Post, May 18, 2012).
Cyber Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru (Deccan Herald, May 9, 2012): “The state IT secretary has passed more than 80 orders. They include both cases of phishing and orders against cyber cafes for not adhering to rules under the IT Act. The Adjudicator has held that ‘section 43 of IT Act is not applicable to a body or Corporate’, after the amended IT Act came into force in 2008.” Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Deccan Herald.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and 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:

Columns by Nishant Shah

Digitally Analogue (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 27, 2012): While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option.
We Are All Cyborgs (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 29, 2012): The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Citizen Action

Resisting Revolutions: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Development, Volume 55, Issue 2, May 2012): In this peer reviewed journal article, Nishant Shah looks into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action that have emerged in the last few years. He seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State–Citizen–Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status quo rather than radically undermining it. He examines a campaign against corruption in India to see how the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present is produced in citizen action.

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:

Course

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India: Ford Foundation has given a grant of $200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India over a period of two years. The project involves creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience, organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues and using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Column in Business Standard

The Coming Telecom Monopoly (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 3, 2012): “The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.”

Event Organised

3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at NLSIU, Bangalore (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 27, 2012): Organised by CIS in association with the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. Professor Rohan Samarajiva delivered a lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia.
The Awesome Contracts Project (Geekup @ CIS, May 18, 2012): CIS co-organised the event with Has Geek. Vivek Durai, co-founder at Awesome Contracts gave a public lecture. Amith Narayan participated through Skype.

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 foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. 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, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

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.

Follow us elsewhere

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

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2012-bulletin

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and 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 want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2011-bulletin

May 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:00:54Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and information on our events in this bulletin of May 2010

News Updates

India slowly gets to grips with ecommerce
Growth in computer use and Internet penetration will help e-commerce.
http://cis-india.org/news/India-gets-to-grips-with-ecommerce
World Wide Web Consortium for All
Indian web designers have long ignored needs of people with different disabilities but a new dedicated wiki aspires to change that, writes Malvika Tegta
http://cis-india.org/news/www-for-all
Biometry Is Watching
In its first steps, the UID drive encounters practical problems, raises ethical questions, reports Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook.
http://cis-india.org/news/biometry-is-watching
What Women Want: The ability debates
In this article published in the Hindu, Deepa Alexander argues that the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (1957) are restrictive and discriminatory.
http://cis-india.org/news/what-women-want
CIS – Internet is neither good nor bad
This post is also available in: French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil)
http://cis-india.org/news/Internet-not-good-not-bad
Right to Read event in Brussels
A 'Right to Read' event is being held at the European Parliament, Brussels on 4 May 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/right-to-read-brussels
Mapping the things that affect us
'Map for making change' is a project using geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India
http://cis-india.org/news/mapping-the-things
'UID is being forced'
CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced
ID programme faces first challenge over privacy, data
The government is looking to the ID programme to help ensure that various welfare programmes reach the poor
http://cis-india.org/news/id-programe-faces-challenge
Their India has no borders
Bangalore felt far for them, they would mark it outside the country. India, for migrant labourers, is different from the India we know
http://cis-india.org/news/their-india-has-no-borders
Scrap UID project, say people's organisations
The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction.
http://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project
UID info can be misused
Public organisations, NGOs and concerned citizens feel UID may become an easy database for anti-social elements.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-info-can-be-misused
UID project draws flak from civil rights activists
The unique identification project is drawing a flak from civil rights activists.
http://cis-india.org/news/UID-project-draws-flak
Citizens' forums want UID project scrapped
Citizens' forums and groups have stepped up their attack on the Unique Identification Project calling for the complete scrapping of the project.
http://cis-india.org/news/citizens-forums-want-UID-scrapped
Disability rights groups oppose changes to Copyright Act
Disability rights groups are up in arms against a Bill proposing an amendment to the Copyright Act, 1952, reports Aarti Dhar in an article published in the Hindu on April 23, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/disability-groups-oppose-copyright-amendments
Centre for Study of Culture and Society seeks Programme Associate
The Higher Education Cell, Centre for Study of Culture and Society is looking for a Programme Associate to help develop e-content and conduct training programmes for projects under its Social Justice and Networked Higher Education Initiatives.
http://cis-india.org/news/position-announcement

Research

Digital Natives at Republica 2010
Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet and Society, made a presentation at the Re:Publica 2010, in Berlin, about its collaborative project (with Hivos, Netherlands) "Digital Natives with a Cause?" The video for the presentation, along with an extensive abstract is online.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrepub

Accessibility

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report
The European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue supported an event sponsored by seven MEPs in the European Parliament to discuss the way forward for EU to support the Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled which has been proposed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-europe

Intellectual Property

The 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/2010-special-301

Exceptions and Limitations in Indian Copyright Law for Education: An Assessment
This paper examines the nature of exceptions and limitations in copyright law for the purposes of the use of copyrighted materials for education. It looks at the existing national and international regime, and argues for why there is a need for greater exceptions and limitations to address the needs of developing countries. The paper contextualizes the debate by looking at the high costs of learning materials and the impediment caused to e-learning and distance education by strong copyright regimes.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/exceptions-and-limitations

Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/tpm-copyright-amendment

Telecom

China Club instead of Bombay Club?
Emulate China's coordinated policies for strategic sectors, and we'll rely less on commodity exports, says Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard on May 13, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/China-club-Bombay-club

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2010-bulletin

Matching Realities and Aspirations

Shyam Ponappa — 2018-03-09T03:03:58Z

Leaving aside fixing the 'mountains' such as land acquisition, NPAs etc, here are some thoughts on systemic focus and action.

The article was published in the Business Standard on January 31, 2018 and in Organizing India Blogspot on February 1, 2018.

There’s an upbeat sense from the annual Economic Survey, and indicators such as soaring stocks and official statements.Yet, the ground realities don’t match because of gritty facts such as not being able to pay electronic tolls on a national highway near Delhi though the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) controls local administration1, Korean steel giant Posco abandoning a huge investment last year after struggling for over a decade, two public sector divestments, Bharat Aluminium Company and Hindustan Zinc, mired in difficulties2, or the hobbling state of services such as electricity and telecommunications despite short-term consumer benefits from lower prices, and so on. Another aspect is that so many college graduates, including engineers, law students and MBAs, compete for low-end government jobs such as peons in state governments. Clearly, something beyond talkfests and episodic discussions is needed. Leaving aside fixing the “mountains” — the land acquisition act, non-performing assets (NPAs), high component taxes — here are some thoughts on systemic focus and action.

Fix infrastructure

With rare exceptions, our governments do not appear to recognise a clear priority to fix infrastructural deficiencies. After national security and maintaining law and order, correcting critical deficiencies of infrastructure in all its forms needs to be an all-out priority. This is a basic requirement for citizens to function effectively and live well. Without infrastructure one cannot function anywhere near full capacity, because of having to spend time, energy and resources dealing with problems of living and hygiene arising from the non-availability of adequate water and sanitation, inefficient travel and logistics for employment, education or health care, communications, dysfunctional equipment because of power shortages, and so on.Instead, some misconceptions in policies and practices appear to be broadly accepted as driving factors not only in the government, but also to some extent in the public perception. One is that all foreign direct investment (FDI) is a panacea for our ills and aspirations. The second is the idea that for services such as water, electricity and communications, the public interest is best served by the lowest consumer prices for those who get such services, regardless of sustainability. Issues such as access to services for half the population living outside urban areas, high and consistent quality, sustainability, and minimising environmental impact appear to be less important criteria.

The Panacea of FDI?

There’s no question about the need for foreign investment, but uncontrolled FDI, particularly at our stage of development, is inadvisable. One wonders where these forms of the erstwhile East India Company and/or winner-take-all might lead. And does it matter, as long as consumers enjoy good living, defined as access to material comforts at low prices? To see why it does matter, consider these parodied scenarios, with apologies to Jonathan Swift’s satirical A Modest Proposal3.

A Modest Proposal for 100% FDI — A Parody

Imagine how well all consumers could do, this time without leaving the other half out, if we invite the likes of (indicative list, in alphabetic order) Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (with guarantees of compensation if there are sudden policy reversals, which we are prone to) to use all unsold and unused spectrum to provide connectivity and digital services pronto. They could put in so much investment to get to year five on day one a couple of years or so out, even Reliance Jio might pale.Don’t want Americans? Why not invite the Chinese and Huawei? We might get even better deals in digital services from the world leader in 4G and beyond.Not to mention the attendant benefits from associated companies to keep consumers happy with smartphones, air conditioners, refrigerators, air purifiers, TV sets, cars, two-wheelers, and so on. There will also be power plants, aircraft, and trains, fixing all three sectors with one swipe. Some impediments would have to be removed of course, such as allowing power plants to come up, electricity lines to be laid out, spectrum to be used, land acquired, changes in labour laws, and so on. As for employment, there could be plenty of local assembly, manufacturing and distribution from all of the above, provided we willingly submit to some regimentation in our lives.

Alternative: Fix The Basics & Do It Ourselves
We have to fix the basics to help ourselves and make FDI succeed in our interests. We need priorities in objectives, as everything cannot have the highest priority. Even more difficult is getting experts and practitioners to work out detailed process plans, evaluating alternatives with realistic simulations, and so on. It takes time, energy, understanding and competence, and patience, to get beyond seat-of-pants discussions. Apply all these from a systems perspective, map the distilled ideas to action plans for each set of interrelated processes, and the upshot could be those process plans. We may get end-to-end strategies leading to convergent results to improve our infrastructure, which will enable agricultural and manufacturing production, services, and trade, with resulting jobs, while limiting negative environmental impact.Goals such as increasing jobs and farm income are desirable. To get on a higher long-term growth trajectory beyond a cyclical recovery, in addition to skilling, there need to be initiatives and investments that fit with the circumstances. An excellent example is the Automotive Mission Plan 2006-2016, now in its second 10-year cycle, which resulted in India becoming a preferred automobile assembly location with 32 million jobs in FY16. Similar approaches could be worked out for connectivity, electricity, and the rest, that address the needs/opportunities/markets, the products/services, how delivery will be organised, what the resources are and where they will be sourced from, how they will be organised and when, i.e., the detailed strategy, process plans and flow charts.Also, effective corporate practices such as facilitation for catalysing group decisions could be used if they are not already, to help administrators, experts, and practitioners arrive at sound, practical decisions.4 Another area is simulation and modelling of alternatives and scenarios. A third is overall strategy.

These steps will help improve our ability to achieve our aspirations.

Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com1. ‘India’s road to digital highway’, Nivedita Mookerji, Business Standard: http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/india-s-road-to-digital-highway-118012401544_1.html
2. ‘India as a ‘business partner’, Kanika Datta, Business Standard: http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/india-as-a-business-partner-118012401599_1.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal;https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html4.https://www.centreforfacilitation.co.uk/files/public/What%20is%20process%20facilitation.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-shyam-ponappa-february-1-2018-matching-realities-and-aspirations

Market Structure in the Telecom Industry

snehashish — 2013-03-15T07:17:12Z

In this unit Snehashish examines the market structure of telecom industry — which include the teledensity, wireless, wireline, and internet services.

Teledensity

Teledensity means number of telephones per hundred people. The current teledensity in India is 78.10. However, there is a large disparity between urban teledensity and rural teledensity. The urban teledensity stands at 169.37 whereas rural teledensity is 38.53 only. The reason for the slow growth in teledensity in the rural areas is that it is less attractive for the telecom service providers to invest. Furthermore, providing service in the remote and rural areas also requires massive investment.


Teledensity in India (Rural, Urban and Cumulative) 2007 – December, 2011
Source: Department of Telecommunication, Annual Report 2011-2012

Public and Private Share in the Market

Annual Growth Rate in the Telecom Industry (1981 to December, 2011)


CAGR: Compounded Annual Growth Rate Source: TRAI, Telecom Sector in India: A Decadal Profile

After the Government of India gave up its monopoly in the telecom sector in 1992 the growth of the telecom industry was slow due to lack of roust policy. However, with the change in the policy and licensing regime in the 1999, it is evident from the above graph that the telecom industry recorded a phenomenal growth. There was 35 per cent growth in the compounded annual growth rate.

Wireless

Market share in the wireless subscription as on February, 2012

	The pie chart clearly shows that currently the private sector dominates the cellular market. However, this was not the case in the beginning. The changes in the market structure were due to the changes in telecom policy in 1999. The growth rate of number of wireless subscribers from 1996-2011 in the graph below, clearly depicts the growth in wireless subscribers after the change in policy in 1999. Currently, the three main players in the mobile services sector are Vodafone, Reliance and Bharti.

Wireline

Market share in the wireline subscription as on December, 2011

In the basic telecom services or wireline services the incumbent — Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has the majority share in the market. This is due to the expanse of the infrastructure available to the incumbent, and its ability to provide basic telecom services in the rural and remote areas. The private wireline service providers do not have the capital to invest in building such infrastructure and there is no profit in such capital investment as well. Therefore, the private players mainly concentrate in urban areas where they can earn more revenue.

Internet Services

Market share of ISPs as on December, 2011


Source: TRAI, Telecom Sector in India: A Decadal Profile

The broadband services came into forefront after the implementation of the Broadband Policy, 2004. It laid down that the minimum speed for a broadband connection has to be 256 kilo bits per second. This has been revised to 512 kilo bits per second under the National Telecom Policy, 2012. In India, 59.6 per cent internet subscription is broadband subscription.

Currently, the main technology used for broadband access is digital subscriber line (DSL). About 85.1 per cent of the broadband subscriptions are via DSL technology. While the other technologies such as fibre, leased line, wireless, ethernet, cable modem covers only 14.9 per cent of the market. The main internet service provider (ISP) in the market is BSNL which has a share of 54.97 per cent.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/market-structure-in-telecom-industry

March 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T12:47:11Z

Welcome to March 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS submitted comments on the draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules for the consideration of the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Government of India. Anubha Sinha in a blog post has identified the various kinds of IP in an app and explained the protections available under Indian IPR law. CIS-A2K is conducting a Wiki internship project for students of New Law College, Pune under the guidance of Prof.Dr.Mukund Sarda, Dean and Principal of New Law College. In an Op-ed published in the Hindu, Sunil Abraham has stated that though biometrics may be appropriate for targeted surveillance by the state, it is wholly inappropriate for everyday transactions between state and law abiding citizens. CIS has published a survey that draws upon a range of literature including news articles, academic articles, and presentations and seeks to disaggregate the potential benefits and harms of big data, organising them into several broad categories that reflect the existing scholarly literature. CIS submitted comments on the Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules, 2017. The comments were in response to the Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules 2017. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a consultation paper which called for developing a framework for security of digital wallets operating in the country. Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster have co-authored a paper that presents exploratory research into “data-intensive development” that seeks to inductively identify issues and conceptual frameworks of relevance to big data in developing countries.

CIS in the news:

The 12-digit conundrum (Richa Mishra; Hindu Businessline; March 13, 2017)
EVMs: How transparent is the Indian election process? (Smriti Sharma Vasudeva; The Statesman; March 14, 2017).
Nasscom chief saying full data protection isn’t possible should wake us from our digital slumber (First Post; March 16, 2017).
Privacy concerns multiply for Aadhaar, India’s national biometric identity registry (One World Identity; March 17, 2017).
No ID, no benefits: thousands could lose lifeline under India’s biometric scheme (Guardian; March 21, 2017).
Why We Should All Worry About The Mandatory Imposition Of Aadhaar (Rimin Dutt and Ivan Mehta; Huffington Post; March 24, 2017).
India’s biometric ID scans make sci-fi a reality (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; March 27, 2017).
क्‍या आधार पर जल्दबाज़ी में है सरकार? (NDTV; March 27, 2017).
Get an Aadhaar card if you don't have one (Priya Nair and Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; March 27, 2017).
The Aadhaar of all things (Shriya Mohan; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Digital native: Lie Me a River (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; March 19, 2017).
It’s the technology, stupid (Sunil Abraham; Hindu Businessline; March 31, 2017).
How Aadhaar compromises privacy? And how to fix it? (Sunil Abraham; Hindu; March 31, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

Comments on the draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules (Nirmita Narasimhan; March 29, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for 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.

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entry

Intellectual Property Rights and Mobile Apps (Anubha Sinha; March 6, 2017).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

"Marathi Bhasha Gaurav Din" celebrations in Maharashtra (Manasa Rao; March 7, 2017).
Women’s History Month: Sambad collaborates with Odia Wikipedia for a Two Day Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik; March 16, 2017).
Wikisource:Internship Project at New Law College, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; March 28, 2017).

Events Organized

Women's Day Edit-a-thon (Co-organized by Sterlite Tech Foundation, Jnana Prabhodhini, and CIS-A2K; Pune; March 10, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was one of the trainers.
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Environment Management (Organized by CSIBER College and CIS-A2K; Kolhapur; March 30, 2017). Subodh Kulkarni was a trainer.

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Participation in Events

National Consultation on OER for Higher Education (Organized by Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia; New Delhi; March 3, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
Open Development Book - Authors' Workshop (Organized by International Development Research Centre and Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching; University of Cape Town, South Africa; March 11 - 12, 2017). The workshop gathered the contributers to an upcoming book by IDRC on open development. Elonnai Hickok, Gus Hosein from Privacy International and Sumandro Chattapadhyay are writing a chapter for this book.
Indo - French Perspectives on Digital Studies (Organized by Digital Studies Group; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; March 15, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

Blog Entries

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on Information Technology (Security of Prepaid Payment Instruments) Rules, 2017 (Udbhav Tiwari, Pranesh Prakash, Abhay Rana, Amber Sinha and Sunil Abraham; March 23, 2017).

Participation in Events

WISER Lecture : Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Deregulation by Code (Organized by the University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg; March 8, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay gave a talk.
Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse (Organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana; March 16 - 17, 2017). Japreet Grewal was a speaker.
State of Digital Rights in India (Organized by Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi and the Internet Freedom Foundation, in association with Access Now; India International Centre, New Delhi; March 24, 2017). Japreet Grewal and Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in panel discussions.
Hangout on Technology and Jobs (Organized by Google; March 24, 2017). Vanya Rakesh was a speaker.

Blog Entry

Analysis of Key Provisions of the Aadhaar Act Regulations (Amber Sinha and edited by Elonnai Hickok; March 31, 2017).

►Cyber Security

Upcoming Event

Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations (CIS; New Delhi; April 7, 2017). IPS officer Dr. Madan M. Oberoi will give a talk.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Benefits, Harms, Rights and Regulation: A Survey of Literature on Big Data (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh, Vidushi Marda and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; edited by Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Leilah Elmokadem; March 23, 2017).

Participation in Event

The Fintech Disruption - Innovation, Regulation, and Transformation (Organized by Carnegie India; March 28, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay attended the event.

►Freedom of Expression

Event Organized

Essentials of building internet tools for inclusion (Valencia, Spain; March 6, 2017). A talk jointly proposed by Chinmayi SK and Rohini Lakshané was selected for the Internet Freedom Festival.

Participation in Events

From Virtual to Reliable: Exploring Freedom and Facts in the World of WWW (World Wide Web) (Organized by Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands and Adaan Foundation; March 21, 2017). Saikat Datta and Amber Sinha were panelists.
Internet Freedom Festival 2017 (Organized by IFF; Valencia, Spain; March 6 - 10, 2017). Vidushi Marda participated in the event. Vidushi also attended these sessions: Data Protection Law and its Different Manifestations; Using the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index for Advocacy & Research; The identity we can't change: a new wave of biometric policies around the world and Enabling free speech online by legal defence: the need for skilled lawyers to secure the free flow of information online: Vidushi channeled a discussion about Shreya Singhal v. Union of India as an important case study in understanding how legal defence has been used to secure rights online.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to 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

Organisational Hurdles in Telecom (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 1, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; March 2, 2017)

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Research Paper

Exploring Big Data for Development: An Electricity Sector Case Study from India (Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster; Global Development Institute, University of Manchester; March 29, 2017).

Blog Entry

Evaluating Safety Buttons on Mobile Devices: Preview (Rohini Lakshané and Chinmayi S.K.; March 27, 2017).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and 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, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2017-newsletter

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:

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 Lakshadweep, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh:

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

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, 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

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.

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

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” 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

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

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

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/march-2013-bulletin

March 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T07:33:44Z

In this month we announced the new clusters from Researchers at Work: Locating the Mobile, Interface Intimacies and Habits of Living.

Research

New series from RAW, new Clusters now Online!

From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. We hope to build knowledge networks and production of new knowledge around questions of body, governance and cultural production in the digital times that we live in. Spearheaded by experts in the field of science, technology, society and culture the clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Locating the Mobile: An Ethnographic Investigation into Locative Media in Melbourne, Bangalore and Shanghai
Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Melbourne), Genevieve Bell (Intel, Shanghai)
As yet we know little about the impact locative media is having, and will have upon people’s livelihoods and identity, or on public policy around privacy, identity, security and cultural production. Discourse in the field has opened up questions of art, innovation and experimentation. But there is a dearth of nuanced research on locative media that provides in-depth, contextual accounts of its socio-cultural and political dimensions. Not much work has been conducted into locative media as it migrates from art to the ‘messy’ area of everyday. The project seeks to address this knowledge gap by studying locative media in Bangalore, Melbourne and Shanghai.

Interface Intimacies
Audrey Yue (Melbourne University) and Namita Malhotra (ALF)
Users of technologies often express their engagement with technologies in affective terms. The interfaces that we see all around us constantly deflect our attention, emotions and desires on to different surfaces, creating flattened universes with the promises of deep immersion. Digging deep into interfaces, to examine peoples’ relationships with the digital interfaces around them the research cluster examines: What are the affective relationships that people have with their interfaces? What goes into anthropomorphising an interface? What are the larger politics of labour, performance and ownership that surround interface design? What are the ways in which people simulate presence and connections through their interfaces? How is the human presumed in computer-human interface design? What aesthetic and political moves are we witnessing with the rise of interface mediated publics? What and who is made opaque when interfaces become transparent? When interfaces get distributed, what are the possibilities and potential for art, theory and practice to move into new forms of politics?

Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects
Wendy Chun (Professor, Brown University), Kelly Dobson, (Chair, Digital + Media, RISD, Providence), Matthew Fuller, David Gee (Reader in Digital Media, Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London) and Eivind Rossaak, (Associate Professor, Department of Research, National Library of Norway, Oslo).
This 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 will be an important locus. Habits are crucial to understanding networks not simply as broad organizational structures but also as structures created through constant actions that are both voluntary and involuntary.

Digital Natives

Video Contest

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? A global video contest finds the answer!
CIS and Hivos are excited to announce the top five videos. The finalists will each win EUR 500. According to Nishant Shah, the 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘today I will change the world’. Yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change.

Public Lectures

D:Coding Digital Natives (Nishant Shah, University of California, Los Angeles, March 9, 2012)
"In the last three years of revolutions we have also now witnessed this extraordinary thing where lot of promises were made of different kinds of revolution but which never materialised in terms of what they intended to. Citizen action happens but it doesn’t lead into anything concrete." The lecture is featured in YouTube.

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Annenberg School of Communication, University of South California, March 8, 2012): Nishant Shah made a presentation on 'Questioning the Radical Potential for Citizen Action'.
5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Digital Media and Learning Conference on Beyond Education Technologies, Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, March 1, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk.
Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (UC Santa Cruz, Monday, March 5, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a lecture. The lecture focused more on the India against Corruption case-study rather than the theoretical framework to understanding revolutions.

Column in Indian Express

Pinning the Badge
Nishant Shah, March 18, 2012
In a world of competition, badging provides a holistic way of grading and learning, where individual talents are realized and the knowledge of the group is used. A peer-2-peer system of badging, which enables learners to be critically aware not only of their own interaction with knowledge but also recognises the ways in which larger communities of knowledge — including the peers and teachers — opens up an extraordinary way of thinking about education.

Book Review...A Few Excerpts

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar
‘Engineering a cyber twin’ is an attempt to inventory the ontological features of an avatar... Ansher’s essay… eschews a simplistic binary of offline/online, preferring to focus on the domain of interaction between the two ‘personae’ of the same self.
Pramod K. Nayar reviews Nilofar Shamim Ansher’s essay ‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ from Digital Alternatives with a Cause? Book One: To Be.

Accessibility

Analysis

Analysis of Comments by WBU & IPA
Rahul Cherian provides an analysis of the comments by the World Blind Union and the International Publishers Association after the 23rd session of the Standing Committee of Copyright and Related Rights.

Event Organised

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 to 15, 2012): At the invitation of the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India, International Telecommunication Union organized a two-day Tutorial on Audio Visual Media Accessibility. The Tutorial was preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility on March 13, 2012. Sunil Abraham participated in the event and was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1, March 14, 2012.

Access to Knowledge

Op-ed in Economic Times

Patented Games, Sunil Abraham, March 8, 2012
Some prefer Steve Jobs, patron saint of perfection, others prefer Nicholas Negroponte, messiah of the masses. While Mr. Jobs may be guilty of contributing to the digital divide, Mr. Negroponte may have contributed to bridging it with his innovation: the One Laptop per Child, also known as the $100 laptop or XO.

Events Participated

Consumers International Global Meeting 2012 (Kuala Lumpur, March 8 and 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in the global meeting organised by Consumers International and spoke on UN Consumer Guidelines. Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter and Guilherme Varella were the other speakers in the session.
Expert Meeting on Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property Rights (London, November 18, 2011): The meeting was organized by ARTICLE 19. Nineteen international scholars, experts and human rights activists met to explore the antagonistic relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) and the rights to freedom of expression and information. Pranesh Prakash was one of the participants.

Openness

Events Organised

Open DataCamp — 2012 (Google, Old Madras Road, Bangalore, March 24, 2012): This was a one-day unconference for people working with data from various sectors to come together and share their projects and ideas. It was organised by the DataMeet group. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Google, India Water Portal, Gramener, Microsoft Research, Akshara Foundation, DataMeet, HasGeek and CIS were the sponsors.
Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners): (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). The workshop drew participants such as interaction designers, artists and those enthusiastic to get started with creative projects but didn’t have prior experience with electronics. About 20 people participated in the workshop.

Events Participated

Water Data Consultation (Evoma Hotel, Bangalore, March 23, 2012). Pranesh Prakash spoke on Policy Issues and Developments around Open Data. The event was organized by Arghyam.

Internet Governance

Column in FirstPost

Why your Facebook Stalker is Not the Real Problem, Nishant Shah, March 20, 2012:We live in networked conditions. This is a statement that can now be taken at face-value, and immediately explains our highly connected, inter-meshed environments…We need to start looking at larger invasive policies exercises by the different invisible actors like the ISP, ICT ministries, corporate policies, design choices and architecture of interception that sustain the networks we so gladly embrace.

Blog Entries

Statutory Motion against Intermediary Guidelines Rules, Pranesh Prakash:A motion to annul the Intermediary Guidelines Rules was moved on March 23, 2012, by Shri P. Rajeeve, CPI (M) MP in the Rajya Sabha from Thrissur, Kerala. We are very glad that Shri Rajeeve has moved this motion, and we hope that it gets adopted in the Lok Sabha as well, and that the Rules get defeated, notes Pranesh Prakash.

Events Organised

India Explores the Balance Points between Freedom of Expression, Privacy, National Security and Law Enforcement (New Delhi, March 5, 2012). Sunil Abraham participated in this closed-door meeting jointly organised with the Global Network Initiative. Issues relating to freedom of expression and privacy were discussed in the meeting.
Climate Change and Controversy Mapping (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, March 19 to 21, 2012). The Devechia Centre for Climate Change, the Indian Institute of Science and CIS organized a three-day workshop with Professor Bruno Latour. Doctorate students doing empirical work in various types of ecological crisis participated in the event and experimented with some of the digital tools and methods developed within the "mapping controversies" consortium.
GeekUp with Erica Hagen (CIS, Bangalore, March 1, 2012). HasGeek organized a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative. Erica gave a lecture on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation.
Cartonama Workshop (CIS, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2012). HasGeek organized a hands-on training for managing and building location based services. Twenty-two participants attended the workshop.
Global Censorship Conference

Events Participated

The Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School is holding a conference on global censorship from March 30 to April 1, 2012, at Yale Law School. The programme is sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and Thomson Reuters. Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow who worked at CIS office in Bangalore on freedom of expression and internet-related policy issues is participating in the event as a speaker in the panel on Case Studies of Censorship.

What is Stewardship in Cyberspace? (Innis Townhall, University of Toronto, Canada, March 18 and 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session “Plenary Panel and Discussions” at the second annual Cyber Dialogue.
Secure IT 2012 — Securing Citizens through Technology (Claridges, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): The event was co-organised by DST and NSDI, Govt. of India in partnership with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. Sunil Abraham was a panelist. The video is now online.
International Conference on Mobile Law (ASSOCHAM House, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): Pranesh Prakash spoke in the panel on Mobiles - Privacy and Social Media on March 1, 2012.
Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes

Media Coverage

Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes
"The state government's use of unsolicited SMS a “clear abuse of the powers afforded by elected office... elected representatives would be justified in such measures, and in utilising public funds, in the event of a disaster, or when public order, public health or national security are compromised."
Sunil Abraham, The Statesman, March 25, 2012.

Open access to government data on the cards
"Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, said, “None of the criticisms ... CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed."
Pranesh Prakash, The Hindu, March 25, 2012.

Is your facebook page your mini resume?
"Background checks are common as some companies deal with sensitive information. So it’s not illegal, but intrusive. I think some power relationships can be abused if they cross the social networking barrier — like a boss-employee and teacher-student relationship."
Sunil Abraham, IBN Live, March 26, 2012.

Click, Play, Watch
"Earlier, creative artistes depended on intermediaries like studios, TV channels and theatres to screen their work and connect with viewers. Now, they are looking at the online medium to connect with the audience directly."
Sunil Abraham, MidDay, March 18, 2012.

Save Your Voice — A movement against Web censorship
"Private sector does not protect the freedom of expression."
Daily News & Analysis, March 13, 2012.

India’s Big Bet on Identity
"There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you’re collecting personal data from more than a billion people. “You can’t change your biometrics,”… so if they become compromised, it’s a difficult problem to fix."
Ieeespectrum. March 2012 edition.

Telecom

Columns in Business Standard

The 2G Supreme Court Judgment
Shyam Ponappa, March 1 and March 4, 2012
The Business Standard published Shyam Ponappa's two-part article deconstructing the assumptions in the Supreme Court's 2G judgment, and suggesting possible ways forward. The first one was published on March 1, 2012, and the second on March 4, 2012.

Blog Entry

Convergence India 2012
Yelena Gyulkhandanyan
Yelena attended an event organised by the Exhibitions India Group from March 21 to 23, 2012. She shares her experiences.

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 International Telecommunications Union, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. 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, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

Follow us Elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter

Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/march-2012-bulletin

March 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:59:46Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects are online for peer review.

New Blog Entry by Zainab Bawa in Transparency and Politics

A History of Transparency, Politics and Information Technologies in India

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Column on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following was published recently:

Watson knows the Question [Indian Express, March 6, 2011]

Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina

Maesey Angelina works as a programme officer at Hivos, Jakarta on gender, women and development while exploring research initiatives on Digital Natives in Indonesia. She spent one month in CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise project under the Digital Natives with a Cause framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:

Blog Entries by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entries:

Accessibility

Featured Research

Accessible Mobile Handsets in India: An Overview

Blog Entry

Note on the Authorities under the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (9th February 2011)

Intellectual Property

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Featured Research

Pirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers [ Written by Prashant Iyengar and originally published in the Economic & Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, Vol XLVI No 9]

Submission

Comments to the Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty (March 2011)

Openness

Workshops organised

Design!publiC [Taj Vivanta, New Delhi, March 18, 2011]
Open Access to Scientific Information Indian International Centre [New Delhi, March 16, 2011]

Internet Governance

Submissions

Submission

Privacy and Governmental Database

Workshops organized

Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Ahmedabad [Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]
Public Talk by Dr. Ian Brown on Privacy, Trust and Biometrics [Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore, March 21, 2011]
Electronication: Ragas and the Future [Jaaga, Bangalore, March 6, 2011]
Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]
Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]

Telecom

Featured Research

India's untapped potential: Are a billion people losing out because of spectrum?

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Big-Bang Budgets? [published in the Business Standard on March 3, 2011]

Forthcoming Events

CIS is organising some conferences/workshops in the month of March/April:

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: A New Imperative for State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities[Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad]
Shadow Search Project (SSP) in CIS [CIS, Bangalore]
Facebook Resistance Workshop [CIS, Bangalore]

News & Media Coverage

Networking its way to better governance (Hindu, March 28, 2011]
‘Learn from failed UK NIR project’ (Deccan Chronicle, March 22, 2011]
Design!publiC - News from Livemint (Livemint, March 18, 2011)
Muzzling the Internet (Outlook, March 17, 2011)
Battle for the Internet (Down to Earth, Issue: March 15, 2011)
Cause and effect Facebook-style (Hindustan Times, March 13, 2011)
Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire (Sunday Guardian, March 13, 2011)
Lives suspended in the Web (Indian Express, March 11, 2011)
Draft IT guidelines may gag internet freedom (Times of India, March 11, 2011)
Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers sparks outcry (Times of India, March 10, 2011)
New Indian Rules May Make Online Censorship Easier (Yahoo News, March 7, 2011)
Anti-Social Network (Mail Today, February 27, 2011)

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/march%20-2011-bulletin

March 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T05:02:42Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! We bring you updates of our research, news, and events for the month of March 2010 in this bulletin.

News Updates

An Open Answer to Office
OpenOffice with its new features is giving Microsoft Word tough competition, says Deepa Kurup in this article published in The Hindu.
http://cis-india.org/news/open-office

Upcoming Events

CPOV: Wikipedia Research Initiative
The second WikiWars conference will be held in Amsterdam from 26 to 27 March 2010
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov

CI Global Meeting on A2K
CIS is a co-sponsor of the Consumers International Meeting on A2K to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on April 21 and 22, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/events/ci-global-meeting-a2k

Research

India Game Developer Summit Bangalore 2010
The India Game Developer Conference held at Nimhans Convention Centre on the 27th of February, 2010 was attended by Arun Menon who is working on The Gaming and Gold Project at The Centre for Internet and Society. The Developer forum brought together game developers from different sectors of the Game Production Cycle, with hardware manufacturers like Nvidia demonstrating their latest 3d technology and Software developers like Crytek and Adobe demonstrating the latest in developer tools for creating and editing games on multiple platforms.
http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/gaming/india-game-developer-summit-in-bangalore-2010

10 Legendary Obscene Beasts
Nishant Shah analyses a peculiar event of vandalism which has now become the core of free speech and anti-censorship debates in mainland China. Looking at the structure of user generated knowledge websites and the specific event on the Chinese language encyclopaedia, 'Baidu Baike', he shows how, in cities where spaces of political spectacle and public protest are quickly diminishing, the Internet has become a tool for producing new public spaces of demonstration and protest.
http://cis-india.org/research/grants/ISShanghai/itcity4

WikiWars - A report
In this blog, Nishant Shah analyses about the WikiWars, the first of the three events held in Bangalore on January 12 and 13.
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/wwrep

Telecom

Understanding Spectrum
What is spectrum and how do government and commercial decisions on this scientific phenomenon affect public facilities and costs? Shyam Ponappa examines this in his latest blog published in the Business Standard on March 4, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/understanding-spectrum

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2010-bulletin

Live [Closed]: TRAI Open House Discussion on OTT Regulation - Delhi

Admin — 2019-05-28T02:04:17Z

TRAI organized an open house discussion on “Regulatory Framework for OTT Services” in Delhi on May 20, 2019. Anubha Sinha attended the event.

The objective of the consultation was to look into services that they are considering as being possibly ‘similar’ to those provided by telecom service providers. The consultation paper sought to compare licensing norms and regulations applicable to TSPs and OTTs, on the grounds that the certain services provided by them are substitutable with one another. Our notes from the TRAI Open House in Bangalore on April 24th are here.

For more see Medianama site

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/live-closed-trai-open-house-discussion-on-ott-regulation-delhi

Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview

snehashish — 2013-03-15T07:13:56Z

In this unit, Snehashish Ghosh tells us about licence, and lists out the major changes in the telecom licensing schemes since 1991.

Before analyzing the telecom licensing framework in India, it is imperative that one must examine what is a liceince. Licence issued by the government is an authority, given to a person upon certain conditions to do something which would have been illegal or wrongful otherwise. For example, a driver’s licence issued by the government, gives the authority to a person to drive a motor vehicle. There are three main types of licence fee which the government charges: (i) initial licence fee, which generally is non-refundable, (ii) annual licence fee, and (iii) additional fee for allocation of spectrum.

Licensing framework has been an integral part of India’s telecommunication law. Under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, section 4 gives power to the government to grant licence to any person to establish, maintain or use a telegraph. However, in the telecom sector, the government had complete monopoly until the early 1990s. Since 1992, the government has allowed licensing in the telecom sector. The major changes in the telecom licensing schemes are listed below:

1991: The government allowed private telecom companies to manufacture telecom switches for telephone exchange.

1992: The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) invited bids for licences for cellular service across the four metros. The DoT offered two licences per metro city. The process involved two stages. First stage, technical evaluation of the bidder and the second stage involved financial evaluation of the bidder.

The rejected bidders challenged the selection process on the grounds that it was unclear and arbitrary.[1]The Supreme Court decided that it would not interfere into the government decision making function until and unless they are patently arbitrary and unfair.

The litigation delayed the launch of the cellular mobile services by three years. Finally the first mobile services were launched in Calcutta in the year 1995. It also brought to the fore-front the lack of policy with respect to licensing and regulatory framework for telecommunication.

Licence Fee and Tariff: A minimum licence fee was specified for each metro. The annual licence fee was highest in Bombay. It was set at Rs. 30 million, which was increased to Rs. 240 million by the seventh year, similarly licence fee for Delhi, Calcutta and Madras were set at Rs. 20 million, Rs. 15 million and Rs. 10 million, respectively. However, by the seventh year the licence fee for the three metros were 160 million, 120 million and 80 million, respectively.

The licence fee was revised and the DoT asked the operators to pay Rs. 5000 per subscriber as annual licence. The licence fee was again revised and service operators had to pay Rs. 6,023 per subscriber.

The DoT also placed caps on the rental and tariffs. The service providers could charge a maximum Rs. 156 only as rental. The call tariff was set at a standard rate of Rs. 8.40; off peak was set at half the standard rate and peak rate was double the standard rate. DoT placed a cap on security deposit which had to be paid by the subscriber; it was restricted to Rs. 3000.

The change in the annual licence fee in the four metro cities is illustrated in the table below:

Metros	Bombay	Delhi	Calcutta	Madras
Licensees	BPL Telecom Maxtouch	Bharti Cellular Sterling	Usha Martin Modi Telstra	Skycell RPG Cellular
Annual Licence Fee (Rs million)
Year 1	30	20	15	10
Year 2	60	30	30	20
Year 3	120	80	60	40
Year 4-6*	180	120	90	60
Year 7*	240	160	120	80

*The service operator has to pay either the annual licence fee or Rs. 5000 per subscriber, whichever was higher.

[Source: TRAI, (1999c: 24-25) as cited in Ashok V. Desai, Indian Telecommunication Industry: History, Analysis and Diagnosis, Sage Publication 2006, pp. 77].

May, 1993: The DoT commissioned ICICI to study and prepare a report on the possibility of private participation in the telecommunication sector.

1994: The DoT took a step back, after falling into controversy, in its previous attempt to allow licensing in the telecom sector. However, the Finance Ministry was in the favour of private participation in the telecom sector and it argued that the incumbents need assistance from the private telecom service providers for increasing the tele-density in the country. In order to study the issue, a committee was set up under ICICI. The report finally culminated into the National Telecom Policy, 1994.

The National Telecom Policy, 1994 laid down the following criteria for the entry of private operators:

Track record of the company
Compatibility of the technology
Usefulness of technology being offered for future development
Protection of national security interests
Ability to give best service to the customer at the most competitive cost
Attractiveness of the commercial terms to the Department of Telecommunication[2]

1995: DoT allowed bidding for cellular licences and wireline licences. Spectrum was bundled with the telecom service provider licence. For the implementation of the licensing scheme, the country was divided into 21 circles (excluding four metros) and it was categorized in to circles namely A, B and C on the basis of the potential of the circle to generate revenue. DoT awarded two licences in each circle; one to the state operator and the other to the private operator. The potential service providers in order to be eligible for bidding for licences had to partner up with a foreign company. The foreign shareholder was allowed to hold equity share

Metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai

Cirlce A: Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra

Circle B: Haryana, Punjab, Kerala, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh (West), Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh (East)

Circle C: Bihar, Northeast, Assam, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir

Eligibility for the private companies to bid for the licence: (i) financial net worth of the company making the bid and (ii) experience of the company in providing telecom services. The minimum net worth to qualify for bidding was set by DoT. A service provider in order to be eligible for bidding should have a minimum paid up capital of Rs. 1 billion and net worth of Rs. 10 billion. The auction of the licences was carried out through a first price sealed bid auction.[3] Two licences were awarded in each circle in order to avoid monopoly of service provider in a circle.

Licence fee and Tariff: A total of 34 licences were issued. The term of the licence was fixed at ten years which was revised to 15 years. The service providers had to pay an annual licence fee which was agreed upon during the auction of the licence. The annual licence fee was based on the projection of revenue generation. There was no allocation spectrum but the government levied charges for spectrum usage as well. The tariffs were same as for the metro licences.

Wire line Licences: DoT also issued six licences for basic telephone services.

Financial Breakdown: After the issue of cellular licences in 1995, six of the service providers were in default due to non-payment of licence fee by the early 1997. By the year 1998 the number of defaulters increased to eight.

The Bureau of Industry Cost and Prices (BICP) was requested to look into the matter. The BICP after investigation reported that 13 operators were running in loss. According to the BICP report, the telecom service providers were running in loss because of the high licence fee, interconnection charges and spectrum usage charges imposed by the DoT. One of the recommendations of the BICP was that the rental should be increased from Rs. 156 to Rs. 600. This would decrease the demand for mobile phones but allow service providers to sustain their business.

ICICI conducted a study, as well. The study revealed that 17 per cent of the consumers had not used their cell phone at all and 37 per cent of the subscriber had bills below Rs. 500 a month. This clearly showed that projection of revenue by the DoT was faulty.

Reasons for the Financial Breakdown (TRAI Report, 1999)

Later, in 1999 the TRAI studied the cellular operators. The study showed that main reasons for the financial failure of the telecom service provider were:

Heavy capital investment for setting up infrastructure, which was underutilized
Number of subscriber lower than projected
The average revenue per user (ARPU) was lower than the costs incurred by the service provider. The ARPU in circles A, B and C were Rs. 1100, Rs. 800 and Rs. 600 respectively.
Significant amount of the finances of the service provider were used to pay licence fees.
Operational charges also took a toll on the service providers.

None of the studies took into consideration that the industry was oligopolistic in nature and the incumbents flooded the market with basic telephone connections.[4] The obvious conclusion was that the revenue generated by the cellular operators was not able to cover their costs.

The financial failure of the telecom operator under the 1994 policy led to the implementation of New Telecom Policy, 1999.

1998: Internet services were rolled out in 1995 by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). In November, 1998, the government opened it up to the private sectors.

1999: The New Telecom Policy, 1999 allowed the migration of the licensees from a Fixed Licence Fee Regime to a Revenue Arrangement Scheme (w.e.f. 1/08/1999). Under the new scheme a licence fees was collected as proportional tax on the service provider’s revenue. Previously, there were two operators in each circle and the 1999 Policy allowed the government as the third operator in the circle.

The 1999 Policy issued licences for the following services:

Cellular Mobile Service Providers (CMSPs);
Fixed Service Providers (FSPs) and Cable Service Providers, collectively referred as ‘Access Providers’;
Radio Paging Service Providers;
Public Mobile Radio Trunking Service Providers;
National Long Distance Operators;
International Long Distance Operators;
Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) Service Providers;
V-SAT based Service Providers

Licence and Tariff: Licence holders under the 1994 policy migrated to the new licensing regime, under the New Telecom Policy, 1999. In order to shift from the fixed licence fee regime to revenue arrangement scheme the service providers had to pay previous arrears in licence fee on a pro-rata basis till July 31, 1999. Under the new adjusted gross revenue, the service providers had to pay 15 per cent of their adjusted gross revenue.[5] The circle operators also had to pay spectrum usage charge.

TRAI regulated the tariff under the New Telecom Policy, 1999. It brought down the call tariff from the peak rate of 16.80 to Rs. 6 per minute with a pulse of 20 seconds. This allowed the consumers to make calls for a minimum of Rs. 2.00. TRAI also put a cap of Rs. 600 on the rental charges. After notification of tariffs in the year 1999, TRAI examined the accounts of the service providers and found out that under the 1999 licensing regime there was healthy competition and the service providers were providing mobiles services at price, below the TRAI ceilings.

Tariffs	DoT ceiling on tariffs under National Telecom Policy, 1994 (in rupees)	TRAI ceilings on tariffs under the New Telecom Policy, 1999 (in rupees)	Industry rates under the New Telecom Policy (in rupees) – average rates
Call Rates (peak-time)	16.80 per minute	6.00 per minute	2.03 per minutes
Rental	156	600	195
Security	3000	-NA-	-NA-

2000: The government issued licence for national long distance telephony (NLDO). There was no restriction on the number of operators to whom the licence was granted. The licence was issued for a period of 20 years on a non-exclusive basis and could be extended upto a period of 10 years once. The entry fee for NLDO licence is Rs. 2.5 crore.[6] There are 32 companies other than BSNL, the incumbent, which have been granted licence for national long distance services. This has facilitated healthy competition in the market.

2001: Licence for basic telephone services using wireless in local loop (WLL). This was the first time that the first-come-first-serve scheme was implemented for issuing licences.

2001: A bid for cellular licence for a fourth operator was introduced in January 2001. The auction was carried out in three stages. The fourth licensee had to pay a sum of 17 per cent of the revenue in addition to the entry fees.

2002: DoT issued licence to private operators for International Long Distance Telephony (ILD) services. The entry fee for ILD licence is 2.5 crores.[7] The licence was valid for a term of 30 years. Currently the annual licence fee on ILD service is 7 per cent on the adjusted gross revenue. However, DoT has revised it to a uniform rate of 8 per cent on the adjusted gross revenue from the year 2013-2014.[8]

2003: Introduction of calling party pays (CPP). Under CPP, no charges can be levied on receiving a call in the home circle.

2003: Unified Access Service Licensing (UASL) regime was introduced by DoT on the recommendation of the TRAI. The UASL “permitted an access service provider to offer both fixed and/or mobile services under the same licence, using any technology.”[9]

The country was divided into 23 service areas, 19 telecom circles and 4 metro circles for the purpose of implementing unified access services (UAS).

TRAI announced the guidelines for migration to the UASL regime on November 11, 2003.[10] An operator under the UASL was allowed to provide for free within its own area of operation, service which cover collection, carriage, transmission and delivery of voice and/or non-voice messages over licensee’s network by deploying circuit and/or packet switched equipment.

Licence Fees: The licence fee for the service operator was two-fold. Fee was charged for migration from Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (CMTS) licence to UASL. This fee was equal to the amount paid by the fourth licensee introduced in the market in the year 2001. Apart from the migration fee, an annual licence fee is also levied according to the circle in which the service provider is operating. The annual licence fee is 10 per cent, 8 per cent and 6 per cent on the adjusted gross revenue in the circles A, B and C respectively.

2007: DoT allowed issuing of licences for operating on dual technologies that is CDMA and GSM. DoT also allowed single licence to Internet Service Providers (ISP) but restriction was put in VoIP.

2011: The government introduced mobile number portability (MNP) which injected further competition in the telecom market. Under the MNP, a cellular subscriber can avail services of another service provider while keeping the same mobile number. Previously, change of mobile number used to be the biggest deterrent to change service provider, this was done away with the MNP scheme.

2012: National Telecom Policy, 2012 introduced Unified Licensing Regime. Under the regime, service operators can provide converged services. The spectrum has been delinked from the licence.

[1]. Tata Cellular v. Union of India, 1994 SCC (6) 651.
[2]. Para 9, National Telecom Policy, 1994 available at http://bit.ly/N4dlEk
[3]. In first price sealed bid auction, the bids are kept secret; the bids are then compared and the highest bidder wins and pays a sum equal to the bid amount.
[4]. Ashok V. Desai, India’s Telecommunication Industry: History, Analysis, Diagnosis, Sage Publication, 2006, pp. 83-84.
[5]. A licensee's adjusted gross revenue usually refers to the total amount of its gross revenue (including all charges, sees, sale proceeds, and miscellaneous revenue) minus interconnection and roaming charges paid to other licensees and service taxes paid to rhe government. See Model Cellular License, Schedule-II, at paragraph 20.1.
[6]. Department of Telecommunication, Annual Report 2011-12 pp. 18
[7]. Id. At pp. 19.
[8]. Notification no. 10-54/2010-CS-11 dated 28^th June, 2012 available at http://bit.ly/Q5nI5O
[9]. Recommendations on Spectrum Management and Licensing Frampework, TRAI, 11th May, 2010.
[10].Unified Access Services available at http://bit.ly/lOQZW7

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/licensing-framework-for-telecom

Learning from Fukushima

praskrishna — 2011-08-30T12:47:25Z

Take remedial steps and demystify the unreasoning dread of nuclear power, says Shyam Ponappa in his latest column published by the Business Standard on April 7, 2011.

Official statistics report over 22,000 deaths related to fires, 27,000 by drowning and 144,000 in traffic accidents annually in India[1]. By contrast, the number of deaths resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear accident is about 10,000 in total, estimates Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist at Princeton, who is co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (other estimates: World Health Organisation 4,000; International Agency for Research on Cancer 16,000; Belarus 93,000 plus 270,000 cancer patients; and Ukraine 500,000). Against this, he estimates the number of deaths owing to pollution from coal plants in the US alone at 10,000 each year [2].

In this context, what are we to make of a top Indian scientist’s demand for stopping nuclear power production in India pending a transparent safety audit of all nuclear plants? Why not stop all traffic because of traffic accidents, to paraphrase another leading scientist? Should we shut down all our cities and towns until the sewerage systems work? A conscious effort should be made to demystify nuclear power.

To consider this rationally, let’s begin with some reported facts. The Fukushima accident happened after the earthquake, after the plant shut down. The plant was designed to withstand waves of six metres, but was struck by an eight-metre high tsunami, according to the US’ National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (other estimates range between 6.71 and 14 metres).

The reactor core takes several days to cool after being shut down and requires external cooling. The cooling system lost power from the grid because of the earthquake. The backup diesel generators worked for an hour, then stopped (there are conflicting reports on the reasons). The backup batteries then powered the pumps until they ran out. There are also conflicting reports of alternate diesel generators that were either of insufficient capacity or could not be connected for reasons that are unclear (flooded connectors, incompatible plugs and so on). The tsunami devastated the surroundings even as it hampered assistance from elsewhere. The failure appears to have been in the supply of power and water, that is , ancillary services.

Japan has 55 nuclear power reactors and it experiences frequent earthquakes. Though there have been instances of plants being shut down after earthquakes (2007: electrical transformer fire at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, and some leaks of slightly radioactive water reported; 2004: one unit at the same plant was shut down), there has been no failure of nuclear plants because of earthquakes. So, no new facts relating to earthquakes or tsunamis seem to have surfaced to cause India to shut down its nuclear plants arbitrarily.

An increase in energy use in India is inescapable, given the correlation between growth and energy consumption. On balance, we need all the energy we can get staying within reasonable risks and costs. Objectively, what can we expect from our government and related agencies such as the Department of Atomic Energy and the Atomic Energy Agency?

Remedial Action

One could be to expect action to reduce risks based on experience.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, a 3.2-km wall was constructed at Kalpakkam, which was in the path of the tsunami, fortified with sandbags, rocks and embankments. (The plant is situated at over 9 metres above the sea, with the reactor floors at a height of nearly 10.7 metres.)
The backup generators are located some distance away from the plant, out of the reach of tsunamis.
Mangroves and casuarinas along the coast helped diffuse the impact of the waves in 2004. News reports indicate the Department of Atomic Energy plans to augment these after its recent review of coastal nuclear plants.
News reports also mention that portable generators will be acquired for backup and tsunami alarms will be installed at coastal sites.

Other remedial measures based on experience may have been incorporated at Indian plants, or if not, could be incorporated now. For instance, referring to Fukushima, Dr von Hippel describes a filtered vent system designed to reduce radioactivity before releasing pressure from the containment building in the event of a meltdown (see diagram). Though it was ignored in the US, Sweden adopted it and so did France and Germany. Presumably, a benefit of Areva’s partnership with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India for constructing India’s new reactors will be the inclusion of filtered vents, if appropriate and not already in our design.

Costs, Benefits and Risks

Another issue is educating people on the risks, costs and benefits of different fuels. Life-cycle emissions capture one aspect of these costs (see figure for Europe).

A similar study is available for the US: “Life-Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Systems and Applications for Climate Change Policy Analysis” by Paul J Meier, University of Wisconsin-Madison, August 2002 (http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/pdf/fdm1181.pdf) Besides, there are costs such as population displacement and environmental effects associated with hydroelectric plants, land requirements and the environmental impact of manufacturing for solar generation, noise levels for wind farms, or pollution and the higher risk of accidents associated with coal [3].

Open Information and Communication

A third issue is easy access to accurate and relevant information. After the tsunami in 2004, the information sharing with the public was exemplary, with open and transparent briefings at Kalpakkam. This approach needs to be instituted as a standard operating procedure for governance by all departments and agencies, displaying integrity in systems, thereby instilling confidence in the public.

Prompt and accurate information about safety features including design and remedial measures could be compiled for ready access on websites, with pointers during press briefings. Regular and effective communication of systems and procedures, and measures to mitigate risks, could reduce our unreasoning dread of nuclear energy. Such steps would help assess risks reasonably and provide a good framework for governance and crisis management.

Notes

[1]."Table 38.1 Incidence of Accidental Deaths", http://mospi.nic.in/...38%20ACCIDENT%20STATISTICS/Table-38.1.xls [2008: latest available data].

[2].“It Could Happen Here”, Frank N von Hippel, New York Times, March 23, 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/opinion/24Von-Hippel.html.

[3].“Nuclear power is safest way to make electricity, according to study”, David Brown, Washington Post, April 2, 2011: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nuclear-power-is-safest-way-to-make-electricity-according-to-2007-tudy/2011/03/22/AFQUbyQC_story.html.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/fukushima

Law & Order through Traffic Systems

Shyam Ponappa — 2013-07-03T05:29:14Z

A TV white space system for traffic management may induce us to observe discipline and law-abiding behaviour, writes Shyam Ponappa in an article published in the Business Standard on June 5, 2013.

Read the original column published in the Business Standard. This was cross-posted in Organizing India Blogspot.

India coasts on a post-feudal-colonial mélange of currents and tides, with the brigandage of opportunistic politics fed by our (the voters’) greed for short-term benefits. The result is grotesque populism and corruption in lieu of the deferred gratification of pleasing cities and countryside with the appurtenances of proper governance: sidewalks and drains, toilets, transport, administration and order. We must develop solutions with an integrated, problem-solving approach, not just wait.

In such chaotic times, should we even consider minor themes, like trying to bring order to our traffic, and our behaviour on our roads? Yes, if one accepts that turmoil and crises provide opportunities as much as threats, and because these areas are among the few in which there may be chances of success if there are well-directed efforts. Instead of passively being buffeted by fate, we can do something about it: analyse the causes of our horrific traffic, devise an approach to mitigate or contain some factors, and formulate and implement solutions. Also, the technology is readily available, and the solutions need not be all-encompassing efforts on a countrywide scale, or not at all. Hence this pitch for a technology- and institution-driven, systems approach to traffic management that could potentially change the way we are. The big assumptions are: (a) that systems can induce order and law-abiding behaviour on our roads, for a start, and (b) that this will reduce traffic accidents. Let's consider how.

Traffic Accidents & Deaths

Information on traffic accidents is available from the National Crime Records Bureau at the ministry of home affairs. The latest report available is for 2011. There were 473,084 reported traffic accidents in 2011, comprising 440,123 road accidents, 2,385 "rail-road accidents" and 30,576 "other railway accidents". The figure for accidental deaths from unnatural causes was 367,194, of which traffic accidents accounted for 165,072. The latter included road and rail accidents, but excluded deaths from drowning and accidents involving aircraft. Road traffic accidents and deaths countrywide and for the Union territory of Delhi for the last five years are shown in the graphs below.

While frightful enough, the graphs do not quite convey the horrid rough-and-tumble unpleasantness of our roads. Could there be some way to bring order to this aspect of our lives? Perhaps, if we can imagine better scenarios, and then apply ourselves to act collectively to achieve them. It may be possible to introduce systems that elicit better governance and behaviour, as in the following instances.

Wireless smart grids and TV white space

An early example of augmenting existing communications networks with TV "white space" (ie, the unused TV spectrum) devices was implemented in America, in the city of Wilmington in North Carolina and its environs of New Hanover County. The City of Wilmington has about 100,000 people in about 105 square kilometres, while the county has a population of nearly 200,000 in an area of about 515 square kilometres. [1]

Because of the distance between localities, the extent of wetlands and waterways, and the dense foliage, extending broadband coverage to all its residential areas was difficult and expensive. In January 2012, Spectrum Bridge helped with installing a wireless overlay in three locations using TV white spaces to provide broadband connectivity. Additional equipment enabled real-time traffic monitoring to improve efficiency, reducing congestion and travel time, as well as aiding in law enforcement, in disaster management such as hurricane evacuations, and in enabling broadband connectivity for public schools. The coverage extended to the parks and recreational areas, providing better facilities for citizens, as well as more efficient environmental monitoring. The point is that communications can be effected much more effectively and efficiently through using TV "white space" bands.

In April 2012, a different group including Google, Microsoft, the BBC, and so on set up a smart grid in the university town of Cambridge in England, using TV white space in six locations covering a radius of about 6 km, comparable to central New Delhi. This network covers a population of about 125,000 and enables the management not only of services like electricity meters, but also of air quality sensors, street lights, traffic management, and parking spaces.[2]

Traffic and law enforcement systems for India

Now consider New Delhi and the National Capital Region. While it has a huge population over an extensive area, central New Delhi covers a radius of some 6-7 km, as do other localities in the city and its environs. Apart from the scale of population and geography, there are also the differences in culture or ethos with the instances mentioned earlier.

Yet, if our authorities could pull together a coordinated effort to develop and implement a network that would support wireless webcams, it may well provide a basis for governance that could work. If initiated for traffic and area management, there could be major improvements in bringing order through non-discretionary traffic management, as also in upholding law enforcement for the safety of citizens.

There may be an outcry from civil liberties champions, but residents will likely welcome the benefits, although they might cavil at unpopular but essential disciplines like system extensions to electricity and water metering. It will also bring about the cutting of the knot of India's welter of unimplemented laws.

The elements of this system would have to consist of really good overall design for the wireless overlay using TV white space bands, initially for a system of web cameras. These spectrum bands are unused despite being very effective for long-range communications. There would need to be some form of automated action report generation systems - for example, penalties for traffic violations. Also needed would be appropriate institutional support so that violators cannot ignore penalties, like fast-track collection processes that do not require recourse to an overburdened and dilatory judicial system. In addition, some degree of surveillance for crisis detection and rapid response would be necessary to deal with law enforcement.

The actual implementation could be modular by location and purpose while maintaining an integrated systems approach, so that areas of action as well as locations could be phased and need not be done simultaneously on a massive scale. In other words, it need not have the ab initio monumental scale of the UID, and could perhaps avoid some of the controversial design issues confronting the latter. It needs the approach, coordination and effort that achieved the Metro.

[1].http://www.spectrumbridge.com/ProductsServices/WhiteSpacesSolutions/success-stories/wilmington.aspx

[2].http://gigaom.com/2012/04/25/brits-score-white-space-first-with-city-wide-network/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-article-opinion-shyam-ponappa-june-5-2013-law-and-order-through-traffic-systems

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

praskrishna — 2016-07-17T03:41:56Z

Ford Foundation and the Centre for Internet & Society bring you research on the origins of the Internet in India, its impact on the Indian GDP and topics and debates surrounding the Internet in today's world.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access

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