Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller

praskrishna — 2012-12-18T06:51:46Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore is hosting a talk by Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation at its office in Bangalore on November 12, 2012, from 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m., followed by a lunch discussion.

Talk Summary

Wikipedia's technology platform is rapidly changing, with improvements being deployed every day. Unlike other top websites, Wikipedia is run by a non-profit (Wikimedia Foundation) and all its technology is open source, ready to be improved and extended by you.

Learn about the recent and coming technology changes to Wikipedia and Wikimedia's other projects: the new Visual Editor, improvements to mobile sites and apps, Wikidata, and projects with mysterious codenames like "Echo", "Milkshake", "Agora" and "Flow". Learn how to get involved and ask anything you'd like to know about Wikipedia.

Erik Moeller

Erik Moeller is the Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, overseeing a department of about 70 people. Erik has been involved in Wikipedia since 2001 and joined the staff of Wikimedia in 2008. He previously worked as a journalist and project manager.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-state-of-tech-talk-by-erik-moeller

Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia

noopur — 2012-11-04T02:12:56Z

This was a competition to raise Wikipedia awareness and help students discover the joy of writing articles in their native language and an attempt to connect producers having knowledge in Gujarati to a wide audience of more than four lakh readers.

The Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition was held among 10 Gujarati medium schools of Ahmedabad city in Gujarat with the support and cooperation of The Open Page publication and Gujarati Lexicon in two phases over a period of two months.

Initial discussions about doing something to promote Gujarati language on the internet started when Shiju Alex, Indian language Wikipedia consultant met Yatrik Patel from Inflibnet. With Mr Yatrik Patel's intervention we were able to meet Mr Archit Bhatt, the director of Tripada Education Trust in Ahmedabad.

After a round of presentations from Wikipedians, Gujarati Lexicon and interested schools in August, we charted out a rough sketch of the article competition. Then, this plan was proposed to Gujarati editors online. Again, without the cooperation and encouragement of long term members like Mr Dhaval S Vyas, Mr Ashok Modhvadia, Mr Sushant Savla and Mr Maharshi Mehta, these students would not have had the freedom to make mistakes and learn as they progressed. Apart from these online members, constant guidance and support was provided by Mr Ashok Vaishnav, Mr Harsh Kothari and Mr Konarak Ratnakar. They coordinated with Ms Hemangini Kanth from The Open Page and Ms Shruti from Gujarati Lexicon to materialize the competion.

Structure

Phase I: Over 200 students from the ten schools were invited to write articles with references on Gujarati literary personalities (poets and writers) on paper. These entries were then collected and checked by Mr Yogendra Vyas, a consultant to GSEB (Gujarat Education Board) and Mr Ashok Vaishnav.

The above picture shows a student learning Gujarati typing

Phase II: 20 students were selected from these entries and invited for a workshop on Gujarati typing, introduction to GU WP and were briefed on how to write articles. Once the deadline was over, these on-wiki articles were checked by Mr Dhaval Vyas and Mr Ashok Modhvadia and two winner entries were selected. They were subsequently awarded trophies and certificates in a small ceremony on 21^st October.

Here is a list of articles written by the students.

Learnings

Given that this was a pilot program and I have read about only one such prior attempt in Javanese Wikipedia, we had much to learn:

It was a wise decision to take primary speakers of Gujarati because their proficiency in spelling, punctuation and vocabulary was good. This may not be possible for students with Indian languages as secondary language.
While we had estimated a maximum of one month's time, it took us nearly two months to accomplish it because of the huge number of entries. Perhaps, the work should be distributed amongst more people.
The biggest challenge that lies ahead is retaining these editors – we are working to get feedback from students to see how this could have been better and what attracted them about Wikipedia.

This competition has given the community a batch of new editors along with valuable content and we hope to retain the momentum by engaging more Gujarati students further.

Click below to download the posters

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-article-competition

Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot

noopur — 2012-10-31T08:17:56Z

This report analyses a series of meetings and workshops held in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, India during the month of October 2012.

I visited Gujarat for a few Wikipedia activities – including Wikipedia meets in the cities of Ahmedabad and Rajkot, interacted with students and teachers from various colleges as well as to successfully conclude the Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition.

I visited Rajkot on October 17, 2012 with two Wikipedians – Harsh Kothari and Konarak Ratnakar, both from Ahmedabad. We were scheduled to take up a small introductory lecture on contributing to Wikipedia at Christ College, Rajkot in the afternoon and meet up with other Gujarati Wikipedians from Rajkot and Junagadh later in the day. Fortunately, I was able to connect with Rashmikant Makwana, a teacher at TGS (The Galaxy School) in Rajkot. I had first met up with him during the photo walk – Wiki takes Ahmedabad in January 2012. He had shown a great deal of interest in doing something for his school students. Thanks to Mr. Makwana's prompt response and support, we visited three branches of TGES (The Galaxy Education System) and had the opportunity of interacting with over 100 students from secondary and higher secondary divisions.

Interactions with TGES students

I got to read Mr. Makwana's email only after I reached Rajkot. He wrote that he spoke to a couple of teachers about our visit and their students were very eager to meet us as they had many questions about Wikipedia! I was pleasantly surprised because once we met these students (mostly 11^th standard, English medium students) we realized they had already tried their hand at editing and even creating articles! So, they had far more advanced queries like how to verify information on Wikipedia, what is the authenticity of information there, questions on notability and so on. Next, we were taken to the vadi branch of the education group. These were children from fifth and sixth standards and who also had questions and better ones about stories of vandalism they had committed on Wikipedia! We told them how Wikipedia was one of the best ways of telling people about their culture, identities, city and language. Besides students, we also met teachers who taught Gujarati, History and Geography.

Interactions with Christ College students

Wikipedians giving lecture.

Christ College offers a variety of graduate courses. We were connected with their faculty, Mr. Rushabh, by Umesh Joshi from the Open Page publication in Rajkot.

I am thankful to both of them for their support in gathering their MBA students! Harsh Kothari, a Gujarati Wikipedian presented on how one can contribute to Gujarati Wikipedia while Konarak helped them in a live editing session. One question that everyone asked us was – WHY do people edit Wikipedia?

So, we called upon Jitendrasinh Chauhan, a long-term Gujarati Wikipedian. He came up and spoke to them on how he discovered Gujarati Wikipedia and has not only gained in terms of knowledge but also friendships that he has made with fellow editors across the state and overseas! We also explained the importance of learning correct ways of editing to these students who might pursue public relations as their professions.

Meeting Wikipedians

The trip to Rajkot, apart from meeting a whole bunch of new people, was also about connecting offline with Gujarati Wikipedians. Their warmth and day long support in terms of logistics, context and guidance kept us enthused. I extend my gratitude to Jitendrasinh Chauhan and his friend Harsh, both Wikipedians for their help. They have also helped us establish a dialog with Saurashtra University where we hope to plan a two-day conference centered around Gujarati language and digitization.

Given here is a network visualization infographic highlighting the key points.

Videos

Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ college - 1

Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ College - 2

Write about your city on Gujarati Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot

First Pune Odia Wikipedia Workshop Organized!

subha — 2012-11-30T12:44:44Z

The first Pune Odia Wikipedia workshop was organized in Pune on October 27, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi recollects his experience about the events through this report.

Recently Odia Wikipedia (http://or.wikipedia.org) crossed 3000 articles. After being dormant for 8 long years, Odia Wikipedia emerged as one of the active South Asian wikipedias. I visited Pune on October 27, 2012 to participate in an Odia Wikipedia workshop celebrating this success with the wikipedians and also attend the WikiWomenDay 2012.

Over the last few months Odia Wikipedia has seen many active faces. One of them is Suratha Parhi, a very active Odia wikipedian. Suratha reached out to his friends, colleagues and existing wikipedians staying in Pune to celebrate the success with an Odia Wikipedia workshop. As it was after Durga Puja only a few Odia people in the city were there to attend. We saw a gathering of 10 people at PAI International Learning Center for this workshop. Abhishek Suryavanshi from Wikipedia Club Pune extended his support for organizing the venue for us.

Prior to the workshop I interacted with the participants to understand their interests and efficiency with Odia typing. To my surprise two of the participants were good in typing in phonetic and Inscript. Suratha took the audience through a presentation about Odia Wikipedia explaining the history of Odia language, importance of Wikipedia, how to contribute to Wikipedia, manual of style for writing articles, dos and do nots, rules and regulations and validating articles by adding sources. After the preliminary sessions participants started asking questions about numbers of readers, how to type in Odia, use of Odia Wikipedia and various such questions. Suratha answered their questions with examples and illustrations.

To demonstrate editing on Odia Wikipedia we invited one of the participants. We helped her to create her user account and others also created their user accounts on Odia Wikipedia. Then we invited Sudhir Patel, a type designer and technologist working with CDAC, Pune to introduce Odia typing and how to type easily in Odia. After a small hands-on training for typing, all of the participants were able to start searching for articles they wanted to edit. Some of them created new articles and some edited existing articles. At the end of the session we shared our contacts to stay in touch. We also showed them Chatasabha, a friendly desk on Odia Wikipedia and demonstrated how they can ask questions and see the answered questions. New wikipedians will be also connected to the facebook group to be updated about events and activities. New Wikipedians have decided to meet once again in November for a Odia Wikipedia meetup. Sudhir and Suratha are also planning to organize a introductory session on Odia Wikipedia during the cultural gathering organized by Odia communities.

Above is a picture of participants from the Orissa Wikipedia workshop held on October 27, 2012

More pictures on WikiCommons.

Press Coverage:
OdishaDiary.com, Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (October 31, 2012)

Videos

Suratha Parhi explaining about Odia Wikipedia

Sudhir Patel explaining about Odia Typing

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized

October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-11-08T11:42:01Z

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

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

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

About CIS

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

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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/october-2012-bulletin

Super Cassettes v. MySpace

ujwala — 2012-10-31T10:27:36Z

The Delhi High Court’s judgment in Super Cassettes v. MySpace last July is worrying for a number of reasons. The court failed to appreciate the working of intermediaries online and disregard all pragmatic considerations involved. The consequences for free expression and particularly for file sharing by users of services online are especially unfavourable.

The judgment[*]is extremely worrying since it holds MySpace liable for copyright infringement, despite it having shown that it did not know, and could not have known, about each instance of infringement; that it removed each instance of alleged infringement upon mere complaint; that it asked Super Cassettes to submit their songs to their song identification database and Super Cassettes didn't.

This, in essence, means, that all 'social media services' in which there is even a potential for copyright infringement (such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are now faced with a choice of either braving lawsuits for activities of their users that they have no control over — they can at best respond to takedown requests after the infringing material has already been put up — or to wind down their operations in India.

The Facts

Aside from social networking, MySpace facilitates the sharing of content between its users. This case concerns content (whose copyright vested in T-Series) was uploaded by users to MySpace’s website. It appears that tensions between MySpace and T-Series arose in 2007, when T-Series entered into talks with MySpace to grant it licenses in its copyrighted content, while MySpace asked instead that T-Series register with its rights management programme. Neither the license nor the registration came about, and the infringing material continued to be available on the MySpace website.

Specifically, T-Series alleged that cases for primary infringement under section 51(a)(i) of the Copyright Act as well as secondary infringement under section 51 (a) (ii) could be made out. Alleging that MySpace had infringed its copyrights and so affected its earnings in royalties, T-Series approached the Delhi High Court and filed a suit seeking injunctive relief and damages. In proceedings for interim relief while the suit was pending, the court granted an injunction, but, in an appeal by MySpace, added the qualification that the content would have to be taken down only on receipt of a specific catalogue of infringing works available on MySpace, rather than a general list of works in which T-Series held a copyright.

The Defence

While other arguments such as one around the jurisdiction of the court were also raised, the central issues are listed below:

Non-Specificity of Prayer
T-Series’ claim in the suit is for a blanket injunction on copyrighted content on the MySpace website. This imposes a clearly untenable, even impossible, burden for intermediaries to comply with.
Knowledge
MySpace argued that no liability could accrue to it on two counts. The first was that it had no actual or direct knowledge or role in the selection of the content, while the second was that no control was exercised, or was exercisable over the uploading of the content. Additionally, there was no possible means by which it could have identified the offending content and segregated it from lawful content, or monitored all of the content that it serves as a platform for.
Intermediary status and Safe Harbour Protection
In relation to its status as an intermediary, MySpace raised several arguments. First, it argued that it had immunity under section 79 of the IT Act and under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (US DMCA). Another argument restated what is arguably the most basic tenet of intermediary liability that merely providing the platform by which infringement could occur cannot amount to infringement. In other words, the mere act of facilitating expression over internet does not amount to infringement. It then made reference to its terms of use and its institution of safeguards (in the form of a hash filter, a rights management tool and a system of take-down–stay-down), which it argued clearly reflect an intention to discourage or else address cases of infringement as they arise. MySpace also emphasized that a US DMCA compliant procedure was in place, although T-Series countered that the notice and take down system would not mitigate the infringement.
Relationship between MySpace and its Users
Taking from previous arguments about a lack of control and its status as an intermediary, MySpace argued that it was simply a licensee of users who uploaded content. The license is limited, in that MySpace is only allowed to alter user-generated content so as to make it viewable.

Outcomes

Infringement by Facilitation
The court concluded that infringement in terms of section 51 (a) (ii) had occurred in this case, since web space is a “place” in the terms required by the section and there were monetary gains in the form of ad revenue. The argument as to a lack of knowledge of infringement was also rejected on the ground that MySpace’s provision for safeguards against infringement clearly established a reason to believe that infringement will occur. Also referenced as evidence of knowledge, or at least a reason to believe infringement would occur, is the fact that MySpace modifies the format of the content before making it available on its website. It also tested for infringement by authorization in terms of section 14 read with section 51 (a) (i), but concluded that this did not arise here.
Reading away section 79?
The court accepted the argument made by T-Series to the effect that sections 79 and 81 of the IT Act must be read together. Since section 79 would be overridden by section 81’s non-obstante, the effect would be that rights holders’ interests under the Copyright Act will erode intermediaries’ immunity under section 79.
Due Diligence
The court rejected the argument that the provision of due diligence or curative measures post-infringement would be sufficient. Specifically, the contention that the quantum of content being uploaded precludes close scrutiny, given the amount of labour that would be involved, was rejected. Content should not immediately be made available but must be subject to enquiries as to its title or to authentication of its proprietor before it is made available. In fact, it holds that, “there is no reason to axiomatically make each and every work available to the public solely because user has supplied them unless the defendants are so sure that it is not infringement.” (Paragraph 88).

There is also an attempt to distinguish the Indian framework from the DMCA. While that law calls for post-infringement measures, it is argued that in India, on reading section 51 with section 55, the focus is on preventing infringement at the threshold. In response to the case that it would be impossible to do so, the court held that since the process here requires MySpace to modify the format of content uploaded to it to make it viewable, it will have a reasonable opportunity to test for infringement.

Analysis

Accounting for the Medium of Communication

The court’s analysis of the issues begins with a predictable emphasis on how the law of copyright would operate in the context of what is termed “internet computing”, peppered with trite statements about “the virtual world of internet” creating “complexit[ies]” for copyright law. The court appears to have entered into this discussion to establish that the notion of place in section 51 (a) (ii) should extend to “web space” but the statements made here only serve to contrast starkly against its subsequent failure to account for the peculiarities of form and function of intermediaries online. Had this line of argument been taken to its logical conclusion, after the character of the medium had been appreciated, the court’s final conclusion, that MySpace is liable for copyright infringement, would have been an impossible one to arrive at.

And What of Free Speech?

As it had argued before the court, intermediaries such as MySpace have no means by which to determine whether content is illegal (whether by reason of amounting to a violation of copyright, or otherwise) until content is uploaded. In other words, there is no existing mechanism by which this determination can be made at the threshold, before posting.

The court does not engage with the larger consequences for such a scheme of penalizing intermediaries. Censoring patent illegalities at the threshold, even if that were possible is one thing. The precedent that the court creates here is quite another. Given the general difficulty in conclusively establishing whether there is an infringement at all due to the complexities in applying the exceptions contained under section 52, it should not be for ordinary private or commercial interests such as intermediaries to sit in judgment over whether content is or is not published at all. In order to minimize its own liability, the likelihood of legitimate content being censored by the intermediary prior to posting is high.

The consequences for civil liberties, and free speech and expression online in particular, appear to have been completely ignored in favour of rights holders’ commercial interests.

Consequences for Intermediary Liability and Safe Harbour Protection

Even if every instance in question did amount to an infringement of copyright and a mechanism did exist allowing for removal of content, the effect of this judgment is to create a strict liability regime for intermediaries.

In other words, the court’s ruling will have the effect that courts’ determination of intermediaries’ liability will become detached from whether or not any fault can be attributed to them. MySpace did make this argument, even going as far as to suggest that doing so would impose strict liability on intermediaries. This would lead to an unprecedented and entirely unjustifiable result. In spite the fact that a given intermediary did apply all available means to prevent the publication of potentially infringing content, it would remain potentially liable for any illegality in the content, even though the illegality could not have been detected or addressed.

What is perhaps even more worrying is that MySpace’s attempt at proactively and in good faith preventing copyright infringement through its terms of use and in addressing them through its post-infringement measures was explicitly cited as evidence of knowledge of and control over the uploading of copyrighted material, at the threshold rather than ex post. This creates perverse incentives for the intermediary to ignore infringement, to the detriment of rights holders, rather than act proactively to minimize its incidence.

A final observation is that the court’s use, while pronouncing on relief, of the fact that MySpace makes a “copy” of the uploaded content by converting it into a format that could subsequently be hosted on the site and made accessible to show evidence of infringement and impose liability upon MySpace in itself is a glaring instance of the disingenuous reasoning the court employs throughout the case. There is another problem with the amended section 79, which waives immunity where the intermediary “modifies” material. That term is vague and overreaches, as it does here: altering formats to make content compatible with a given platform is not comparable to choices as to the content of speech or expression, but the reading is tenable under section 79 as it stands.

The result of all of this is to dislodge the section 79 immunity that accrues to intermediaries and replace that with a presumption that they are liable, rather than not, for any illegality in the content that they passively host.

Effect of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012

Since the judgment in the MySpace case, the Copyright Act has been amended to include some provisions that would bear on online service providers and on intermediaries’ liability for hosting infringing content, in particular. Section 52 (1) (b) of the amended Act provides that “transient or incidental storage of a work or performance purely in the technical process of electronic transmission or communication to the public” would not infringe copyright. The other material provision is section 52 (1) (c) which provides that “transient or incidental storage of a work or performance for the purpose of providing electronic links, access or integration, where such links, access or integration has not been expressly prohibited by the right holder, unless the person responsible is aware or has reasonable grounds for believing that such storage is of an infringing copy” will not constitute an infringement of copyright. The latter provision appears to institute a rather rudimentary, and very arguably incomplete, system of notice and takedown by way of a proviso. This requires intermediaries to takedown content on written complaint from copyright owners for a period of 21 days or until a competent rules on the matter whichever is sooner, and restore access to the content once that time period lapses, if there is no court order to sustain it beyond that period.

This post does not account for the effect that these provisions could have had on the case, but it is already clear, from the sloppy drafting of section 52 (1) (c) and its proviso that they are not entirely salutary even at the outset. At any rate, there appears to be nothing that *determinatively* affects intermediaries’ secondary liability, i.e., their liability for users’ infringing acts.

Disclosure: CIS is now a party to these proceedings at the Delhi High Court. This is a purely academic critique, and should not be seen to have any prejudice to the arguments we will make there.

[*]. Super Cassettes Industries Ltd. v. MySpace Inc. and Another, on 29 July, 2011, Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law. See http://bit.ly/quj6JW, last accessed on October 31, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/super-cassettes-v-my-space

Phone Spreadsheet

jdine — 2012-10-30T05:51:04Z

A documentation of the basic components and features of the mobile devices in a spreadsheet.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/phone-spreadsheet.xlsx

The Hathitrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO

Rahul Cherian — 2012-10-30T04:28:24Z

Those of you who have been following my earlier posts on the WIPO negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired will remember that one of the biggest concerns of the World Blind Union on the draft wording of the Treaty was with the definition of an “authorized entity” that can undertake conversion and distribution of accessible format copies.

Before the WIPO intersessionals began on October 17, 2012, the definition of “authorized entity” in the draft Treaty prescribed that only authorized entities that address the needs of beneficiary persons as one of their primary (in brackets) activities or institutional obligations can undertake conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats. This requirement is unacceptable since it will exclude many legitimate organisations and institutions that undertake these activities but who do not address the needs of beneficiary persons as a “primary” activity or institutional obligation. Some examples of such organisations/institutions are mainstream education institutions and mainstream libraries. Delhi University which has a large number of blind students will be excluded and this is unacceptable.

The main proponents pushing for the word "primary" was the United States and the European Union while India and other developing countries wanted the word to be deleted for obvious reasons. There was a virtual deadlock in the negotiations on this particular point.

The United States was pushing for the word “primary” because under US Copyright law, an authorized entity means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities. Under US law there was uncertainty as to whether educational institutions and libraries would be covered under the definition of “authorized entity”.

Enter the HathiTrust Judgment http://www.tc.umn.edu/~nasims/HathivAG10_10_12.pdf. The judgment, which was pronounced a few days before the October WIPO intersessionals by the New York Southern District Court, held that libraries and educational institutions fall under the definition of “authorized entities” under US law.

The US delegation to WIPO was instantly alerted about this judgment and was requested to negotiate broader wording for authorized entities under the Treaty as was now the position under US law.

At the intersessionals that concluded on October 19, as observers, we were not allowed into the room and the discussions were happening between the Member States but at the end of the intersessionals this is the proposed wording of authorized entity:

Authorized entity means an entity that is authorized or recognized by the government to provide education, instructional training, adaptive reading or information access to beneficiary persons on a non-profit basis. It also includes a government institution or non-profit organization that provides the same services to beneficiary persons as one of its primary activities or institutional obligations.

As can be seen from above, this definition is broader than the previous definition since the word primary has been deleted from the main definition and it explicitly covers educational institutions and libraries. It is also interesting to note that even for profit entities that provide the above services on a non-profit basis to beneficiaries are covered.

It remains to be seen what form the definition of authorized entities will take but the HathiTrust judgment has definitely helped in the negotiation process.

The next meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights takes place in Geneva between November 19 and November 23, 2012.

Watch this space for updates. See my earlier posts on the WIPO negotiations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/hathitrust-judgment-and-its-impact-on-tvi-negotiations-at-wipo

Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates

shiju — 2012-11-09T18:18:20Z

Three months back, I wrote a blog post (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/) about the inauguration of the Wikipedia education program in Malayalam Wikipedia. This program is the first of its kind in an Indic language, and Malayalam community is doing the program in collaboration with the IT@School, a project of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in schools.

Three months have passed since the last report in English (regular updates in Malayalam) about the program have been shared with the Malayalam wiki community during this period. Here is a brief update about this ongoing program. The July report was mainly about the inauguration of the project in the Government Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, Kollam, and a few details about the plans of the community regarding this project.

The Wikipedia education program was inaugurated by the IT@School director, Abdul Nasar Kaipanchery on July 14, 2012. After two weeks, we conducted a Malayalam Wikipedia introduction workshop for the students and teachers of Anchal West School. Almost 150 participants including students and teachers attended this workshop. After the workshop students were asked to write an article (on paper in Malayalam) about any topic related to Anchal and submit it to the education program coordinator, Sateesh R. Veliyam, a teacher in that school. Satheesh is also a Malayalam wikipedian. Students were given three weeks to submit the article on paper. Nearly 100 students submitted the articles and the project coordinator (with inputs from other Malayalam Wikipedia community members) shortlisted 34 students for the Wikipedia education program. The selection of the students for this program was based on their writing skills in Malayalam, the interest in this voluntary project, and other skills needed for this time bound Wikipedia education project.

A meeting was conducted with the selected students on August 9 in the school computer lab. As Malayalam Wikipedians knew that the major roadblock for students to start wiki editing in Malayalam would be Malayalam typing (in fact this is the case with all Indic languages) we decided to teach Malayalam typing to students on a priority basis. A printout of the Malayalam Inscript layout was given to the students. The Inscript layout was selected because that is part of the syllabus in Kerala. Students were asked to practice Malayalam typing and learn it within the next two months. From that day onwards students were practising Malayalam typing at school and making a steady progress.

Some recent developments are listed below:

September 8

Students are back to school after the Onam vacation. The progress on their Malayalam typing is evaluated. Malayalam Wikipedians, Kannan Shanmugham and Sugeesh visited students and addressed them. They discussed the potential articles that could be created as part of this project. They also helped few students to create their user names in Malayalam Wikipedia. After addressing the students they also visited some famous people in Anchal, other places, and some organizations to collect reference books and other information related to this project. The collection of reference materials from library, personal collections, and from panchayat office is vital for this project as these are the only places from where we can get any reliable information regarding the different topics that students plan to write.

October 1

As Malayalam typing and the collection of information and reference materials were in progress we received an important book authored by Dr. P. Vinayachandran which had a lot of information about Anchal. Students who achieved a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing and those who had created user accounts started editing in Wikipedia. On October 1, four new articles were created by the students who had learned Malayalam typing.

October 12

Shiju Alex visited the school students to see the progress of the project, interacted with them, and welcomed them to Malayalam Wikipedia. Since all of them had acquired a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing, we decided to create usernames for all of them. So on that day we created accounts and user pages for all the 34 students who were included in the project.

October 13

All the students who were part of the project reached Kollam to participate in a one-day Malayalam Wikipedia editing workshop. The program started at 10 a.m. Malayalam wikipedians Binu, Sugeesh, Kannan Shanmugham, Ajay Balachandran, Akhil, and Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. It was organized to assist students in getting started with Malayalam Wikipedia, introduce them to basic wiki editing and other related stuff. Apart from providing support for all basic needs, students were also introduced to "talk pages" and the basic policies of Wikipedia which would help them to get started with the project. We finished this one-day workshop at 3.30 p.m. by taking a group photo. A detailed report (in Malayalam) regarding this one day workshop can be read from here.

Students doing Malayalam wiki editing

October 14

Malayalam Wikipedians Sateesh, Sugeesh, Shiju, and our new wikipedian Anathu P. Sankar visited the Rehabilitation Plantation Limited [RPL] which is an important institution near Anchal and is one of the article being developed as part of this project. We met a few key people who provided some references about RPL. It was decided that students who were working on the articles related to RPL will visit again to collect more information about the project.

As of today some of the important progress the main progress made on the project are is listed below:

All students have created their accounts.
All students have created their user pages.
Most students created or edited articles that they were planning to contribute.
Students with the help of their teacher, Satheesh continue collecting reference materials on topics they plan to write.
Students continue editing in Malayalam whenever they get access to computer and internet.

Some of the things that need to be kept in mind regarding this project are:

The project is done entirely on a voluntary basis. No separate time is allocated for students to participate in this project.
Thirty-four students are part of this and most of them are from ninth standard.
Out of the 34 students, 7 are girl students.
Out of 34 students only 10 students have got computers at home.

Kerala schools are using free software for computers. They use a customized version of Ubuntu in computer labs. It is easy to configure Malayalam typing in that. Technically all 34 students need to depend on the five computers available (computers with internet facility) in the school computer lab to practice Malayalam typing, wiki editing, and do the other tasks related to the project. And the lack of regular access to computer and internet is affecting the smooth progress of the project.

As separate time is not allocated for this project, students who are part of this project are working on it either during intervals, lunch time, during early hours before the start of the school, or by staying late after the school working hours. Since we have only around five computers with internet in the school lab, students need to divide and share the timing among themselves. Many of them come to the school on Saturdays and Sundays to participate in the project.

Few important links related to this project:

The master project page of this program is available here.

The list of students participating in this program is available here
The list of articles that students started or enhancing as past of this project is available here
The progress report of the project in Malayalam is regularly updated here

We will keep you posted about the updates from this project as and when it happens. Malayalam community is planning to complete this project (student editing) by the third or fourth week of November.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update

Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!

subha — 2012-11-10T08:30:09Z

A2K team members Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval participated in the "WikiWomenDay" organized by Wikipedia Club Pune at PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus on October 28, 2012. Subhashish unfolds the happenings of this full day free fun workshop.

Globally participation of women on Wikipedia is less than 10 per cent. Women wikipedians across the world have joined hands to boost women's contribution to Wikipedia. Recently the A2K team was in Pune for the WikiWomenDay 2012. Wikipedia Club Pune, the first Wikipedia club in India, to encourage women's participation on Wikipedia, had organized a full day fun event on October 28, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions.

Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of Wikipedia Club Pune briefed about the agenda of the event. Noopur spoke about the global contribution on Wikipedia in terms of various topics and how male-centered topics were well covered. Few of the male centric articles were taken up for comparison with those of women to make the audience understand the gap of contribution. A good majority of articles which were of interest to men were well written whereas women centric articles were of bad shape due to lack of contribution from women. A visual representation was shown to the participants to explain the statistical information about gender gap on Wikipedia. Apart from article contribution, male editors were found to be more social and discussed more on talk pages which also bring more male editors on Wikipedia.

Participants were introduced to the basics of Wikipedia editing (five pillars, notability, importance of source of references, vandalism) before they were explained about actual editing. Each of the participants were provided with a computer and one of them was invited to create her user account.

Thereafter Abhishek demonstrated searching an article on Wikipedia and how logging in to Wikipedia allows editors to edit articles which are protected from editing by anyone. One of the logged in editors was asked to make a small edit on an article which surprised many of the participants. They realized that even they can make changes to the articles, for the first time in their life. Then there was a buzz about the credibility of the articles as they all saw that anyone can edit the articles. So the Wikipedia article on Pune was vandalized and Pune was made the capital of India for a few minutes! The page was refreshed after a while and reverted. This was clear enough to demonstrate how active the editor community is on Wikipedia.

Abhishek Suryavanshi demonstrates wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012

Most of the errors and typos get corrected quickly as someone or the other notices that there is a mistake and correct it. However, there are many articles, especially articles of Indian context which still have wrong information because the number of Indian editors are less. A series of editing for various favourite articles chosen by new wikipedians opened up the window for them to understand how important their participation could be. Abhishek, Nikita, Noopur and Subhashish helped the editors with editing.

After engaging the editors for quite sometime with editing there was a fun quiz session to brush up what was taught. The participants were asked questions based on the previous session.

Winners of the quiz were awarded with Wikipedia stickers and badges.

A picture of participants learning wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012 in Pune

Some of the participants left after the lunch break. Those who came back then gathered for a Indian language Wikipedia session. Out of the whole audience there were Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Odia speakers. They all were showed their respective language wikipedias. A demonstration was given to show the typing tool. As the editors were completely new to the Indian language typing, some of them started typing using default Narayam transliteration tool and some took the help of Microsoft ILIT and Google Transliterate as well. During this session new wikipedians edited many articles on Marathi, Hindi and Bengali Wikiepdia. After the whole day session there was still some time left for acclaim and fun. The participants were awarded with participation and contribution certificate by the Wikipedia Club Pune. All the new wikipedians registered on Wikipedia Club Pune.

There was a special announcement for Wikipedia Summit India, Anniversary Celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune. Club members celebrated with cutting a special Wikipedia cake. Rishi Aacharya and Ketaki Pole from PAI International Learning Solutions extended their support for this event.

Meeting with Wikipedia Club Pune members

There was a meeting with some of the Wikipedia Club Pune members on October 27, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions. It was attended by Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of the club brought a proposal about the Wikipedia India Summit, anniversary celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune which is planned in the first quarter of 2013. Importance of a India level summit, plans and agenda, logistics and partnership and sponsorship options were discussed during this meeting. There will be public announcement regarding this summit.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad

praskrishna — 2012-10-25T08:42:56Z

CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus are organizing a hackathon for their tech fest — ATMOS on October 26 - 27, 2012, from 6.00 p.m. on October 26 to 6.00 a.m. on October 27.

An all night hackathon to get started in contributing technically to the world’s largest source of free information – Wikipedia. The code that you write (and eventually deploy) will be viewed/used 7,938,026,125 times a month! Write user scripts that fix annoying little things with the way Wikipedia functions. Write bots to import (and accurately maintain) large amounts of information from various sources into Wikipedia. Write tools to make it easier to maintain Wikipedia’s standards and fight spam. Most of all join the awesome Open Source community and have fun!

Pre-requisites:

Preferable working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript *or* python.

Laptops, which you will have to carry with you.

To register for the event, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad

A Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies"

jdine — 2012-10-25T06:52:50Z

The Centre for Internet and Society invites all individuals interested in investigating and exploring the internal of the Mobile/Hardware Technologies and understanding of capabilities of mobile phones to join our workshop on Saturday, October 27, 2012, at the TERI Southern Regional Centre.

Objective:

Bringing together the technical/hacker community and individuals interested in mobile devices to explore mobile devices internals and capabilities

Scope of Conference and Workshop:

Our proposed topics/areas which we hope to have discussions on are:

Hardware Hacking (Board/Chips Capabilities)
Operating System Internals (Hardware/OS Interfacing)
Software Development Kit (MRE, etc.)
Forensic Analysis
Understanding of Mobile as Telecommunication Device (2G/3G, etc.)
Understanding Mobile/Devices Internals
Working with JTAG/UART Ports
Porting Open Softwares on Mobiles/Hardwares

Expected outcomes:

Understanding of mobile devices internals and capabilities
Documenting mobile devices capabilities and internals
Publishing of blogs on knowledge generated
Exploration/Speculation on research/development avenues

Agenda

I. Core Talks
Tea/Coffee: Time: 9:00 - 9:30 a.m.
1. Arduino Board Capabilities and Playing Around It! Objective: Understanding Arduino board capabilities and playing with it Speaker: Sudar Muthu Level: Introduction Duration: 1 Hour Time: 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.
2. Initiatives@CIS Objective: Discussing the research initiative that has led CIS to become interested in mobile device internals and capabilities Speaker: Jadine Lannon Level: Introduction Duration: 10-15 Minutes Time: 10:30 - 10:45 a.m.
3. Mobile Hacking Through Linux Drivers Objective: Understanding the Linux kernel & driver internals from the perspective of reverse engineering Speaker: Anil Kumar Pugalia Level: Intermediate to Advanced Duration: 1 Hour Time: 10:45 - 11:45 a.m.
4. Hardware Hacking (Board/Chips Capabilities) Objective: Discuss and explore key areas of mobile hardware (power, clock, pin multiplexing, peripherals, etc.) Speaker: Khasim Syed Mohammed Level: Introductory to Advanced Duration: 1 Hour Time: 11:45 - 12:45 p.m.
Lunch Time Time: 12:45 - 1:30 p.m.
5. Porting Open Software on Hardware Objective: Cover porting examples for each type of peripherals Cover Android and Linux bringup as an example Speaker: Khasim Syed Mohammed Level: Intermediate to Advance Duration: 2 Hours Time: 1:30 - 3:30 p.m.
II.Community Knowledge Sharing/Hacking!
Time: 3.30 to 5.30 p.m.
5. Free Slot
6. Free Slot
Tea/Coffee Time
7. Free Slot
8. Free Slot

We are inviting community members to take up Free Slots to share their knowledge in this section. In this section, any person can propose a talk, workshop, or speculation about any device for a duration 30 minutes to 1 hour, as long as the topic falls within broader scope of the focus areas described at the in the “Scope of the Conference and Workshop” section of the workshop objectives.

Venue, Dates and Logistics

The event will take place on Saturday, October 27, 2012, at the following address:

TERI Southern Regional Centre
4th Main, Domlur II Stage
Bangalore - 560 071
Karnataka

The event will be begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday and end in the evening around 5 p.m. Lunch and snacks will be provided by CIS.

Available Resources:
CIS has purchased 12 gray-market mobile phones with the intent to document as much information about the life-cycles, hardware, software and content of each phone as possible. We request that the producers, make and model of each device be kept anonymous in discussions/publications that take place outside of the workshop.

The Speakers

1. Anil Kumar Pugalia
The author is a freelance trainer in Linux internals, Linux device drivers, embedded Linux & related topics. Prior to this, he was at Intel and Nvidia. He has been working with Linux since 1994. A gold medallist from IISc, Linux & knowledge sharing are two of his many passions. Creating and playing with open source hardware is one of his hobbies, which he materializes through his company eSrijan, which can be accessed at:
Website: http://profession.sarika-pugs.com/

2. Jadine Lannon
Jadine is a research intern at the Centre for Internet and Society. She is currently working on the “Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace” research project. More information on the research project can be found here: http://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-access-to-knowledge-in-the-market-place

3. Khasim Syed Mohammed
Khasim leads Open Hardware and Software Initiatives at Texas Instruments. Blog: http://www.khasim.in/; http://khasim.blogspot.in/

4. Sudar Muthu
Sudar does open hardware as hobby; Arudino is his playground. He is passionate about programming (particularly web-based) and loves to design and build web sites/services from scratch. AJAX, Web2.0, Semantic Web, Comet, RDF or any of those latest buzz-field jargons.

Blog: http://SudarMuthu.com; http://hardwarefun.com;

Supporting Communities:

NULL: http://null.co.in/
SecurityXploaded: http://securityxploded.com/
Computer Club India: http://computerclub.in/Main_Page

Register at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dG1UcHBYR2xRLWhPZ0QwVWlaaEg0SXc6MQ

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/workshop-exploring-the-internals-of-mobile-technologies-1

Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:43:37Z

The Assamese Wikipedia community has shown a rapid growth in the past six months from 20 active editors in January 2012 to 29 active editors in June 2012. The absolute numbers might seem low but in terms of percentages its an overwhelming increment of 45 per cent.

This increment can partly be credited to the photography and article contest, conducting workshops at various educational institutions and organic community growth.

Though Assamese Wikipedia is still a small project with about 1600 articles, the Assamese Wikipedians have the drive, willingness and zest to get more editors and multiply their community. Their enthusiasm and determination has led them to start with an Assamese Wikipedia Education Program. The program was launched on October 14, 2012 with 15 masters students (90 per cent of these are women students) under the guidance of Prof. Dulumoni Goswami, Head of the Department of Education, Guwahati University.

The day before the launch some of the Assamese Wikipedia editors including Jyoti and Durbhajyoti met to design and alter the Wikipedia Education Program for Assamese Wikipedia. It was decided that the entire program will be divided in four different stages which are as follows:

Stage 1: Introduction to Wikipedia + Introduction to Education Program + Assamese typing
Stage 2: Editing Assamese Wikipedia
Stage 3: Advanced editing including adding references, headers, TOC and wiki markups
Stage 4: Concluding the Education Program

In accordance with each of these stages there will be set of deliverables expected out of the students which are as follows:

Deliverable 1: Create Wikipedia user accounts and user pages
Deliverable 2: Submit a two-page typed article in Assamese
Deliverable 3: Students will select one article each and start editing their articles
Deliverable 4: Students will continue enhancing their articles and will start adding references, wiki markups and pictures, if desired.

Assamese Wikipedia Education Program initiated in Guwahati University

On Oct 14, 2012 at 11 a.m., the program was initiated with an introduction about Assamese Wikipedia and Wikipedia Education Program. Students were completely thrilled with the idea of them contributing to Wikipedia articles and created their usernames during the session. Since students were not familiar with Assamese typing a larger part of the session was dedicated to teach students on how to type in Assamese using Rudali. As a deliverable, students will be submitting two-page article typed in Assamese on paper before the first week of November. Thereafter, a second in-class session will be organized where students will be taught editing Assamese Wikipedia.

Students learn Assamese typing using typing tool Rudali.

All the students have willingly enrolled themselves in the program and have not been forced by the faculty members. Indeed, three students were not studying in Guwahati University but still wanted to be a part of the Assamese Education Program. A loud cheer and good wishes to the Assamese Wikipedia community!

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program

Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad

nitika — 2013-01-07T16:30:36Z

The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet & Society was approached by Gaurav Prashar, Assistant Dean at Inmantec College, Ghaziabad to organize a Wikipedia workshop. Accordingly, a workshop was organized on October 17, 2012.

It was quite overwhelming to see the amount of effort the institution had put in to organize this event. It took place in a large auditorium which was well equipped with all modern facilities like projector, internet, good sound system, each student had a laptop with access to stable internet connection.

Over 120 participants attended the workshop including MCA, BCA, BBA students and faculty members. The workshop included a brief introduction about - what is Wikipedia, who edits Wikipedia, why do they edit Wikipedia, how can one contribute to Wikipedia articles. The presentation was followed by a hands on editing training session where some participants created usernames and tried minor editing.

During the session participants also created a new article, Inmantec, and have taken it as a challenge to edit and improve this article over the period of next one month.

Participants listening to the proceedings at the Wikipedia workshop

The session was highly interactive and students asked a lot of queries regarding other projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation, when and who started Wikipedia, the demographics of existing Wikipedia editors, edit wars, collaborative editing, how they can participate in other activities organized by the A2K team and more.

Towards the end of the session many students showed interest to organize a follow up workshop where they could get to know about Wikipedia Clubs and how they could initiate one at Inmantec college.

Overall, the workshop was a huge success. The A2K team will be in regular touch with the participants through mail and Facebook to provide editing support. The participants will also be sent regular invites about Wikipedia events organised in NCR. The follow up session might be organized sometime in the month of November. Please watch out for more updates.

Presentation being given during Wikipedia workshop held in Ghaziabad

Video

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

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!

Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-11-04T14:03:49Z

Kannada Wikipedia is one of those Indic language wikipedias which has seen many readers coming up every month. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the experiences of some of the very active Kannada wikipedians from the recent Kannada Wikipedia meetup held in Bengaluru on October 7, 2012.

Seven Kannada wikipedians (a couple of them also contribute to Sanskrit Wikipedia) participated in this event. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi from the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet & Society and Jessie Wild from the Wikimedia Foundation also participated in the event.

After a brief introduction about the theme of the meetup, Omshivaprakash, one of the active contributors for community building who also solves technical issues besides contributing articles explained the history and happenings of Kannada Wikipedia said “the only reason all of us joined together to contribute for Kannada Wikipedia is because we love our mother language, Kannada.” He explained how he reached out to a renowned Kannada writer asking him to document his own writings and books to become active on Kannada Wikipedia and start contributing. In the recent past Kannada community has organized many outreach events. The presentation for each outreach has been translated and customized for effective presentation. In the past they struggled for the six username creation barrier. Om also spoke about the scope of government partnership for including Kannada Wikipedia in the school syllabus (which worked out really well in Kerala) for which he is willing to meet the government officials. Additionally, he also shared the idea of recording an outreach session and presenting it to the government.

Another active wikipedian, Tejas emphasized the importance of having Kannada Wikipedia as part of the syllabus where lecturers and teachers will be learning to teach about Wikipedia in the classroom. As this will be mandatory, both students and teachers will take it seriously and it would be a sustainable practice. To show the results about 4-5 schools could be shortlisted for a pilot program. Tejas also proposed the idea of including Kannada typing in schools because that is something most people are not taught.

The above picture shows some participants working on their laptops during the meetup.

The wikipedians further discussed about Kannada Wiktionary and how collaborations will work to bridge the gap of wikipedians who contribute separately for Kannada Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Frequently Used Entries for Localization (FUEL) is a great project for creating content on Wiktionary, which will involve bringing new people to the community. In Bengaluru, CIS and Sanchaya co-hosted a two-day workshop for discussion regarding the same. Involving more wikimedians for such workshops would be helpful for both the projects, Wikipedia and Wiktionary. “I was always keen to do something for Kannada language on the web, being a software professional nothing leaves me a better chance to work for such a project like Wikipedia in my own language,” expresses Pavithra, another active Kannada Wikipedian who has supported many outreach events and translation projects.

Wikipedians, those who were a few weeks older, spoke about the problems they are facing when searching databases. Even the experienced wikipedians face the same problem. Options, such as having a central place, like a list of templates with little description and templates which could be standardized so that anyone could contribute to the translation and other things which need contribution, were discussed.

Tejas, a long-term Kannada Wikipedian discussed about the non-standard nature of the South Asian language wiktionaries. If Wiktionary could be standardized it could be easier to ask other communities to collaborate and contribute in their respective languages.

Discussion on Sanskrit Wiki projects:
Abhiram, another wikipedian who initially began with editing Sanskrit WikiSource and then started contributing to Kannada Wikipedia explained the hurdles they faced while spreading the word about Sanskrit WikiSource in Karnataka. Being closely associated to Samskrita Bharati and contributing largely to the Kannada WikiSource project, Abhiram feels not many people can write in Sanskrit though they can speak because of their fluency in the Devanagari script. People who study Sanskrit lose their grip of it after they pass 10^th or 12^th grades. “As Sanskrit is rarely found as a spoken language a lot of ground work and motivation for the contributors are needed to cultivate a community. We could plan for 10 spoken Sanskrit sessions in a month to kick-start before we teach how to edit Sanskrit Wikipedia”, Abhiram added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bengaluru-a-hub-for-kannada-and-sanskrit-wikipedia

Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller

Talk Summary

Erik Moeller

Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia

Structure

Learnings

Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot

Interactions with TGES students

Interactions with Christ College students

Meeting Wikipedians

Videos

First Pune Odia Wikipedia Workshop Organized!

October 2012 Bulletin

Public Call for Comments

Blog Entries

Analysis

Blog Entry

Event Organised

Wikipedia Education Programs

Wikipedia Workshops

Wikipedia Event

Wikipedia Press Coverage

Wikipedia Team Updates

Column

Analysis

Upcoming IGF Events

Other Upcoming Event

Event organised

Events Participated

Video

Media Coverage

Column in Business Standard

Newspaper Column

*About CIS*

Super Cassettes v. MySpace

The Facts

The Defence

Outcomes

Analysis

Accounting for the Medium of Communication

And What of Free Speech?

Consequences for Intermediary Liability and Safe Harbour Protection

Effect of the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012

Phone Spreadsheet

The Hathitrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO

Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates

September 8

October 1

October 12

October 13

October 14

Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!

Meeting with Wikipedia Club Pune members

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad

Pre-requisites:

A Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies"

Objective:

Scope of Conference and Workshop:

Expected outcomes:

Agenda

The Speakers

Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University

Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!

About CIS