Centre for Internet and Society

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Prajavani)

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:05:25Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a workshop in Hasan on June 4, 2013. Prajavani carried a report on June 5, 2013.


A Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted in Hasan by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on June 4, 2013. Above is the report published by Prajavani in Kannada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-june-5-2013-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-coverage

May 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-13T11:51:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fifth issue of its newsletter for 2013. We bring you an overview of our research, report of events held by us and announcement of upcoming ones, events we participated in, and recent media coverage.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
CIS is now 5 years old and we just celebrated this by holding an open exhibition in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, showcasing our work and accomplishments over the period. We had about 170 visitors from the general public coming in to our office. Renowned artists like Tara Kelton, Kiran Subbaiah, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra and Sharath Chandra Ram exhibited their work. The four day event attracted press coverage: Bangalore Mirror (May 18, 2013), DNA (May 19, 2013), Hindu (May 22, 2013), Prajavani (May 23, 2013), Udayavani (May 25, 2013) and Bangalore Mirror (May 31, 2013). Download all posters that were part of the exhibition here.

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

Accessibility

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

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

The Sikkim Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, May 30, 2013).
The Odisha Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, May 31, 2013).

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

Banking Accessibility

Survey on Banking Accessibility (by Vrinda Maheshwari, May 30, 2013). G3ict is a survey on accessibility of financial services in banks for persons with disabilities around the world. The survey is available here.

Event Organised

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Access to Knowledge and Openness

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

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

Announcements

Access to Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014): CIS has announced its detailed plan detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.
WMF-A2K Revised Budget (draft) and Utilization (Sept 2012 - Feb 2013): In our effort to increase transparency with the working of CIS-A2K programme, we are sharing with you the A2K Programme Budget along with the Utilization for the period Sept. 2012 to February 2013. The proposed revisions to the budget along with some notes are here.
WMF-A2K Grant Budget and Utilization (Sept 2012 – February 2013): CIS has given an open disclosure of the Access to Knowledge budget to Wikimedia India and the global community.
CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai: has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions.
India Access to Knowledge IRC can be accessed here: May 13, 2013 (All Language Discussion) and May 26, 2013 (Odia Language Discussion).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 11, 2013).
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians (by Nitika Tandon, May 20, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 30, 2013).

Event Organised

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

Event Participated In

Kannada IRC Meet (organised by the Wikipedia Community, May 7, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Upcoming Event

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Press Coverage

CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Prajavani (Prajavani, May 23, 2013). Prajavani published a report of Dr. U.B. Pavanja’s talk “From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada”.
CIS Celebrates 5 Years: A Report in Udayavani (Udayavani, May 25, 2013). Udayavani published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)
Blog Entry

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit (by Ujwala Uppaluri, May 27, 2013).

Openness
Research Papers

Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers (by Subbiah Gunasekharan and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 27, 2013).
Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings (by Madhan Muthu and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, May 28, 2013).

Comments

Draft ICAR Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, May 28, 2013). The comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Event Hosted

RHoK Global Event (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, June 1 – 2, 2013). A report of the event would be published soon.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. We began two new projects earlier this year. The first one, with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression and the second one with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto on mapping of cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia:

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

An Interview with Christopher Soghoian (May 28, 2013).

Upcoming Event

The Geopolitics of Information Controls: A Presentation by Masashi Crete-Nishihata (TERI, Bangalore, June 19, 2013).

Privacy

Comparative Analysis of DNA Profiling Legislations from Across the World (by Srinivas Atreya, May 23, 2013).

Events Co-organised

3rd Privacy Round Table meeting (co-organised with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Data Security Council of India, Chennai, May 18, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event and gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations.
Consilience – 2013 (co-organised with the Law and Technology Committee of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 25, 2013).

Events Participated In

ICT, Law and Innovation: Recent Developments, Challenges and Lessons Learned (organised by Bilgi University, Istanbul, May 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker on the Internet Governance panel at Towards a Global Network of Internet and Society Centres.
India’s Politics of Free Expression (co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Centre, Free Speech Debate, the Oxford India Society and Ideas for India Oxbridge Exchange, May 31, 2013 at Nissan Lecture Theatre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Lectures on 'India's Politics of Free Expression'.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, Mumbai (Mayfair Banquets, Mumbai, June 15, 2013).

Blog Entry

The Surveillance Industry in India: At Least 76 Companies Aiding Our Watchers! (by Maria Xynou, May 2, 2013).

Media Coverage

Sex on-the-go (by Anand Holla, Mumbai Mirror, May 4, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
CIS anniversary (Hindu Business Line, May 5, 2013).
Central Monitoring System to make government privy to phone calls, text messages and social media conversations (by Indu Nandakumar, May 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Messaging apps find another foe in India’s market regulator (Quartz, May 8, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
India's Rs 400-crore Central Monitoring System to snoop on all communication (Tech 2, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is India's government becoming Big Brother? (by Talia Ralph and Jason Overdorf, May 9, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Worldwide Playground (Telegraph, May 15, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
NGO invites public to peruse its accounts (by Vandana Kamath, May 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Online privacy should not come at the cost of security: Sunil Abraham (by Anirban Sen, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
A lifetime of five years on the internet (by Subir Ghosh, DNA, May 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
CIS highlights changes ushered in by the Internet (Hindu, May 22, 2013).
Burma to host first Internet freedom forum (by Chan Myae Khine, Asian Correspondent, May 22, 2013).
INET Bangkok to Explore Internet’s Impact on Thailand’s Economy and Society (BusinessWire, May 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is participating in this conference.
Shooting cyber cafes before they die (by Bangalore Mirror, May 31, 2013). CIS’s film on Cyber Cafes is mentioned in this article.

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

Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). The agenda for the event has been finalised.

The following unit was published recently:

Network Connections and Modes of Access (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, May 30, 2013).

Telecom

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

Newspaper Column

Configuring a 'Non-Toothless' Regulator (TRAI) (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 9, 2013 and Organizing India Blogspot, May 10, 2013).

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

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Visit us at http://cis-india.org

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

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

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

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

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:15:54Z

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai.

Institutional partnerships (especially in the higher education context) is a cross-cutting activity across A2K's various language plans and also the pilot project. A2K Team is happy to share with you an important outcome on this front.

CIS-A2K has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions. The objective is to enhance digital literacy in the Indian languages and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and free dissemination. A2K along with TISS will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this. Further, within TISS campuses we will endeavour to bring teaching-learning processes onto free and open digital platforms, including Indian language Wikipedias. The A2K team would like to acknowledge the pivotal role played by our Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana in buildig this collaboration.

We'll keep you posted as and when new developments shape up and would like to actively involve Mumbai Wikipedians in planning, designing and rolling out Wikipedia training programmes.

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

Access To Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014)

T Vishnu Vardhan — 2013-06-10T14:20:06Z

This page is created to share CIS-A2K's Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) for Indian language Wikimedia projects. The main objective of this document is to present a detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.

Language Area Work Plans

Telegu

Odia

Kannada

GOM (Konkani)

Bengali

Overall Support Across Indian Language Communities

Pilot Project - Performing Arts in India

Learning and Evaluation

Introductory note

Context

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge (A2K) program in India; of this, ₹11,000,000 has been released. The purpose of the grant is to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand on Wikimedia’s Indic-language free-knowledge projects. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Objective

The main objective of this document is to present a detailed Annual Work Plan for 2013–14, setting out the expected outcomes and impact of the A2K program activities. The overall objectives of the A2K Team are here.

Methodology

In putting together this Work Plan the A2K team has, over the last two months extensively engaged with various stakeholders. These include a) some Wikimedia India Community members across various Indian-language Wikimedia projects; b) some English-language Wikimedia community members from India; c) Wikimedia India chapter executive committee; d) some potential institutional partners; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

A draft of each of the language plan will be shared with the particular language community through respective language Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists; feedback will be collected in finalizing the plan.

A2K’s method of work

A2K principally sees itself as working hand-in-hand with the Indian Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India chapter, and with all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India. A2K will mostly engage in catalytic kind of work; however, depending on the requirements of each language-area, the A2K team may also undertake the hands-on implementation of some activities that would otherwise be done by the community. The planned A2K program activities are mostly in the south and south-east of India, and it makes better programmatic sense to have the A2K team located in Bangalore. This will not only save the A2K program from relatively larger overhead spending for the project (which could be productively used for programmatic work) but will enable the A2K team to be more in touch with the Wikimedia India community and in proactively undertaking collaborative activities with the community on the ground. Thus the entire A2K team will relocate to Bangalore and work out of the existing CIS office. Please kindly note that the A2K team will hire a new space in Bangalore, once the work plan is finalized, and the intention is that this space will be open to free use by the WM India community and chapter alike.

How to read this Annual Work Plan

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised. The intention of this Work Plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. The broader aspects of the plan have been outlined here. Thus this document is more towards evolving a sense of granularity of the A2K team’s work along with micro level outcome and impact metrics.

We have worked towards developing an Annual Work Plan that is language-specific. The A2K team has not adopted ONE single model, because we believe that each language area has a) specific strengths that we need to build on; b) particular needs for support that we could offer; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions. Thus there are chances that you might see repetitions in the strategies mentioned across language areas.

Please note that the A2K team has some language area plans worked out in greater detail than others. This is mainly because we intend to prioritize working on five language areas during the coming year. This does not mean that we will not support other language areas/communities, but our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on requests made to the A2K team by the community. The A2K team will continue its efforts in actively exploring to include a few more language areas, and will share such plans after they reach a certain stage.

Risk and mitigation

The message that comes across, after a cursory glance at Indian-language Wikipedias, is that there is a huge potential to increase the number of editors, especially active editors, along with the expansion of article entries. On one hand, unfortunately there is no fool-proof formula or plan that either the Wikimedia India community, Wikimedia India chapter or A2K can immediately bank on. This does not mean, on the other hand, that there are no ideas, experiences, learnings and failures, that can inform a strategy. An important point is that what we (the community, WMI chapter, WMF and A2K) all are attempting to do is to achieve something that sounds very simple (increase the number of editors, increase the articles, and build article quality) but yet complex to achieve. In addition to this, improving the Indian-language Wikipedias becomes even more complex for some the following reasons:

Lack of reference material available online in Indian languages.
Typing in Indian languages is a major challenge.
Relative dearth of quality content available in digital format.
Relative lack of research/academic standards, which is transferred on to Indian language Wikipedias.
Various technical issues like input, browser compatibility, font display, which deter new users.

Thus it should be noted that we should extend our work beyond Wikipedia, if we are to grow Indian-language Wikipedias. We need to think of a holistic intervention that would also involve enabling, facilitating and forming localized language-based virtual communities. That this has never been done before, and Indian language Wikipedias have a huge potential to do so.[1] This is also the significance of Indian-language Wikipedias, which are a potential (often the only) medium/platform for migrating Indian languages into the digital era. Also Wikipedia can be leveraged to further the much-needed active research culture in India and Indian culture. As a collective, we are doing something cutting edge and have too much of a risk of failure, time and again. This kind of work has failure fore-written. The only mitigation by which we can aim to be successful is by being open to learning, working as a collective, being supportive of each other, picking ourselves up whenever we fall down, and celebrating the little successes.

Language area work plans

As indicated above, the A2K team has prioritized the five languages and developed a detailed plan. We had initially set out to work with a different set of languages. The language set has slightly changed during the past two months.

Telugu
Odia
Kannada
(GOM) Konkani
Bengali

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

Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and increase in that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later point. We have respected the community's decision and are open to work with a couple of language areas later in time.
Work on one incubation project. During our interaction with Wikimedia India Chapter EC about the A2K plans, they have actively encouraged the A2K team to take up at least one project under incubation. Based on their suggestion we have taken up Konkani as we have some institutional contacts that could be leveraged to build the Konkani Wikipedia. The A2K team has also conducted some outreach work in Goa over the past 3–4 months that could be built on.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

As mentioned earlier, A2K team's prioritization of working actively with these five language projects does not mean that A2K team will not support other language areas/communities. The A2K team will continue to provide overall support to all Wikipedia Communities in India. Our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on the requests made to the A2K team by community members.

Overall A2K support to all Wikipedia communities in India

Besides the specific programs mentioned under individual language area plans, A2K team will provide overall support to all Indian-language Wikipedia communities. Please see this page for more details.

Pilot Project – Performing Arts in India

India has a wide range of performing arts. A lot of work is done on performing arts by various individuals and institutions, which offers rich knowledge about the aesthetics, artists, institutions, performance spaces/infrastructure, and policies, across various geographies and languages. This pilot is premised on a theme and seeks to create a multilingual repository of knowledge on Indian performing arts that is interdisciplinary, dynamic and ever evolving. Please go here to read more about the plan.

Learning and evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Community, the A2K team has arrived at some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work. Please see this page for more details.

Giving feedback

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

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.
- For Telugu plan here.
- For Odia plan here.
- For Kannada plan here.
- For Konkani plan here.
- For Bengali plan here.
For feedback on Pilot Project plan go here.
For feedback on Overall Support Across Indian language Communities you can write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnucis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please call +919845207308 from 08:00 to 21:00 hours IST (Indian Standard Time).

List of contributors

[1] Many of the challenges that we see vis-à-vis Indian-language Wikipedias are somewhat akin to the challenges print technology faced during the 19th century in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/resources/access-to-knowledge-work-plan

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit

ujwala — 2013-06-05T06:55:41Z

It is not news in this country when the law or other institutions of the state, are used as tools by which to threaten or intimidate citizens into submission to a particular course of action or to a particular point of view. Unfortunate as that is, today’s post will deal with the rising incidence of SLAPP suits, an abuse of the adjudicatory process that is also a feature in a number of jurisdictions elsewhere.

Our interest in them arises from two sources. The first is the particular damage that this device is able to do free speech. Its effects were quite picturesquely described in the following terms by the Delhi High Court in M/S. Crop Care Federation Of India v. Rajasthan Patrika (Pvt) Ltd. “Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined.” [Rajasthan Patrika in turn borrowed this language from Gordon v. Marrone, a case in the New York Supreme Court.] The second is this piece of news.

About the Phenomenon
The term “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” is rather self-explanatory. Nevertheless, some of its features bear the explicit articulation:

First, there is always, and necessarily, a power imbalance between the parties in such cases: the plaintiff or complainant will always have greater and often disproportionately greater access to the resources necessary to enter and sustain a litigation, in addition to social, political or corporate power. A simple shorthand for SLAPP suits will always be Deep Pockets v. Free Expression. And so it has been in India, as this article evidences.

Second, there is always one object: to intimidate a target into silence or apology by way of legal action or the threat of it. SLAPPs are a win-win play for those that employ them: targets are likely to bow to the pressure given that they will not have access to the resources to mount a legal defense. Even where the defendants’ (relatively scarce) resources are diverted to the defense of their speech, even assuming that the threat and costs of litigation, the civil damages and/or penal consequences do not intimidate them, their opportunity cost will be considerably higher than that of the other party. Given the ordinary rigours of the adjudicatory process and the ubiquitous delays associated with it in India, however, the harassment function of the SLAPP is always achieved.

Third, SLAPP suits are always characterized by a flimsy, frivolous or even non-existent cause of action. They will have done their damage irrespective of, and before, the outcome of the suit is decided. The question of legal tenability, and in these cases, its absence is really not one of any relevance. The real damage is done by forcing defendants to bear the trouble (monetary and otherwise) with preparing and mounting the legal response/defense itself, rather than by the litigation’s ultimate success or failure. A little amusing then that in the latest instance, which I describe later in this post, it is a law student, presently in law school and writing for a legal blog who finds herself on the receiving end of such threats.

Defamation SLAPPs
Defamation is a classic tool by which contrary opinions are sought to be silenced by those in (political, social or corporate) power. Rajeev Dhavan argues here that defamation is becoming an increasingly popular tool by which the “politics of exposé” and whistleblowers participating in it are being threatened. [SLAPPs in India have arisen on the back of other causes of action as well. See, for instance, the case of S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal and Frontline discussing it.] Lawrence Liang details a number of older instances in which defamation has been used in Indian courts to silence speech here.

Much more recently, Tata Sons Ltd. v. Greenpeace International, involved intellectual property and defamation claims in a game designed to bring attention to the threat to Olive Ridley turtles from developmental activity in Orissa. The IIPM saga that rose to prominence in February this year is another instance of such litigation. It is also one that carries the added ignominy that a university, whose function one would presume is to foster critical thinking and the ability to constructively respond to criticism, would sue for defamation against criticism and use the state apparatus to employ opaque means by which to silence the allegedly offending content online [see here and here]. IIPM also demonstrates how SLAPPs will involve what have been called “creative ways” to abuse of process: more than one suit can be filed, and they can be filed in more than one jurisdiction or in jurisdictions in which it is difficult for the target of the suit to appear or defend him or herself.

On Attempts at Silencing Academic Opinion
While the Activist v. Corporation trope is by now a tired one, it appears that the incidence of SLAPP proceedings, both civil and criminal, against commentators and academics are on the rise:

Ajay Shah’s case has been a well-documented one [see here and here], and one in which the Bombay High Court did not appear to appreciate the SLAPP dynamic. Closer to home, Shamnad Basheer [see here and here] a professor at NUJS and founder of SpicyIP saw a defamation SLAPP suit for what appears to be an exercise in only academic analysis.

As of the 21^st of this month, it was reported that a student contributor at the same blog, Aparajita Lath faces similarly suspect allegations of defamation from a newspaper [see here and here]. Here is a case not of Activist v. Corporation or Whistleblower v. Government, but of Academic Opinion v. Press. There is a special and truly unfortunate irony in the press having recourse to tools like the defamation suit, and even more egregiously, the criminal complaint.

Why We Worry
A number of rights of the target are ordinarily affected by SLAPP suits. In what was a significant case for the United Kingdom involving a defamation suit brought by McDonald’s against two authors of a pamphlet criticizing it, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) recognized in Steel and Morris v. United Kingdom a number of the following rights:

First, there is the right to free expression itself. Violations of this right would arise on two levels, although the second may not be actionable. First, there is the right of the defendant to the SLAPP suit. Steel and Morris affirmed that the fact that the defendants to the defamation suit were not journalists did not mean that the scope of their free speech protection would differ [¶89]. Instead, it held that “the limits of acceptable criticism” where “large public companies” were concerned was wider than those that would otherwise apply [¶ 94]. India’s Supreme Court has, in one notable instance, disagreed on the proposition that bloggers should have similar rights to journalists. Next, there is the chilling effect: others placed similarly to the targets of SLAPP suits would self-censor to avoid legal retaliation for their views and the significant cost of defending themselves.

The importance of Steel and Morris however comes from this latter set of holdings. The ECtHR found that the right to fair trial, in civil and criminal cases, which included the right of access to court and to justice presumed an “equality of arms” as between contesting parties [¶ 59]. It held to this effect on the understanding that European Convention on Human Rights, the underlying rights instrument, was a guarantee of practical and effective rights. In the circumstances of that case, it found that since the financial disadvantage of the defendants in the defamation suit disallowed them the opportunity to mount an effective defence, there was a clear inequality of arms with McDonalds that rendered the trial unfair for the purpose of Convention Article 6 (1) [¶72].

The IIPM blocks add a further dimension to the problem. When the content complained against is online, India’s lack of clear legal principles to determine, and more crucially limit, where the cause of action will have arisen and can be tried will only exacerbate the blogger’s situation, given the arguably global spread of an audience for online content.

A final point about this trend, particularly as it relates to silencing academic comment, is that it is a dangerous one, and one against which we must all speak out: these cases, in which the challenged content offers studied comment against the powers that be, will be a good acid test for the strength of our speech protections as they fall squarely within the class of speech which constitutional protections seek to maximize and disinhibit. It should be the very minimum that the Article 19(1)(a) guarantee entails.

A lifetime of five years on the internet

praskrishna — 2013-05-20T09:04:28Z

Centre for Internet and Society observes its fifth anniversary on Sunday.

The article by Subir Ghosh was published in DNA on May 19, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted in this.

Five years is a long time in the internet space. The past five years, certainly, has been. And so has it been for the Centre for Internet and Society that completes five years here.

When a group of citizens got together to come under a platform called CIS five years ago, they had wanted to work on policy issues about the internet that had a bearing on society. They, in fact, still do; except that the new media space itself has undergone a metamorphosis. Five years ago social media was just starting off, few people had smart phones, and online speech was not a burning issue.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of city-based CIS, affirms this, and goes on to assert: “Five years ago, privacy was not a mainstream concern. Today, many different actors and stakeholders are interested in the configuration of the draft Privacy Bill. We first warned the public about the draconian measures in the IT Act during the 2008 amendment. Four years later, many more people are familiar with problematic sections and are adopting various strategies to amend the Act and it’s associated rules.”

Likewise, five years ago, people dismissed “shared spectrum” as a pipe dream; today “shared spectrum” is mentioned in the National Telecom Policy. CIS usually thinks ahead, and works on a range of issues.

“For internet adoption in India to grow dramatically from the dismal statistics today, we need to ensure continued access to cheap devices and affordable and ubiquitous broadband,” says Abraham.

“With Ericsson suing Micromax for Rs100 crore, the mobile wars have come to India. If we have to protect innovation in sub-100 dollar devices, we need to configure our patent and copyright policy carefully.”

But since CIS works primarily on policy issues, shouldn’t it have been based in Delhi rather than in Bangalore? “We do have a small office in Delhi. But we are headquartered in Bangalore because we need to keep learning from technologists and the technical community,” explains Abraham.

When an organisation calling itself the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org) observes its fifth anniversary, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that many of the activities related to the anniversary celebrations (May 20-23) have precious little to do with the internet, and is more about society itself. And yes, an entire evening is devoted to Kannada. There’s a talk by Chandrashekhara Kambara on ‘Kannada in the modern era,’ and another by UB Pavanaja titled ‘From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada’.

“We are looking at the complete eco-system. For instance, during the digitalisation of TV in India, what will happen to the internet? Do TV promoting policies undermine the growth of broadband? On the second day we look at the connection between another older technology - cinema and the Internet.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-india-may-19-2013-subir-ghosh-a-lifetime-of-five-years-on-the-internet

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

subha — 2013-07-17T06:35:15Z

This blog encompasses the status of Odia Wikipedia and assessment of the needs for growth of the community.

This blog is part of the annual work plan for Odia Wikipedia which was updated on Odia Wikipedia and Meta Wiki.

Odia is one of the official languages of India. It is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand. Odia is also spoken in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. By 2011 census there are 3.6 crore Odia speakers across the world. Literacy rate of Odisha is 73.45 per cent (82.4 per cent male, 64.36 per cent female).

Majority of the computer users in Odisha were on Microsoft Windows platforms. Windows did not have a stable Odia language support until the release of Windows Vista. This would have forced majority of the computer users prefer English on Odia for internet communication. As per the 2011 census only 5.1 per cent of the 9,661,085 households of Odisha had computers and 1.4 per cent (357,460 households) of the households had access to internet. Odia Wikipedia has only 13 active contributors[1] who are based both in and out of Odisha and contributed to 3715 articles.[2]

Low computer/internet penetration, lack of promotion/outreach of Odia Wikipedia are some of the major factors which resulted in low Wikipedia participation. Odia Wikipedia celebrated its 9th anniversary on January 29, 2013 which is marked to be the date of its first edit in 2004.[3] The project was inactive for about 8 years until February 2011.[4]

Community building process slowly started by February-March 2011 by some of the active wikipedians in Bengaluru and gradually in six other cities in and out of Odisha.[5]The community so far has organized 18 meet-ups, 10 workshops and worked on a major media donation project on Wikimedia Commons.[6] Six on-wiki projects on various subjects[7] and rolled a Wikipedia education program.[8]

Fact Sheet

Wikimedia projects	No. of Editors/Contributors (2011-12)	No. of Editors (2012-13)	No. of Active editors (2011-12)	No. of Active editors (2012-13)	No. of Articles/ entries (2011-12)	No. of Articles/ entries (2012-13)	No. of Page views per months
Wikipedia	29	64	19	14	1951	3209	330161
Wiktionary	6	14	1	2	98	155	30618

Identified Needs

This section gives a broad idea of the challenges for community/wikipedia growth for which there is a need of programatic and technical intervention.

Lack of awareness

Lack of media presence: Mainstream Odia language media is still unaware of the presence and importance of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need for wider media coverage about Odia Wikipedia.
Lack of focussed meetups/outreach events due to dispersed community: Outreach events and meetups have not been customized for the target audience and have been done in a low scale because of the small community dispersed in six different cities. Physical meetups often have been more on technical issues and not much focus on designing strategies for growing content and community. Experienced wikipedians conducting outreach need to be trained properly to conduct productive outreach events.
More city centric communities: Majority of community members are located in three major cities; Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Nalconagar. This has resulted in outreach events being more delimited to these three cities only. There is a need for taking Odia Wikipedia to more cities.
Target age group for outreach: Till date the targeted audience for outreach are mostly engineering/other students based in cities where English is predominantly the language of communication in terms of written/computer communication and partly verbal communication. Many of the elderly masses are unaware of even the existence of Odia Wikipedia. More of young professionals, elderly and retired professionals need to be involved in the outreach.

Accessibility issues

Technical hindrance

Lack of Unicode usage: Printing industry professionals still use non-Unicode fonts for typing. There are at least three major different typing schemes and font categories used across the industry (includes book/magazine/newspaper publishers, print/digital media). Font converter tools of high accuracy are needed for easy conversion of such available content and using them as primary resources.
Lack of support in typing schemes: Those who are experienced in typing schemes other than the ones used on Odia Wikipedia (InScript, Transliteration, Phonetic) often fail to adapt the typing schemes of Odia Wikipedia. There is a need of new typing schema for simplifying typing in Odia.

Content

Lack of Open-Source culture: There is very little presence of the open source methodology across academia, media industry and public and private sector organization. A lot of resources produced are either not digitized and distributed or copyrighted. This has been a road block to the Wikipedia community to make use of any kind of archived and digitized resource. Wikipedians need to be connected to more open source communities, exchange ideas/information and spreading words across other communities.
Lack of resource dissemination because of support: Some of the digitized resources are not being distributed because of shortage of manpower and resource. A book digitization project initiated by Srujanika faced many hindrances during distribution including copyright issues, hosting and manpower for support. Such resources need to be gathered and distributed for community use.

Community

Role of experienced wikipedians: There is a need of more experienced wikipedians coming forward to take the lead of projects along with their primary contribution for articles. Wikipedia could be a platform for them to reach out to more people who are in the domain of knowledge dissemination and language resource building.

[1]. Wikimedia stats. January 2013

[2].https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

[3].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriya_Wikipedia

[4].http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Tinucherian_and_Shijualex/Wiki_Community_development_in_India_and_newsletter/Report#Bhubaneshwar

[5].http://shijualex.in/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2011/

[6].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/ay

[7].https://or.wikipedia.org/s/jf

[8]. https://or.wikipedia.org/s/cgj

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

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

praskrishna — 2013-05-17T01:01:47Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by July 1, 2013.

The Google Policy Fellowship offers successful candidates an opportunity to develop research and debate on the fellowship focus areas, which include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom, for a period of about ten weeks starting from July 7, 2013 upto October 1, 2013. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

To apply, please send to google.fellowship@cis-india.org the following materials:

Statement of Purpose: A brief write-up outlining about your interest and qualifications for the programme including the relevant academic, professional and extracurricular experiences. As part of the write-up, also explain on what you hope to gain from participation in the programme and what research work concerning free expression online you would like to further through this programme. (About 1200 words max).
Resume
Three references

Fellowship Focus Areas

Access to Knowledge: Studies looking at access to knowledge issues in India in light of copyright law, consumers law, parallel imports and the interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property rights, targeted at policymakers, Members of Parliament, publishers, photographers, filmmakers, etc.

Openness in India: Studies with policy recommendations on open access to scholarly literature, free access to law, open content, open standards, free and open source software, aimed at policymakers, policy researchers, academics and the general public.

Freedom of Expression: Studies on policy, regulatory and legislative issues concerning censorship and freedom of speech and expression online, aimed at bloggers, journalists, authors and the general public.

Privacy: Studies on privacy issues like data protection and the right to information, limits to privacy in light of the provisions of the constitution, media norms and privacy, banking and financial privacy, workplace privacy, privacy and wire-tapping, e-governance and privacy, medical privacy, consumer privacy, etc., aimed at policymakers and the public.

Telecom: Building awareness and capacity on telecommunication policy in India for researchers and academicians, policymakers and regulators, consumer and civil society organisations, education and library institutions and lay persons through the creation of a dedicated web based resource focusing on knowledge dissemination.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Google Policy Fellowship program?

The Google Policy Fellowship program offers students interested in Internet and technology related policy issues with an opportunity to spend their summer working on these issues at the Centre for Internet and Society at Bangalore. Students will work for a period of ten weeks starting from June 1, 2013. The research agenda for the program is based on legal and policy frameworks in the region connected to the ground-level perceptions of the fellowship focus areas mentioned above.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program? Are there any age restrictions on participating?

Yes. You must be 18 years of age or older by January 1, 2013 to be eligible to participate in Google Policy Fellowship program in 2013.

Are there citizenship requirements for the Fellowship?

For the time being, we are only accepting students eligible to work in India (e.g. Indian citizens, permanent residents of India, and individuals presently holding an Indian student visa. Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet the criteria.

Who is eligible to participate as a student in Google Policy Fellowship program?

In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs. Eligibility is based on enrollment in an accredited university by January 1, 2013.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program?

In order to participate in the program, you must be a student (see Google's definition of a student above). You must also be eligible to work in India (see section on citizen requirements for fellowship above). Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet this criterion.
I have been accepted into an accredited post-secondary school program, but have not yet begun attending. Can I still take part in the program?

As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2013, you are eligible to participate in the program.
I graduate in the middle of the program. Can I still participate?

As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2013, you are eligible to participate in the program.

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

How do payments work?

Google will provide a stipend of USD 7,500 equivalent to each Fellow for the summer.

Accepted students in good standing with their host organization will receive a USD 2,500 stipend payable shortly after they begin the Fellowship in June 2013.
Students who receive passing mid-term evaluations by their host organization will receive a USD 1,500 stipend shortly after the mid-term evaluation in July 2013.
Students who receive passing final evaluations by their host organization and who have submitted their final program evaluations will receive a USD 3,500 stipend shortly after final evaluations in August 2013.

Please note: Payments will be made by electronic bank transfer, and are contingent upon satisfactory evaluations by the host organization, completion of all required enrollment and other forms. Fellows are responsible for payment of any taxes associated with their receipt of the Fellowship stipend.

*While the three step payment structure given here corresponds to the one in the United States, disbursement of the amount may be altered as felt necessary.

What documentation is required from students?

Students should be prepared, upon request, to provide Google or the host organization with transcripts from their accredited institution as proof of enrollment or admission status. Transcripts do not need to be official (photo copy of original will be sufficient).

I would like to use the work I did for my Google Policy Fellowship to obtain course credit from my university. Is this acceptable?

Yes. If you need documentation from Google to provide to your school for course credit, you can contact Google. We will not provide documentation until we have received a final evaluation from your mentoring organization.

Host Organizations

What is Google's relationship with the Centre for Internet and Society?

Google provides the funding and administrative support for individual fellows directly. Google and the Centre for Internet and Society are not partners or affiliates. The Centre for Internet and Society does not represent the views or opinions of Google and cannot bind Google legally.

Important Dates

What is the program timeline?

June 15, 2013	Student Application Deadline. Applications must be received by midnight.
July 1, 2013	Student applicants are notified of the status of their applications.
July 2013	Students begin their fellowship with the host organization (start date to be determined by students and the host organization); Google issues initial student stipends.
August 2013	Mid-term evaluations; Google issues mid-term stipends.
October 2013	Final evaluations; Google issues final stipends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/google-policy-fellowship-call-for-applications-2013

CIS anniversary

praskrishna — 2013-05-06T07:28:07Z

The Centre for Internet and Society will celebrate five years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its works and accomplishments.

This was published in Hindu Business Line on May 5, 2013

The exhibition will be held concurrently at both Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, said a press release.

“To promote transparency, we're getting the general public to be our auditors by throwing open our account books and contracts which show how we have spent the Rs 8.3 crore received from our donors.”

The exhibition will also see artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra, among others exhibiting their works, as well as lectures.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T09:15:58Z

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

Download all the posters exhibited during the recent exhibition here.

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

Agenda

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

Evening Programmes

May 20, 2013

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

May 21, 2013

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

May 22, 2013

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Surveillance

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

May 23, 2013

Kannada Language and IT

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

About the Speakers

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

The Artists

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

Locations

Bangalore

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

Delhi

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

Event Brochure

Event Flier

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

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

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

Access to Knowledge

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

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

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

Openness

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

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

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

Internet Governance (Privacy)

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

Telecom

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

RAW Monographs

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

News and Media

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

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

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — May 2013

praskrishna — 2013-07-04T04:17:49Z

In this issue of our newsletter for 2013, we are pleased to bring you updates about the open exhibition held at our office for celebrating five years of our existence, Access to Knowledge work plan (2013-14), and the revised budget (September 2012 - February 2013).

Wikimedia Foundation, beginning from September 1, 2012, awarded the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. Consequently, Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program became the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS. In this newsletter, we are pleased to bring you updates about the recently concluded exhibition organised in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi and share with you the feedback to the Access to Knowledge work plan from the wikipedia community.

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. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer left the organisation on April 24, 2013. Archives of our newsletters are here.

Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
CIS is now 5 years old and we recently celebrated this by holding an open exhibition in our offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, showcasing our work and accomplishments over the five year period. We had about 170 visitors coming in to our office. Renowned artists like Tara Kelton, Kiran Subbaiah, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra and Sharath Chandra Ram exhibited their work. The four-day event attracted press coverage: Bangalore Mirror (May 18, 2013), DNA (May 19, 2013), Hindu (May 22, 2013), Prajavani (May 23, 2013), Udayavani (May 25, 2013) and Bangalore Mirror (May 31, 2013). Download all the posters that were part of the exhibition here.

Announcements

Access to Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014): CIS has announced its detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.
WMF-A2K Revised Budget (draft) and Utilization (September 2012 - February 2013): In our effort to increase transparency with the working of CIS-A2K programme, we are sharing with you the A2K Programme Budget along with the utilization for the above period. The proposed revisions to the budget along with some notes are here.
CIS Signs MOU with TISS: has signed a MoU with TISS as part of which we will collaboratively work towards building Digital Knowledge Partnerships with select higher education institutions.
India Access to Knowledge IRC can be accessed here: May 13, 2013 (All Language Discussion) and May 26, 2013 (Odia Language Discussion).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 11, 2013).
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians (by Nitika Tandon, May 20, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants (by Subhashish Panigrahi, May 30, 2013).
My First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad (by T. Vishnu Vardhan, June 19, 2013).

Events Organised

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

Event Participated

Kannada IRC Meet (organised by the Wikipedia Community, May 7, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Upcoming Event

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised in collaboration with HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS (IISc), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Press Coverage

Report on CIS 5 Years Celebration (Prajavani, May 23, 2013). Prajavani published a report of Dr. U.B. Pavanja’s talk “From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada”.
Report on CIS 5 Years Celebration (Udayavani, May 25, 2013). Udayavani published a report of the evening programme hosted as part of the Centre for Internet and Society's 5 year celebrations in its Bangalore edition.
A Feature on Wikipedia and Telegu Wikipedians (HMTV, May 30 – 31, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted in this half an hour feature on Wikipedia and Telugu Wikipedians.
Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme (HMTV, June 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan speaks about Telegu Wikipedia in the discussion that was telecasted live.

About CIS

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

CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-may-2013

Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges

nitika — 2013-05-08T02:26:36Z

Nitika Tandon, in this blog post, provides an analysis of the Konkani Wikipedia. She reflects on the challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia and identifies four possible solutions.

Konkani is a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighbouring states on the western coast of India (also known as the Kokan belt) – some pockets in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. All of these neighbouring states are places where speakers from Goa may have migrated over the past five centuries (Garry, 2001).[1] Each region has a different dialect, pronunciation style, vocabulary, tone and sometimes, significant differences in grammar.

The total number of Konkani speakers seems to have remained remarkably stable for over a century. This is borne out by the census reports over the years. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).[2]

Goa has a high literacy rate of 87.4 per cent.[3] Goa is also in one of the top three states/union territories with highest computer density. In Goa, about 31.1 per cent of households use computers while 12.7 per cent of households use computers with internet.[4]

Konkani Wikipedia is currently in its incubation stage with very few editors. About 86 articles have been added but much work needs to be done 1) to push it as a live Wikipedia project and 2) to improve quality and quantity of articles. Konkani Wikipedia promotes editing in all scripts (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada) equally.

Challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Konkani Wikipedia has grown meagerly in the past 7 years ever since the inception of the project (in 2006). It is still an extremely small project with barely 86 articles. The project received maximum number of edits in 2007-2008 and since then the level of activity has been gradually decreasing with negligible edits in 2012-2013.
There are handful of volunteers who have ever edited on Konkani Wikipedia and they too seem to have lost interest/inclination to sustain their edits. There are only 16 editors who have total of 10 edits or more on Konkani Wikipedia. In addition, no virtual/physical meeting of any kind has ever been organised by/for the volunteers. No outreach event had also been organised for Konkani Wikipedia until Dec 2012.[5]
Problem of usage of multiple scripts in Konkani Wikipedia aggravates the massive challenges the project currently faces. Konkani does not have a unique script of its own and hence scripts of the other languages native to the regions are used. Konkani speakers are spread across different states and they use multiple scripts like Kannada, Devanagari, Roman and Perso-Arabic scripts. There is no one/common script - Konkani thus has a unique distinction of being written in four scripts.
Multiple script issue ties in with some religious aspects as well. The Goan Hindus use the Devanagari script in their writings while the Goan Christians use the Roman script. The Saraswats of Karnataka use the Devanagari script in North Kanara district and the Kannada script in Udupi and South Kanara. Malayalam script is used in Kerala, but now there is a move to use the Devanagari script.

Because of these reasons and more Konkani Wikipedia has struggled to grow since its inception. It has been in the incubation stage for the past 7 years with an extremely small number of volunteers.

Fact Sheet

Parameters	Number
No. of scripts used in current incubation project	3 (Roman, Devanagari, Kannada)
No. of articles in Devnagri script	52
No. of articles in Roman script	32
No. of articles in Kannada script	2
No. of system messages translated in Devnagari script	126 (including 30 core messages)
No. of system messages translated in Roman script	500
No. of system messages translated in Kannada script	0
No. of editors with more than 10 edits	16
No. of editors with less than 10 edits	32
No. of articles	86
No. of redirects	4
No. of revisions	1113 (including 254 minor edits)

Multiple script issue faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Developing of Konkani Wikipedia faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. Enabling the users to access and edit all articles in different scripts is the main problem faced by this wiki.

Similar challenge faced by other wikis: Similar problem was faced by Kashmiri Wikipedia which used Pasho, Sharada and Devanagari scripts. Punjabi has the Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts, of which the former is used in India and the latter in Pakistan. Chinese language has two major writing systems; simplified and traditional Chinese. Other Wikipedias that have faced similar challenge are Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Korean Wikipedia, etc.

Possible solutions: Let’s look at what are the possible solutions to this problem of multiple scripts, how some of these language Wikipedias have tackled this in the past, and what might or might not work for Konkani Wikipedia in particular.

Possible Solution 1: Automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be built into the server end of language Wikipedia to automatically transliterate content from one script into another.
Other Wikis using this solution are Chinese, Serbian, Kazakh, Kurdish Wikipedias. To give an example, Automatic conversion system has been running successfully on Chinese Wikipedia since 2004 and has been well received by the community. In addition to Chinese Wikipedia, Chinese Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks also have the conversion systems.
Automatic transliteration from one script to another might not work for Konkani Wikipedia, as there are dialectical differences and also there is no ready tool available for to convert one script to another. (transliterating between Roman to Devanagari or Roman to Kannada script etc.).

Possible Solution 2: Partial automatic conversion system.

A plug-in could be used that can transliterate one script to at least another; out of all the writing systems used.
Other Wikis using this solution are Tajik, Uzbek, Gan Wikipedia. To give an example, Tajik Wikipedia currently has auto-converting system for two of the writing systems (Cyrillic - Latin) but not into Perso-Arabic.
This could be a possible solution for Konkani Wikipedia if the community decides that they’d like to have transliteration tools installed at least for the Indian scripts.

Possible Solution 3: Multiple writing system

Have multiple articles in different scripts about the same topic. For example, have multiple articles about India in Konkani Wikipedia - one in Devanagari script, another in Roman script and yet another in Kannada script.
Some of the other wikis considering to adopt multiple writing system in the near future are Korean and Javanese Wikipedia.
This could be the short term solution for Konkani Wikipedia. It is something that is currently being used in Konkani Wikipedia in incubation and might also prove to be one of the best solutions for live Konkani Wikipedia project.

Possible Solution 4: Create separate wikis for each script

Create separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.
Separate wikis were created for Punjabi-Gurmukhi and Punjabi-Shahmukhi.
This could potentially be the long term solution for Konkani Wikipedia i.e. to have different Wikis for each active writing system - Konkani-Roman, Konkani-Devanagari and Konkani-Kannada. If there is an intersted active community to create content for a particular script; we could push that to a new project in due course of time. As things stand, the Roman script has been active in the recent past, followed by Devanagari and Kannada in that order.

Mitigation or consensus building: The community needs to reach consensus on how to deal with this issue. The best short term solution seems to be having multiple writing systems in the same Konkani Wikipedia project. However, in the long run we could evaluate the option of creating separate wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.

[1]. Garry, Jane, & Rubino, Carl. (Ed.). (2001). Facts about the world's languages: an encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. New York & Dublin: A New England Publishing Associates Book.

[2]. http://bit.ly/RNVq53

[3]. http://bit.ly/13gBsoo

[4]. http://bit.ly/JUUjJ6

[5]. http://bit.ly/12eY4Dn

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-analysis

April 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-05-31T08:07:38Z

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

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

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

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

Accessibility

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

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

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

Events Organised

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

Announcement

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

Access to Knowledge and Openness

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

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

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

Blog Entries

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

Event Organised

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

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

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

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

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

Other Access to Knowledge Updates

WIPO

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

Internet Governance

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

Information Technology

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

Resources
The below rules were published recently:

Newspaper Column

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

Privacy

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

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

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

Announcements

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

Upcoming Events

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

Other Event Hosted

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

News and Media

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

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

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

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

The following units have been published:

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

Telecom

Newspaper Column

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

Blog Entry

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

Event Participated

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

About CIS

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

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

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — April 2013

praskrishna — 2013-05-29T10:57:49Z

In the third issue of our newsletter for 2013, we are pleased to bring you updates from the Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project, reports of events organised in Kolkata, Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.

Wikimedia Foundation, beginning from September 1, 2012, awarded the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. Consequently, Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program became the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS. In the third issue of our newsletter for 2013, we are pleased to bring you updates from the Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project, reports of events organised in Goa, and press coverage of the Kannada Wikipedia Workshop held in Mysore.

The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi and one member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who is working from Bangalore office. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge) has resigned. April 24, 2013 was her last working day. Archives of our newsletters are here.

Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

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

Guest Blog

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month (by Netha Hussain, April 29, 2013).

Event Organised

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

Events Co-organised

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

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

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

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

About CIS

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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.

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

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month

Netha Hussain — 2013-04-29T09:21:45Z

March 2013 was a busy month for women Wikimedians in India, as we conducted various events, such as edit-a-thons and workshops to celebrate the presence of women in Wikimedia projects. The women Wikimedians, members of the Wikimedia India Chapter and the Access to Knowledge Team, brainstormed about the possible events, which we wanted to conduct to encourage women to participate and to increase the quality of articles related to Indian women in Wikipedias in English and the Indian languages.

This is a guest post by Netha Hussain, a Wikipedia contributor from India who regularly contributes to Malayalam Wikipedia, among other projects. The blog post was originally published on the Wikimedia Foundation page.

We decided to conduct the workshops and meetups in various Indian cities, in addition to online edit-a-thons. We created a co-ordination page on English Wikipedia and added suggestions for articles to edit. We invited participants to join the edit-a-thon by spreading the word on mailing lists, social media networks and blogs. The Times of India published a feature about the event, which attracted many newbies to participate in it. We also created separate pages for offline events taking place in parallel, and we added a summary of the events to the main page. The participants of the edit-a-thon signed up on the co-ordination page, where we also added the details and status of Women’s History Month events happening in various Indian language Wikipedias.

The inaugural event took place on International Women’s Day (March 8) at Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa. Out of 100 participants who attended the event, 90 were female. Veteran Wikimedians Rohini and Nitika conducted a basic Wikipedia editing workshop. The event also set off the two-day long online edit-a-thon in which fourteen editors participated. Among those who participated in the program were homemakers, students and professionals. Rohini took charge as the Chairperson of the special interest group (SIG) for Gendergap at the Wikimedia Chapter India on the day of the workshop (March 8). She plans to conduct more workshops for women in the future.

Organizers subsequently held a series of events at two venues in Bengaluru and one in Ernakulam. Experienced Wikimedians Pavithra and Nikita Belavate led the workshops in Bengaluru. The workshop also served as an occasion for editors living in and around Bengaluru to meet. The Ernakulam event was aimed at increasing the participation of women in Malayalam Wikipedia and was led by Wikimedian Ditty Mathew. Around 40 women participated in the three edit-a-thons. A Wikipedia Academy with 9 participants was conducted in Hyderabad. Led by Anupama Srinivas, the last of all events took place on 30 March, 2012, in Chennai.

Nikita, who led the Bangalore event, said she was filled with happiness watching the exuberance in the eyes of women participants who edited and saved their edits live on Wikipedia. “This year’s Women’s History month makes me once again believe in the power of women and honing it by empowering them, Wikiwomenising them,” said Nikita.


Participants of the Bangalore workshop organized by FSMK

Vishnu Vardhan, the Program Director of the Access to Knowledge team, was with the WikiWomen throughout the editathon, connecting people, planning events and urging them to contribute. He encouraged his mother, wife and female cousins to contribute to Wikipedia.

“I wish more of us took the initiative of involving the women in our life to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and truly make the Wikipedias the sum of all human knowledge,” he said. Harriet, one of the key organizers of the women’s day events, believes that the Indian Wikimedia community has gained momentum in favor of bridging the gender gap because of this event. She urged the Indian community to follow this success and to increase the participation of women in the Wikimedia movement. Though she could not attend the events in person, she ensured her participation in the edit-a-thon by arranging the logistics, monitoring the coordination page and suggesting changes.

The events had good participation from men as well. Among the 14 participants who signed up on English Wikipedia, 5 were men. In Malayalam Wikipedia, 18 out of the 26 participants who signed up for the online edit-a-thon were men. Dileep Unnikrishan, a male participant of the edit-a-thon, and a fan of Wikipedia, participated in the Ernakulam event because he was curious to find out how Wikipedia works. With women participants, he edited three articles and found it exciting to “be a part of the movement that has brought about a knowledge revolution in the world. The best thing I noticed about Wiki is that it has a peer-to-peer way of organization, which makes it warm and welcoming to newbies like me,” said Dileep.

The Indian WikiWomen are planning to conduct similar events in the future to increase the participation of women in Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are hopeful we will bridge the gender gap in the Indian Wikimedia community by conducting outreach programs, increasing awareness about free knowledge programs among women and conducting action-oriented events targeting women.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indian-wiki-women-history-month

Centre for Internet and Society

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Coverage in Prajavani)

May 2013 Bulletin

Access to Knowledge and Openness

CIS Signs MOU with TISS, Mumbai

Access To Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014)

Language Area Work Plans

Introductory note

Context

Objective

Methodology

A2K’s method of work

How to read this Annual Work Plan

Risk and mitigation

Language area work plans

Giving feedback

List of contributors

On the Unfortunate Rise of the Indian SLAPP Suit

A lifetime of five years on the internet

Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment

Fact Sheet

﻿Identified Needs

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

Fellowship Focus Areas

Frequently Asked Questions

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

Host Organizations

Important Dates

CIS anniversary

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

Agenda

May 20, 2013

May 21, 2013

May 22, 2013

May 23, 2013

About the Speakers

The Artists

Locations

Bangalore

Delhi

Event Brochure

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Openness

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Telecom

RAW Monographs

News and Media

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — May 2013

Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges

Challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia

Fact Sheet

Multiple script issue faced by Konkani Wikipedia

April 2013 Bulletin

Access to Knowledge and Openness

News and Media

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — April 2013

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month

Identified Needs