Centre for Internet and Society

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore

praskrishna — 2015-09-27T09:59:00Z

Train the Trainer is a four-day long residential training workshop to enable Indian Wikipedia community members conduct outreach sessions effectively and independently. It is being conducted by the CIS-A2K team in Bangalore in the first week of October.

See the event on the Wikipedia page here. Please note that the exact dates for this event hasn't been finalized. We will let you know once it is done. See the Snippets from Wikimedia Train the Trainer here.

Why CIS-A2K is conducting this Program?

Based on an internal needs assessment exercise undertaken by CIS-A2K, it has been realized that:

bulk of the Indian population does not know about the existence of Indic Wikipedias and sister projects.
there is a lot of potential to do outreach in India but it is hampered by community member's lack of time, lack of availability of support material and/or ability to do outreach.
though many Indic Wikipedia community members have desire to undertake offline outreach they seldom receive support and guidance.
there is a need to further build the capacity of interested community members to conduct effective outreach sessions.

Thus through this program, the CIS-A2K programme wants to support and enable community members who are interested to conduct Wikipedia outreach sessions in their own cities/languages and to spread the word about the Indic Wikipedias.

Overview of the programme

CIS-A2K is organising a 4 day Train the Trainer Program in Bangalore. The program will include:

3 day sessions with interactive training run by professional consultants on how to conduct outreach in an effective manner – training on presentation skills, audience engagement, public speaking etc. It will include mock presentations, with video recording for feedback.
4th day will be a field trip aiming to train the participants on how to organise an effective photothon; in addition, participants will also add pictures from the field trip to Wikimedia Commons for enhancing and improving articles on Indian language Wikipedias.

Selection Criterion

CIS-A2K will conduct this program for approximately 20-25 interested community members from different Indian language communities. We want to make sure that there is equal participation from each language community. The CIS-A2K will use below mentioned parameters for selecting candidates.

CIS-A2K's evaluation of Train the Trainer Program Application Form.
Motivation of the candidate to be a part of the program.
The applicant should have made minimum 200 edits on their respective Indian language Wikipedia.
The applicant should have created at least 5 new articles of start class (as defined by their language community) on their respective Indian language Wikipedia.
The applicant should have conducted at least 1 outreach session before the end of application date and shared the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.)

Candidates' Deliverable

There are certain deliverables that CIS-A2K expects out of selected candidates. These are:

Take lead in translating outreach documents (including presentations, banners, FAQs, handouts) in their respective language and share it with their respective communities.
Organise at least 2 outreach sessions per month in their respective cities, for a minimum of 6 continuous months and share the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.).
Take lead in organising at least 1 community meet up in their respective cities, where they would give a small talk/presentation about their experience in the Train the Trainer Program and share ideas and tips they picked from the program with their language community members.
Write a 1500-word report sharing their Train the Trainer Program experience with large emphasis on their learnings and take-aways to be shared with all Indian communities.

What's in it for you?

Get general training and presentation skills which you can apply not only during Wikipedia workshops, but also during delivering personal and professional talks.
Receive detailed feedback about your presentation and training skills from professional consultants.
Help design a training program that serves Wikimedia community in the long term.
Share your skills with others.
Meet fellow Wikimedia editors and have fun.

Dates	Number of days	Details
30th August to 13th September 2013	14 Days	CIS-A2K accepts applications.
13th September to 16th September 2013	3 Days	CIS-A2K evaluates the applications and shares details of selected candidates.
16th September to 23th September 2013	7 Days	CIS-A2K co-ordinates with selected candidates to finalize their travel plans, make reservations etc.
1st week of October 2013	4 Days	CIS-A2K organises Train the trainer Program.

Call for Participation

CIS-A2K is calling for applications for it's Train the Trainer Program. If you'd like to be part of this program please make sure that you meet the selection criterion and fill in the Train the Trainer Program Application Form by 13th September, 2013.

FAQ

What is train the trainer program?
Train the trainer is a 4 day program organised by CIS-A2K to build capacity and enable community members to conduct outreach sessions independently or with minimal support to introduce Wikipedia to prospective editors in their respective Indian languages. Participants will be trained on various aspects such as presenting with impact, engaging with the audience, significance of body language, outreach follow ups etc. Program will also include groups discussions on ideas, learnings, challenges faced during outreach sessions.
When will train the trainer program run?
Train the trainer program will take place in Bangalore for 4 continuous days in the 1st week of October 2013. Exact details of dates and venue will be communicated shortly.
Who can take part in the program?
The event is open to all Wikimedia volunteers from India who can and want to support outreach events in the coming year.
How can I apply?
Please fill in Train the Trainer Program Application Form.
Who will take care of my travel and accommodation?
CIS-A2K has a budget for Community Development and the team will be able to cover your travel and accommodation.
What will be the timings each day?
The timings of the program will be 9.00am to 7.30pm everyday with sufficient time for lunch, dinner, tea breaks and fun sessions.
Where will I eat?
Light breakfast and lunch will be provided; together with social dinner. Arrangements will also be made for tea and coffee.
What is expected out of me?

Each selected candidate will be given some pre-work. You're expected to come with completed pre-work.
Take lead in translating outreach documents (including presentations, banners, FAQs, handouts) in their respective language and share it with their respective communities.
Post the program, organize at least 2 outreach sessions per month in your respective cities, for a minimum of 6 continuous months and share the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.).
Post the program, take lead in organising at least 1 community meet up in your respective cities, where you would give a small talk/presentation about your experience in the Train the Trainer Program and share ideas and tips you picked from the program with your language community members.
Write a 1500-word report sharing your Train the Trainer Program experience with large emphasis on learnings and take-aways to be shared with all Indian communities.

Contact

For any further queries please mail at a2k@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/train-the-trainer

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.


Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

1	धालो	Varsha Kavlekar
2	केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग	Mona Rodrigues
3	देखणी	Fernandes Sandra
4	गोयच्यों परबो	Komal Dhuri
5	जागर्	Cliffa Fernandes
6	गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय	Abigail Dias
7	गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण	Effa Dias
8	चवथ	Shanta Gaundalkar
9	कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ	Dias Neves
10	राणेचे बंड	Fay Fernandes
11	रविंद्र केळेकार	Gaurisha Phal Desai
12	गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ	Safira Ferns
13	शणै गोयबाब	Pratima Fal Desai
14	मांडो	Anisha Gad
15	संगीत	Santoshi Kole
16	म्हणी,ओपारी	Pooja Kavlekar
17	मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर	Sukhada Daikar
18	कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां	Konknni mogi 24
19	कोंकणी लोककाणयो, कोंकणी सिनेमा	Supriya Kankumbikar
20	गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी, कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ	Vaishali Parab
21	कोंकणी नाटक	Darshan Kandolkar
22	विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र	John Noronha

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

1	गोंयचें लोक नाच	Pooja Tople
2	गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था, गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास	Priyanka Kudaskar
3	दिवाळी,शिरगांवची जात्रा	Pritam Barve
4	गोंयची लोकगितां	Rusita Paryekar
5	हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस	Gauri Prabhugaonkar
6	लोकवादय़ा	Suma Parab Gaonkarr
7	गाराणें	Darshana Mandrekar
8	तुळशीलग्न	Heefza
9	बारसो	Nikita Prabhu
10	कोंकणी कथा	Marizma Mascarenhas
11	गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां	Linette Saldanha
12	बेबींक	Frania Pereira
13	तियात्र	Rhakee Santos
14	गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त	Pereira Goreti
15	कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो	Rubiya Komarpant
16	कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप	Savidha Talekar

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
- Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
- Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
- Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?


Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.


				Konkani Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools

gavin — 2013-09-02T14:45:08Z

In this blog post, the first of a series of three, Gavin Pereira attempts to address the challenges that India's obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties may pose to the establishment of a patent pool in the country. The author thanks Puneeth Nagaraj for his guidance and inputs on this paper.

"And finally, many states, unfortunately, see investment treaties as a diplomatic photo opportunity without being fully aware of the actual legal implications."
Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder[1]

Introduction
Continuing from the Indian government’s Economic Reform Program, which had started in 1991,[2] are India’s Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements. Generally referred to as Bilateral Investment Treaties or "BITs," these agreements seek to provide for conditions that are “favourable for greater investment by investors of one State in the territory of the other State”[3] in hopes that this would lead to "stimulation of business initiatives and increase in prosperity."[4]

Since 1996, India has signed a total of 82 BITs, of which 72 have come into force.[5] At the time of signing them, BITs were generally hailed as a means to increase foreign investor confidence during the liberalisation of India’s economy.[6]

Recently however, several notices of disputes were filed or threatened to be filed under these treaties by companies such as Vodafone B.V.[7], Telenor[8] and Sistema.[9] These filings lead to the review of all the BITs signed by India, a procedure that was called upon by the Indian government’s Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion,[10] as well as the composition of an amended model BIT by the Ministry of Finance to increase the threshold requirements for an investor to initiate arbitration.[11]

Such discord between thestate and investors protected under BITs is not unique to India. There has been a steady rise in the number of investment disputes brought to international arbitration with the highest number of known treaty-based disputes filed in 2012. This has been revealed through a review of the claims filed in the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and an inspection of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).[12] In the history of investor-state dispute resolution, the highest reward to the tune of $1.77 billion in Occidental v Ecuador[13] was awarded last year.

In order to better contextualize this background of increasingly assertive investor claims, my essay will first attempt to ascertain the meaning of intellectual property (IP) rights as defined as investments within BITs and explore their effect on the compulsory licensing of information and communication technology patent pools. I will then discuss the relation between covenants that India is a signatory to, Indian copyright law and BITs with an aim to propose measures by which BITs should be suitably amended to allow for India’s burgeoning growth in the budget smartphone market.

BIT Claims Against India
There are a total of 12 known and 17 estimated[14] treaty claims against India, the 11th highest number of claims in the world.[15] Given the strict confidentiality thatcovers these proceedings, this is merely the tip of the iceberg, as there may be several other claims against India that are not available in the public domain.[16]

The tribunal in White Industries v Republic of India [17] — the first investment treaty award against India — held India liable for breaching its obligation to provide “effective means of asserting claims and enforcing rights” pursuant to 4(2) of the India-Australia BIT, read with 4(5) of the India-Kuwait BIT. India was ordered to compensate White Industries a total amount of approximately four million Australian dollars plus interest.[18]

The tribunal attributed the inordinate delay by Indian courts, especially the Indian Supreme Court in enforcing an arbitral award in favour of White Industries as a denial of effective means to enforce their right to their investment.[19]

In 2012, Vodafone B.V. filed a notice of dispute, a prerequisite to commence arbitration under the India-Netherlands BIT, claiming that the Indian government’s decision to enact the Indian Finance Bill 2012 would be a failure to accord ‘fair and equitable treatment;’ the reason being that the amendment sought to retroactively tax the 2007 share-purchase agreement between Hutchinson Telecommunications International Ltd. and Vodafone[20] despite the Supreme Court ruling in favour of Vodafone on that issue.[21]

Telenor and Sistema have filed or threatened to file notices of dispute under BITs Following the cancellation of 122 2G spectrum telecom licenses by the Supreme Court.[22] Within these filings was the alleging that the act of the Supreme Court undermined the license allocation process and was a form of indirect expropriation of their investments.[23]

In March 2012, the Children’s Investment Fund (CIF) filed a notice of dispute in a letter addressed to the Minister of Finance, invoking both the India-UK BIT and the India-Cyprus BIT in response to the “seriously impaired business activities and operations of the company” by virtue of their investment in Coal India.[24] They alleged that Coal India’s sale of assets to private companies at below-market price, on the directive of the Government, has caused a huge loss to the Coal India and in effect, to the company’s share value. This claim is unprecedented as CIF is a minority shareholder essentially suing Coal India for greater dividends.[25] CIF has since soldalmost 20% of their shareholding in Coal India.[26]

Intellectual Property and BIT
The Indian model text of BIT’s, and therefore all 82 BITs that have been drafted based on the model text, define "investment" inter alia as "intellectual property rights, in accordance with the laws of the contracting party."[27] This enables investors protected to file BIT claims against India for any action that directly or indirectly adversely affects their IPR, subject to certain other conditions. It was only a matter of time before the full extent of the scope of claims that may be brought forward against India under the numerous BITs had begun to unravel. Two distinct but equally important IP-related court judgments have signaled the possibility of the intervention of investment treaties on India’s IP regime, and in the context of this paper, on affordable smartphones.

The first is the interim injunction passed by the Delhi High Court in Ericsson v Micromax[28] that acknowledged that the plaintiff (Ericsson) has "made out a prima facie case in its favour and balance of convenience…also entirely in its favour." Accordingly, if interim compensation in accordance with a temporary Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) license between Micromax and Ericsson were not granted, "irreparable harm would be caused to the plaintiff."[29]

The resulting interim arrangement included the execution of a FRAND license, based on FRAND terms, with Micromax agreeing to pay Ericsson between 1.25% and 2% of the sale price of their phone models to Ericsson.[30]

The second of the two court judgments to be looked at is comprised of a series of pharmaceutical patent disputes between global pharmaceutical companies and Indian generic drug producers regarding the compulsory licensing of critical drugs related to cancer and HIV. In March 2012, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks relied on the patentability clause of the Patents Act, 1970[31] to authorise an Indian generic drug producer, Natco Pharma,to manufacture and sell copies of Nexavar, a patented drug sold globally by Bayer.[32]

In April 2013, the Supreme Court allowed Indian generic drug manufacturers to manufacture a version of the cancer drug, Glivec (also known as “Gleevec”), referring to the same patentability clause of the Patents Act in coming to the conclusion that it did not have a feature that qualified it as a true invention.The court emphasised the importance of referring to the evolution of India’s patent regime, specifically the influence of what they term “important milestones,” such as the Justice Bakshi Tek Chand Committee Report, the Justice Ayyangar Committee Report, the growth of India’s domestic pharmaceutical industry after the enactment of the 1970 Patents Act, and the signing of the TRIPS agreement in determining whether a compulsory license should be granted.[33]

Interestingly enough, an immediate reaction to these regulatory and court decisions in the area of pharmaceutical patents included press releases from large law firms discussing the benefits for multinational pharmaceutical companies in seeking dispute resolution under Bilateral Investment Treaties.[34] While there is a WTO Dispute Resolution Mechanism under TRIPS, where contracting parties may request for consultation under Article XXII or initiate dispute resolution under Article XXIII of the GATT, there are a number of reasons why investors chose to file claims under BITs,[35] an aspect that will be discussed in the next post.

Internationally as well, the intertwining of issues of Intellectual Property with BIT claimsis a new development, at the forefront of which is the Australian tobacco plain packaging international arbitration. Australia enacted the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act that increased the Graphic Health Warnings on the front of the packaging from 30% to 75%, and which prescribes every aspect of the appearance, size and shape of tobacco packaging and prohibits the use of trademarks, symbols or graphics other than the brand and variant name in plain font. Philip Morris Asia Limited (PMAL) filed a notice of arbitration under the Hong Kong-Australia BIT arguing that their intellectual property and goodwill were infringed by the Plain Packaging Act.[36]

Pervasive Technology and India’s Growth
The Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression emphasised the importance of the internet, not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of expression but to promote the progress of society as a whole. The report called upon member states to make the internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all segments of society.The cutting off of users from Internet access, including on grounds of violation of IP,was described as disproportionate and in violation of the reasonable limitations to freedom of expression clause of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.[38]

It is in light of these international developments and global arbitral awards in the area of IP that the compulsory licensing of budget smartphone patents in India needs to be evaluated.

[1]. Latha Jishnu, India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable, Down To Earth, Jan 31, 2012.

[2]. For a commentary on the slew of FDI measures taken as part of India’s liberalisation, see M.S. Ahluwalia, Economic Reforms in India since 1991: Has Gradualism worked?,16(3) J. Econ. Perspectives 67, 73 (2002).

[3]. See e.g. Preamble to, Agreement for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments, India-Arg., Aug. 20, 1999, Ministry of Finance-Government of India, http://finmin.nic.in/bipa/Argentina.pdf; Preamble to Agreement for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments, India-China, Nov. 21, 2006, Ministry of Finance-Government of India, http://finmin.nic.in/bipa/China.pdf.

[4]. Id.

[5]. Ministry of Finance-Government of India, Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements, http://finmin.nic.in/bipa/bipa_index.asp?pageid=1 (last visited July 17, 2013); ICSID Database of Bilateral Investment Treaties, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, https://icsid.worldbank.org/ICSID/FrontServlet (last visited July 18, 2013).

[6]. Id;India-Germany sign bilateral investment pact, INDIAN EXPRESS, July 16, 1998; YashwantSinha, Foreword to Agreement for the Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments, India-Ger., July 10, 1995, Ministry of Finance-Government of India, http://finmin.nic.in/bipa/Germany.pdf.

[7]. Vodafone.com, News Release: Vodafone serves Notice Against Indian Government Under International Bilateral Investment Treaty, http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/group_press_releases/2012/bit.html (last visited July 23, 2013).

[8]. Siddharth, Telenor seeks arbitration, claims $14 bn from govt in 2G case, Times of India, Mar. 27, 2012.

[9]. ShauvikGhosh, Sistema asks why India wants to delay arbitration proceedings, Live Mint, Oct. 1, 2012.

[10]. S. Bhushan & Puneeth Nagaraj, Need to align Bilateral Investment Treaty regime with Global Reality, THE HINDU, Jan. 6, 2013; Surabhi, Govt. to review bilateral ties to avoid legal battle with telcos, Indian Express, Apr. 13, 2012.

[11]. Deepshikha Sikarwar, Government to draft model treaty on MNC’s mediation rush, Economic Times, Jul. 9, 2013.

[12]. UNCTAD, INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT ARBITRATION ISSUE NOTE: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTE SETTLEMENT (2013).

[13]. UNCTAD, UNCTAD publishes its review of investor-state dispute settlement, http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=453&Sitemap_x0020_Taxonomy=Investment%20and%20Enterprise;#607;#International Investment Agreements (IIA);#20;#UNCTAD Home (last visited Aug. 2, 2013).

[14]. Sikarwar, supra note 11.

[15]. Id. at 29.

[16]. Latha Jishnu, A treaty too many, DOWN TO EARTH, May 15, 2013 (few details are available of the Enron-Dabhol Investment Arbitration under the India-Mauritius Bilateral Investment Treaty).

[17]. White Industries Australia Ltd. v Republic of India, UNCITRAL, Final Award, Nov. 30, 2011.

[18]. Id. at ¶ 16.

[19]. Id. at ¶ 14.3.5. For an understanding of the implications that the White Industries case has for India’s Investment Treaty program, see Prabhash Ranjan, The White Industries Arbitration: Implications for India’s Investment Treaty Program, INVESTMENT TREATY NEWS, Apr. 13, 2012 available at http://www.iisd.org/itn/2012/04/13/the-white-industries-arbitration-implications-for-indias-investment-treaty-program/.

[20]. Vodafone.com, supra note 7. For an analysis of Vodafone and India’s investment arbitration claims, see RAAG YADAVA ET. AL., VODAFONE AND INDIA: A REVIEW OF CLAIMS IN INVESTMENT ARBITRATION (2012).

[21]. Vodafone International Holdings B.V. v. Union of India & Anr., Civil Appeal No. 733 of 2012, arising out of S.L.P. (C) No. 26529 of 2010, Supreme Court of India.

[22]. Dr. Subramaniam Swamy v. Union of India & Ors., W.P. (Civil) No: 423 of 2010 with W.P. (Civil) No: 10 of 2011. Supreme Court verdict on 2G spectrum allocation, The Hindu, Feb. 2, 2012.

[23]. Siddarth, supra note 8; Ghosh, supra note 9.

[24]. Sam Jones, TCI initiates legal action against India, Financial Times, Mar. 27, 2013.

[25]. Debjoy Sengupta, UK-based The Children's Fund demands higher dividend from Coal India, The Economic Times, Feb 19,2013.

[26]. See, http://www.vccircle.com/news/commodities/2013/06/25/childrens-investment-fund-sells-fifth-its-holding-coal-india.

[27]. Department of Economic Affairs – Ministry of Finance, Indian Model Text of Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPA), available at http://finmin.nic.in/the_ministry/dept_eco_affairs/icsection/ Indian%20Model%20Text%20BIPA.asp?pageid=1.

[28]. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Mercury Electronics & Anr, I.A. No. 3825/2013 in CS(OS) 442/2013, Delhi High Court.

[29]. Id.

[30]. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v. Mercury Electronics & Anr, I.A. No. 4694/2013 in CS(OS) 442/2013, Delhi High Court.

[31]. Section 3(d) - the mere discovery of a new form of a known substance which does not result in the enhancement of the known efficacy of that substance or the mere discovery of any new property or new use for a known substance or of the mere use of a known process, machine or apparatus unless such known process results in a new product or employs at least one new reactant.

[32]. Vikas Bajaj & Andrew Pollack, India orders Bayer to license a Patented Drug, NYT, March 12, 2012.

[33]. Novartis AG v Union of India &Ors., CIVIL APPEAL Nos. 2706-2716 OF 2013 with Natco Pharma Ltd. v. Union of India & Ors. CIVIL APPEAL No. 2728 OF 2013 with M/s. Cancer Patients Aid Association v. Union of India & Ors. CIVIL APPEAL Nos. 2717-2727 OF 2013, Supreme Court of India (2013).

[34]. See e.g. TREATY PROTECTION FOR GLOBAL PATENTS: A RESPONSE TO A GROWING PROBLEM FOR MULTINATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES, JONES DAY (October 2012).

[35]. GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TRADE AND TARIFFS , XXII and XIII (1994).

[36]. NOTICE OF ARBITRATION, BETWEEN PHILIP MORRIS ASIA LIMITED AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA (2011).

[37]. U.N.G.A. - Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, U.N. Doc A/HRC/17/27.

[38]. Id. at 21-22. Article 19 (3) of the ICCPR - The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bilateral-inhibiting-treaty-investigating-challenges-that-bilateral-investment-treaties-pose-to-compulsory-licensing-of-pervasive-technology-patent-pools

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

praskrishna — 2013-10-04T10:49:51Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of August 2013:

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

The CIS-A2K programme organised a four-day workshop in collaboration with the Goa University for students of M.A. (Konkani) at the Central State Library, Konkani Department, University of Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted this workshop. The event saw 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia, which is incubation. The main objective is to bring this seven-year-old project out of incubation into a live Wikipedia project. Event reports, blog entries, videos, guest column and media coverage arising from the workshop can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

Event Reports

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013):
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013):

Guest Columns

Konkani Wikipedia climbing up the Indian language ladder (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, September 6, 2013).
Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013)

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 19, 2013). The event was organised by Wikimedia Foundation. Subhashish participated in the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (co-organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Organised

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.
Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan taught a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated in the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, DNA, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).

Other guest columns:

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and CIS-A2K, September 13, 2013).
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi.

Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://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.

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.

To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@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/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-august-2013

August 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T06:26:30Z

Our newsletter for the month of August 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the eighth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we are glad to bring you the final report on banking and accessibility submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, a research paper on India’s obligations under bilateral investment treaties, a report from a Wikipedia workshop held at the Konkani Department in Goa University, a report on the sixth privacy roundtable held in New Delhi, recent news coverage, and updates on our upcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

As part of its project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you three new draft chapters on Assam, Manipur and Puducherry. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 3 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the below chapters:

The Assam Chapter (by CLPR, August 28, 2013)
The Manipur Chapter (by CLPR, August 29, 2013)
The Puducherry Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 31, 2013)

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Reports

Banking and Accessibility in India: A Report by CIS (by Vrinda Maheshwari, August 12, 2013). This is the final report submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Opening New Avenues for Empowerment (by UNESCO, August 31, 2013). UNESCO has published a global report on higher education titled “Opening New Avenues for Empowerment”. Nirmita Narasimhan was the coordinating author for the Asia Pacific region.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

As part of its project on developing the growth of Indic language communities with Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K held six Wikipedia workshops. 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.

Access to Knowledge
Research Paper

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools (by Gavin Pereira, August 31, 2013).

Column

Copyrights and Copywrongs Why the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain (by Pranesh Prakash, Yojana, Issue: August 2013).

Media Coverage

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry (by C.H. Unnikrishnan, Livemint, August 26, 2013). CIS work on Access to Knowledge is mentioned.

Blog Entries

Are Indian Consumer Laws Ready for the Digital Age? (by Vipul Kharbanda, August 8, 2013).
Do You Have the Right to Unlock Your Smart Phone? (by Puneeth Nagaraj, August 7, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

The A2K team consists of four members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Syed Muzammiluddin, and one team member Nitika Tandon who works from Delhi.

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013.
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013. Thirty-eight students took part in the wiki editing workshop.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Hosted

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated for the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).
Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 – 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is teaching a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".
You too can write on Wikipedia! — Orientation Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, September 15, 2013).

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).

Openness

Event Hosted

Open Hardware Lab: Play & Invent + Bonus Film Screening (CIS, Bangalore, August 4, 2013). A hangout was done with CIS Lab Community and with members of the Computer Club of India and Arduino enthusiasts.

Event Participated

e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government (organised by Google, July 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness (by David Eaves, Tech President, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share (by Glyn Moody, Techdirt, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project

Event Report

Sixth Privacy Roundtable (co-organised by CIS, FICCI and DSCI, New Delhi, August 24, 2013). Bhairav Acharya and Prachi Arya participated in this event. The discussions and recommendations from the six round table meetings will be presented at the Internet Governance meeting in October 2013.

Newspaper / Magazine Columns

Freedom from Monitoring: India Inc Should Push For Privacy Laws (by Sunil Abraham, Forbes India Magazine, August 21, 2013).
Out of the Bedroom (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, August 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

'Ethical Hacker' Saket Modi Calls for Stronger Cyber Security Discussions (by Kovey Coles, August 5, 2013).
Ethical Issues in Open Data (by Kovey Coles, August 7, 2013).
FinFisher in India and the Myth of Harmless Metadata (by Maria Xynou, August 13, 2013).

Events Organised

The Hackers Way of Reshaping Policies (CIS, Bangalore, August 2, 2013). Bernadette Langle gave a talk on different ways to reshape policies.
Chennai: Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (Asian College of Journalism, Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013). A Crypto Party was organised.
The Phishing Society: Why 'Facebook' is more dangerous than the Government Spying on You - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, August 7, 2013). Maria Xynou gave a talk on phishing society.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (ACJ - Asian College of Journalism, Second Main Road (Behind M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013).
Privacy Meeting: Brussels – Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore, August 14, 2013). Gertjan Boulet and Dariusz Kloza gave a talk on privacy.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2013). A Crypto Party was held at CIS.

Events Participated In

Summer School 2013 (organized by the Research Center of Media and Communication at the University of Hamburg, Germany, July 29 – August 2, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session on "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Pirates, Pornographers, Terrorists and the IT Act in India".
Meeting of a Sub-committee on DNA Profiling Bill (Hyderabad, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting for discussing the draft bill.
Surveillance: Privacy Vs Security (organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals, India International Centre, New Delhi, August 17, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Crypto Night (by Rahul M., Caravan, August 1, 2013). Pranesh Prakash and Bernadette Langle are quoted.
Facebook: Limiting access to social media can restrict freedom of speech (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Token disclosures? (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, August 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Memeâ€™s the word now (by Padmaparna Ghosh, The Times of India, August 4, 2013). Nishant Shah is quoted.
Chinese hackers baiting Indian govt, corporate employees: report (by Moulishree Srivastava and Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests (NDTV, August 16, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui discussed the grey areas of the IT Act.
Balancing vigilance and privacy (by Prashant Jha, The Hindu, August 18, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
How Next-Gen Smartphone Users are Being Bought and Sold (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 13, 2013, and IBN Live, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Dear Milind Deora, Prakash Javadekar Deserved The Truth (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India, August 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, August 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India's Internet Privacy Woes (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 26, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication (The Times of India, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business (by Neil McAllister, The Register, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interview

Part 9: Interview with Saikat Datta (August 5, 2013).

Telecom

CIS has published one newspaper column in the Business Standard and also made a submission to TRAI:

Newspaper Column

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets (by Shyam Ponappa, originally published in the Business Standard, July 31, 2013 and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot, August 1, 2013).

Submission

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum (by Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa, August 31, 2013). The submission was made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 21, 2013.

Digital Humanities

We are building 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. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Blog Entries

Digital Humanities Talk (by Sara Morais, August 1, 2013). Sara wrote about her talk in this blog entry.
Theorizing the Digital Subaltern (by Sara Morais, August 2, 2013).

Event Organised

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by CIS-A2K, HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CCS-Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013). Errata: We had got the name of one of the co-organisers wrong in our previous newsletter. We have corrected this now.

Event Participated In

South Asia Conference on Higher Education (organised by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Ford Foundation Office, New Delhi, August 5 – 7, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this conference.

About CIS

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

*Support Us*

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

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

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

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T10:32:39Z

Wikimedia India in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society is organising a workshop on "Digitization of books for Indic language WikiSource" on August 18, 2013, 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

This workshop will be conducted by Malayalam Wikimedian Viswanathan Prabhakaran. Anyone interested in learning about the process of digitising old manuscripts, books and creating text based documents could join this workshop. The workshop will cover the following topics:

Best practices in capturing images using a camera and tripod through demonstration;
An introduction to the types of scanners;
How to hold books and the need to treat old books with proper care;
Discussion on image formats and some basic comparison (i.e. djvu, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF);
Introduction and practical use of SM Tether (using Nikon dSLR) in capturing images;
Practical demonstration of using Scan Tailor (a free software) in post-processing of scanned pages. Splitting, deskewing, rearranging borders, and de-speckling of scanned pages;
Some basic discussion on copyright and introduction to Wiki Source;
Importance of online archival resources (DLI, DSAL, Archive.org, etc) and when to do or not to redo scanning of books (i.e., image resolution) that are already available in scanned format;
OCR and Indian languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/digitization-of-books-for-indic-language-wikisource

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:24:45Z

T.Vishnu participated in the Telugu meet-up held in Hyderabad on August 25, 2013, via Skype.

Click to read the original published by Telugu Wikipedia here

తెలుగు వికీపీడియా నెలవారీ ముఖాముఖీ సమావేశం. సమావేశానంతరం/ముందు మినీ వికీపీడియా వర్కుషాపు ఉంటుంది.

వివరాలు

ప్రదేశం : థియేటర్ ఔట్రీచ్ యూనిట్ (టి.ఓ.యు), గోల్డెన్ త్రెషోల్డ్ అబిడ్స్, హైదరాబాద్
తేదీ : 25:08:2013; సమయం : 3 p.m. నుండి 6 p.m. వరకూ.

చర్చించాల్సిన అంశాలు

హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు - విష్ణు
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాలు - ECHO; AFT; VISUAL EDITOR - విష్ణు
తెలుగు రంగస్థలం - వికీపీడియా - ప్రణయ్ రాజ్, రామారావు మరియు శేఖర్ బాబు.
తెలుగు ప్రముఖుల ప్రాజెక్టు సమీక్ష - రాజశేఖర్
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ సమీక్ష - పోటీలో విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రదానం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పని యొక్క ప్రస్తుత పరిస్థితి.
విక్షనరీలో నెలవారీ కార్యక్రమ ప్రణాలిక.

ఇంకా ఏమయినా విషయాలు దీని పైన చేర్చగలరు

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

Rajasekhar1961 (చర్చ) 13:12, 17 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

పైన మీ పేరు చేర్చండి

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

(నమోదు తప్పనిసరికాదు కాని నిర్వాహకులకు సహాయంగా మరియు ఇతరులకు ప్రోత్సాహంగా వుంటుంది. పైన మార్చు నొక్కి మీ పేరు చేర్చవచ్చు)

తప్పక

వాడుకరి:Maheshwar Reddy (చర్చ) 12:05, 22 జూలై 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

Skype ద్వారా చర్చలో పాల్గొనదలచినవారు

విష్ణు (చర్చ) 14:33, 23 ఆగష్టు 2013 (UTC)

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

బహుశా

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

పాల్గొనటానికి కుదరని

<పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

స్పందనలు

<పై వరసలో స్పందించండి>

నివేదిక

స్కైప్ ద్వారా విష్ణుగారు పాల్గొని హాంక్‌కాంగ్ లో జరిగిన 2013 వికీమానియా విశేషాలు, వికీపీడియా అభివృద్ధికోసం జరిగిన చర్చల గురించి తెలియజేశారు.

అనంతరం ఈ క్రింది అంశాల గురించి వివరించారు.

తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపులేదు. తెవికీలో ఉన్న ప్రాజెక్టులలోని కొన్ని వ్యాసాలను (పల్లెవాసుల జీవన విధానం మొ.) ఆంగ్లంలోనికి అనువదించి, ఆంగ్ల వికీపీడియాలో చేర్చడంద్వారా గ్లోబల్ లెవల్ లో గుర్తింపు తీసుకురావడం. వచ్చే వికీమానియాలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియాకు ప్రముఖస్థానం వచ్చేలా కృషిచేయడం.
లీలావతి డాటర్స్ అనే పుస్తకంలోని 64 మంది మహిళా సైంటిస్టుల గురించి వ్యాసాలను రాయడం.
తెలుగు వికీపీడియాలో చురుగ్గా పనిచేస్తున్న ఇంజనీర్స్ ను తెలుగు వికీపీడియా మెంటర్స్ గా తయారుచేయడం.
తెలుగు భాషాభివృద్ధికి తోడ్పడే ప్రాజెక్టులను ఎంపికచేసుకొని, ఆ ప్రాజెక్టుల నిర్వాహణకు గ్రాంట్ వచ్చేలా చూడడం.
తెవికీ నాణ్యతకు వికీపీడియా ఉపకరణాల ఉపయోగాలు. 1. ECHO (Notification Tool, రాసిన వ్యాసాల గురించిన సవరణలను చూపించే ఉపకరణం). 2. AFT (Article Feedback Tool, వీక్షకులు, పాఠకులు తమ అభిప్రాయాలను రాసే ఉపకరణం). 3. VISUAL EDITOR (వ్యాసాన్ని వ్యాసపు పేజీలోనే సవరించేందుకు ఉపకరణం).

వచ్చే నెలలో తెలుగు రంగస్థలంపై ప్రాజెక్టు నిర్వహించదలచామని రాజశేఖర్ గారు ప్రతిపాదించగా, రంగస్థలానికి చెందినవారిని వాడుకరులుగా చేర్పించి వారితో వ్యాసాలను రాయించాలనీ, అందుకోసం రంగస్థల అధ్యాపకులైన పెద్ది రామారావు గారి సహయం తీసుకుందామని విష్ణుగారు సూచించారు.
వ్యాసరచన పోటీ విజేతలకు బహుమతుల ప్రధానంకోసం, ఎంపికైనవారు వారివారి చిరునామాను పంపించవలసిందిగా వారి వాడుకరి/వ్యాసపు పేజీలో రాయడం.
వికీసోర్సులో s:పోతన తెలుగు భాగవతము చేర్చే పనిలో భాగంగా 4 స్కంధాలు పూర్తయ్యాయని, మిగతావి మరో వారం రోజుల్లో పూర్తి చేస్తానని రాజశేఖర్ గారు చెప్పారు.
రావూరి భరద్వాజ గారి గురించి, ఆయన రచనల గురించి తెవికీలో రాయడంపై బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్ తో రాజశేఖర్ గారు చర్చించగా, తన వద్దవున్న సమగ్ర సమాచారాన్ని అందించగలనని శ్రీనివాస్ హమీ ఇచ్చారు.

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొన్నవారు

విష్ణు (Skype ద్వారా)
Rajasekhar1961
గుళ్లపల్లి నాగేశ్వరరావు
Pranayraj1985
బొగ్గుల శ్రీనివాస్

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/telugu-wiki-meet-up-hyderabad-august-2013

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS

praskrishna — 2013-08-28T11:01:35Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore welcomes you to a mobile training workshop in its office in Bangalore on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar will conduct the workshop from 12.00 p.m. to 2.00 p.m.

Social media tools provide us with a huge opportunity to make our voices heard farther and faster. Social media campaigning has been used successfully to bring about changes that traditional campaigning methods have been unable to. Keerthana Chandrashekar will talk about successful online and offline campaigning.

Agenda for Training

Case studies of successful mobile campaigns including studies relevant for CIS programmes.
Highlighting major components in a successful mobile campaign.
Outlining general communication flow of a mobile campaign.
Presentation of a sample campaign idea.
Presentation of detail campaign flow for that campaign idea.
Campaign data analysis.

About Jhatkaa

Jhatkaa is a new advocacy group committed to building citizen power across India in effective and innovative ways. We look to organize people to rapidly respond to issues in ways that maximise their collective power in a given situation. We look to achieve this goal of mobilizing citizens through the use of digital technology which will help bridge the gap of distance and time. Some of the tools that we are looking to utilize are email, mobiles, radio, social media, etc. Our belief is that through sustained collective action, huge change is possible.

The Speakers

Keerthana Chandrashekar

Keerthana is a telecommunication engineer. She graduated in 2012 from CMR Institute of Technology, Bangalore. She was trained as a data and business analyst in Mu Sigma Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and worked there for six months before joining Jhatkaa as a campaigner. Currently she works as a campaigner and is setting up the mobile platform for Jhatkaa.

Rachita

Rachita graduated from the University of Delhi with a Bachelors in Mass Media and Mass Communications last year. Thereafter, she worked with Greenpeace India in the Digital Media Team and now works as a campaigner with Jhatkaa.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/mobile-training-workshop

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur

Gorvachove Pothal — 2013-08-27T12:09:56Z

A training workshop for Odia Wikipedians was held in Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. The workshop was organized by Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal, with financial support from CIS-A2K programme. It was a part of the Access To Knowledge - Outreach Programs.

Hosted by Gorvachove at the Golden Jubilee Seminar Hall of VSSUT, the Odia Wikipedia Workshop was attended by more than 100 students and Professors of the university. He explained the many possibilities of using Wikipedia as an open knowledge and information platform. The members that attended the Workshop have received awareness about Wikimedia projects. An introduction was given to Odia Wikipedia with practical examples. (Using searching, editing, creating new articles). The wiki model was explained by Gorvachove upon questions/doubts from students. He explained how writing articles in Wikipedia can help students think critically, improve their writing skills, strengthen their research skills, etc.

On July 27, 2013, a hands-on session was conducted by Gorvachove. He helped various participants in creating usernames and writing one article about their “Village/Town” (part of the Edit-a-thon started on April 1, 2013) in Odia Wikipedia. The Workshop's objectives that have been achieved, namely:

Spread awareness about Wikimedia projects.
Importance of free knowledge sharing.
A group of enthusiastic students received technical orientation to conduct further workshops.

Important links:

Odia Wikipedia workshop page on Odia Wikipedia: http://or.wikipedia.org/s/gqw
Link to the pictures: http://bit.ly/13VNkzf

Media Coverage

Odia Wikipedia Workshop at VSSUT, Burla (Sambad, July 27, 2013)
ଓଡିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର କର୍ମଶାଳା ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହୋଇଯାଇଛି ବୀର ସୁରେନ୍ଦ୍ର ସାଏ ବୈଷୟିକ ବିଶ୍ୱବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟ, ବୁର୍ଲାରେ (Odishan.com, July 27, 2013)

Seen below are participants doing the Wiki editing at the workshop

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-sambalpur

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:20:24Z

Terms not defined in draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions leaves room for misinterpretation

The article by C.H.Unnikrishnan was published in Livemint on August 26, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society's work on access to knowledge is mentioned.

Could the simple Latin phrase, per se, which translates as “in itself”, lead to confusion in verifying whether a computer-related invention deserves a patent or not? Some members of the $108 billion Indian information technology industry, intellectual property (IP) law firms and anti-patent lobby groups say it can.

The inclusion of some terms that are not defined by local laws in the government’s draft guidelines on patents for computer-related inventions (CRIs) leaves room for ambiguity and misinterpretation when examiners grant or reject such a patent, they say. The guidelines were released in early August.

The terms include ‘per se’, algorithm, hardware, firmware —and CRI itself.

CRI “has not been defined in any of the Indian statutes and is construed to mean, for the purpose of these guidelines, any invention which involves the use of computers, computer networks or other programmable apparatus and includes such inventions, one or more features of which are realized wholly or partially by means of a computer programme/programmes”, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) acknowledged in the draft guidelines, and called for feedback from industry stakeholders by 8 August.

	Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent. IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se. The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Patent examination is the most crucial function performed by a patent office. An examiner verifies the invention claims made by an applicant by relying on scientific parameters, industrial applicability and previously known technologies, among others, to decide whether the claims are genuine and deserve a patent.

IPO’s draft guidelines are aimed at helping examiners in this task. However, with new technologies, the task of granting or rejecting patents has become tougher, as acknowledged by the patent office, in its draft guidelines. The confusion is only compounded with the inclusion of dictionary terms such as per se.

The Indian Patent Law does not contain any specific provision regarding the protection of computer software that includes programs, musical and artistic works, studio and video recordings, databases and preparation material and associated documents such as manuals. India does not grant pure software patents (i.e., a patent over a “computer programme per se”).

Software, instead, is protected by the Copyright Law, similar to literary and aesthetic works.

In the feedback, a copy which was reviewed by Mint, India’s largest software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), said it “is happy to note that IPO is taking the right steps in the direction of protecting inventions...Moving from the notion of ‘Computer Implemented Invention’ to ‘Computer Related Invention’ itself is a positive shift...”

	“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback. It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

“Primary objective of the CRI guidelines, as expected and understood by the stakeholders, is to deliberate on the meaning of “per se” in Section 3(k) for Software Inventions with example pertaining to Software Inventions and not interpret them to be the Hardware-led inventions,” said TCS in its feedback.

It added that “while examining the technical character of a CRI, mere usage of the words such as enterprise, business, business rules, supply-chain, order, sales, transactions, commerce, payment, etc. in the (patent) claims should not lead to conclusion of the CRI being just a ‘Business Method’ without any technical character. These terminologies actually qualify the contextual utility and fitment of the inventions..”

According to Rajiv Kumar Choudhari, a lawyer specializing in IT patent law, a computer program is software ‘per se’ because there may be no transformation of data/signal/input, or there is no tangible benefit to the device if this software is run on the device. “The benefit to the device may be in terms of efficiency, or increase/decrease in certain attributes,” he said in a blog in SpicyIP where he analyzed software patenting position in India earlier.

In such cases, if the applicant fails to define the exact benefit to the device in a tangible manner, the examiner may refuse to grant a patent. In January 2012, for instance, the Delhi patent office rejected a software patent application filed by Netomat Inc., on grounds that it did not fulfil the requirement of Section 3(k).

According to section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act, “a mathematical or business method or computer programs per se or algorithms” are not inventions.

Between 2006 and 2011, the latest available data, 34,967 IT patent applications were filed with the Indian patent office. It granted about 5,594 patents during the same period.

“We hope that through this consultation (feedback) the prevailing evaluation methods for computer related inventions will become more efficient and encourage the Industry to file and protect their IP. However, we have some major concerns related to the draft guidelines,” said Nassom, the country’s software lobby body.

Overall, the guidelines appear to be “restrictive and may be a hindrance to grant of patents in India, even when such rights would be granted in other countries like Europe, Japan, etc,” said Nasscom, adding that “over a period of time”, it will discourage innovative activities from being carried out in India.

For instance, Nasscom pointed out that since the patent office has not defined ‘per se’, the phrase “computer program per se” should mean a set of instructions by itself or computer program by itself. “This meaning is generally accepted even in the UK and before the EPO (European Patent Office),” it added. The software lobby body has suggested that the scope of the “per se” limitation in Section 3(k) should be changed to cover hardware features, irrespective of whether the features are novel or not.

The guidelines, said Nasscom, seem to imply that for computer program-related claims to be allowed, the software needs to be “machine specific”, which “will unfortunately exclude patent protection for any computer-implemented invention designed to be interoperable across platforms, and not specific to a machine”.

In its feedback to the patent office, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an organization that works on Internet privacy-related issues, underscored the complexity that new technologies could introduce by citing the example of CRIs in the field of data storage.

The first compact disc (CD) was invented in 1982, the digital video disc (DVD) in 1995 and the flash drive in 1999.

“While each of these inventions was far superior to their predecessor, the time between each incremental innovation has drastically reduced,” CIS noted in its feedback

“If an invention can become obsolete in as little as 2 years, it would make little sense to grant monopoly rights for 20 years. So even if a CRI passes the three tests of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability, it needs to be evaluated from the perspective of its possible obsolescence. In such a scenario, the examiner should look at the history of innovation in that particular field to ascertain that the invention does not become obsolete in a short time.”

Also consider for instance the term, “business methods”. It involves a whole gamut of activities in a commercial or industrial enterprise relating to transaction of goods or services but “the claims are at times drafted not directly as business methods but apparently with hitherto available technical features such as Internet, networks, satellites, tele-communications, etc”, the draft stated.

“The exclusions are carved out for all business methods and, therefore, if in substance the claims relate to business method even with the help of technology, they are not considered patentable,” the guidelines added.

The Japan intellectual Property Association, in its reaction to the India’s new CRI patenting guidelines, also noted that recent computers, including processors or memories, mostly do not rely on any specific programs.

“In addition, software-related inventions should be patentable originally for their functioning on the basis of novel computer programs in combination with general purpose devices. However, these computer-related inventions would be excluded from protection under the new standards for patentability,” it cautioned.

The draft guidelines “have interpreted and applied Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act 1970 in a more restrictive way to conclude as to what is patentable, which is a cause of concern to various stakeholders”, said Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in its reaction.

Software patents remain an emotive issue.

Their proponents argue that patents promote investment in research and development, accelerate software development by making previously unknown and not obvious software inventions public and protect IP of software companies. They also encourage the creation of software companies and jobs and increase the valuation of small companies, the proponents add.

Critics counter that traditional copyright has provided sufficient protection to facilitate massive investment in software development and that most software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.

Globally, patents in the IT and software sector are being revisited due to litigation and compensation claims over misuse of patents including the much-hyped patent battle of Apple Inc. with Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. with Microsoft Corp.

In June 2008, technology companies including Google, Intel Corp, Oracle Corp, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Co. set up the ‘Allied Security Trust’ to address the risk of patent-infringement suits by buying those patents which they feel are most important to their businesses.

AST has 26 members from Europe, North America and Asia. It buys patents that its members have expressed interest from the patent holder, and the cost would be deducted from those companies’ Escrow accounts. AST argues that non-practicing entities, or NPEs, also known as patent trolls, produce no products or services of their own, and yet acquire patents—sometimes hundreds of them—with the sole intention of asserting their right and conduct patent litigation to extract settlements or licensing fees.

In 2008, AST estimated that it costs operating companies an average of $3.2 million through the end of discovery and $5.2 million through trial to defend cases in which there is more than $25 million at stake.

The costs of determining if a particular piece of software infringes any issued patents are too high and the results too are uncertain. A software patent costs, on average, around $20,000, it said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-august-26-2013-ch-unnikrishnan-dictionary-words-in-software-patent-guidelines-puzzle-industry

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-06T12:30:19Z

Rusita Paryekar is one of the 38 students from the MA Konkani department of Goa University gathered at the State Central Library to learn writing and editing articles on Konkani Wikipedia. Currently Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation and needs more voluntary participation from enthusiasts who want their language, Konkani to strengthen its base in the digital knowledge domain.


					Wikipedia editor Rusita Paryekar speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia.

Thirty-eight M.A. students from the Konkani department of Goa came together for a four day long Konkani Wikipedia editing fun workshop and created history. Konkani Wikipedia is one of the Wikipedia projects that went into incubation (a phase every new Wikipedia project goes to allow the editor community to grow and take the project to a sustainable position) seven years back. Sadly it is still in incubation. One of the major reasons is the conflict for script. Konkani is written in 5 different scripts; Devanagari in Goa (as the official script of Goa) and Maharashtra, Roman (also known as Romi) and written by Goan Christian population, Kannada in Mangalore region of Karnataka, and Malayalam in Kochi region of Kerala. The Konkani speaking diaspora is now very much part of the the socio-ethnic groups of these neighbouring regions. The language of these states has naturally influenced Konkani spoken and written by the Konkani diaspora which has resulted in multiple writing standards and dialects. There are four standards of writing systems:

Writing standard that is officially approved by the Directorate of Official language, Government of Goa written in Devanagari script. Majority of the books (includes all Government of Goa publications) are written in this standard.
Writing standard that was influenced by the Portugese language during the Portuguese rule. Earliest available writings in Konkani including The Holy Bible are written in this standards.
Writing standard that Mangalorean Konkani diaspora use.
Writing standard that Keralite Konkani diaspora use.

Interestingly Konkani diaspora of all these regions have produced books in the writing standards mentioned above. The Konkani Wikipedia incubation project currently has 133 articles written in 3 different scripts; Devanagari, Roman and Kannada which has been a problem to get the approval. But this has not stopped the language enthusiasts to stop contributing. While meeting these students I felt that urge for bringing up Konkani in a digital domain and telling the Konkani diaspora about the untold story of Goa. This is the motivation that drives Rusita and many others to contribute to Wikipedia. Her first contribution was about Goan folk songs (गोंयची लोकगितां) which is the first Konkani article about this topic on the internet that is available for free. ‘If I would not write about my culture in my language who would do that?, says Rusita.

Further reading
Manohar L. Sardessai. Influence on Konkani. Journal of South Asian Literature. Vol. 18, No. 1, Goan Literature: A Modern Reader (Winter, Spring 1983), pp. 155-158.

Copyright note: The video and the content of this post are in CC-BY-SA 3.0. Feel free to use, share and remix the content and attribute me.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa-wikipedia-editor-rusita-paryekar

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

subha — 2013-09-05T09:24:57Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Konkani department of Goa University organized a four-day Wikipedia workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

				Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Video by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikipedia editors are always volunteers which translates to “Anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia”. What is that brings people in today’s date to write articles on Wikipedia. This is a question we are not sure at times. You get up late in the night and check how many times your article has been edited and feel excited. This happens to many of the wikipedians including myself. It has been a personal journey to ask Wikipedians about the same. While conducting this workshop along with my colleague Nitika, I spent some time with the students asking about their experience of Wikipedia editing. We found that many of them were shy enough to sound low and we could not take the videos. This particular video features Frania Pereira, an MA student from Konkani department of Goa University. She attended the Wikipedia workshop we organized at the Central Library at Panaji for two days and edited articles on Bebinca (Konkani article here) and Colvá fama (Konkani article here), a local festival celebrated by the Colvá Catholics. Frania is worried how people stereotype Goa to be the just land of enjoyment and not look at the diverse culture, its ethnic food and festivals. Even the Konkani speaking population in other regions (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and abroad) don’t know much about this socio-language-cultural diversity. No other language than her mother-toungue Konkani could tell about these. And that is why she edits Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/voices-from-goa

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference

praskrishna — 2013-08-29T06:30:54Z

Wikimania is the annual international conference of the Wikimedia movement. It's organized by a different local team each year. In 2013 the conference took place in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wikimania allows the community and the general public to learn about and share their experiences with free knowledge initiatives all over the world. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Click to read the details published on the Wikimania website.

The previous conferences were held in Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Boston, USA (2006), Taipei, Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009), Gdańsk, Poland (2010), Haifa, Israel (2011), and Washington, D.C., USA (2012).

Picture: Wikimania 2013. Official site, CC-BY-SA 3.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikimania-2013

Wikipedia writes a new script

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:27:27Z

Wikipedia is available in over 30 Indian languages. Add Konkani to that list. The Centre for Internet and Society has just completed a programme of training students to write for Konkani Wikipedia.

The article was published in the Goan on August 24, 2013.

They sat listening to Subhashish Panigrahi, learning how to seamlessly flow from English to Konkani. Panigrahi walked around the room, 40 sets of eyes and ears followed him eagerly, latching on to his every word. Then the team moved into a small conference room at the new Central Library, where they sat down to work on a few articles in Konkani. The reason: Because Wikipedia has a new language – Konkani.

When on February 4, 1987, Konkani in Devnagri script was declared the official language of Goa according to the Goa Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987, little did the officials know that one day, one of the largest web-based encyclopaedias would want the encyclopaedia to be available also in Konkani for the 30, 00000 or so Konkani language speakers over the world.

Wikipedia, a multi-lingual, web-based, free content encyclopaedia is available in over 30 Indian languages and several languages of other nations. The project to begin a Konkani Wikipedia began in 2006. “Sadly, even after seven years of inception, Konkani Wikipedia has only 90 articles,” says Nitika Tandon, of the CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet & Society, Access to Knowledge) team. The CIS is a movement for open access to web-based information. “Rather than being open receivers of knowledge, we want people to be active producers of knowledge,” she adds. The CIS has selected five Indian languages to uplift and Konkani is one of them.

Carlos Fernandes, the Curator of the Central Library said, “We supported it because this will maintain the culture and develop the language using technology. Articles in Konkani language will be available to people all over the world and thus should one want to research something in Konkani, his search will not be limited to the books of the library.” Another project by the CIS team to make Konkani more well-known is digitising the 4-volume Konkani encyclopaedia published by the Goa University. “This encyclopaedia will be uploaded by this team and will be available under the creative commons licence,” says Dr Gopakumar, the university Librarian.

The programme covered aspects like how Wikipedia works, how to edit articles, how to type in Devnagri, how to create a new article, etc. “We are learning how to about editing and writing in Wikipedia. The 40 students are of MA part 2, and the group is divided into two. The first 20 will work on the first two days and the others will work on the last two,” says Fr Luis Xavier Gomes who is doing his MA in Konkani at Goa University. Fr Gomes will be writing on Konkani tiatr and Konkani cantar after having researched and referenced about the same.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/thegoan-joyce-dias-august-24-2013-wikipedia-writes-a-new-script

Centre for Internet and Society

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore

Why CIS-A2K is conducting this Program?

Overview of the programme

Selection Criterion

Candidates' Deliverable

What's in it for you?

Call for Participation

FAQ

Contact

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

Introduction

Highlights of the Workshop

Articles and Participants

Media Coverage

Learnings

Challenges

Acknowledgements

What's Next?

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

Event Reports

Guest Columns

Media Coverage

Blog Entries

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

Events Co-organised

Event Organised

Events Participated

Media Coverage

Other guest columns:

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

About CIS

August 2013 Bulletin

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge and Openness

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Openness

Internet Governance

SAFEGUARDS Project

Telecom

Digital Humanities

About CIS

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు

వివరాలు

చర్చించాల్సిన అంశాలు

సమావేశం నిర్వాహకులు

సమావేశానికి ముందస్తు నమోదు

నివేదిక

సమావేశంలో పాల్గొన్నవారు

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS

Agenda for Training

About Jhatkaa

The Speakers

Keerthana Chandrashekar

Rachita

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur

Important links:

Media Coverage

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry

Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference