Centre for Internet and Society

Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia

Nitika Tandon — 2012-09-29T12:13:04Z

Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.

What is Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia?

Editor Growth & Contribution Program is an online outreach program that will help raise the number of active editors on Telugu Wikipedia. The program will provide an entrance point for newcomers to Wikipedia, enabling them to contribute to its contents and share the knowledge they possess, while participating and communicating with existing Wikipedia community members. Such a program will serve as a compliment to off-wiki outreach activities already underway.

Some of the Telugu Wikipedians like Arjuna, Dr. Rajshekhar, Sujatha are in the initial stage of discussing the possibility and ways of running an Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia.

How will the program run?

The idea is to run outreach banners using the local site notice on Telugu Wikipedia for three consecutive months. These banners will be in the form of short bios/stories of Telugu Wikipedians who agree to be featured in the editor campaign. Most Wikipedia visitors are unaware of the fact that regular folks write articles on Wikipedia and not scholars or paid writers. These personal stories from active Wikipedians could feature their motivation to contribute, their passion for building and developing Wikipedia, their early experience with Wikipedia as an editor, their invitation to site visitors to become Wikipedia editors, etc. Such personal stories will add a human touch to Wikipedia and will help new visitors related to real life stories.

Each of these banners will link to a landing page. The landing page will start with a question at its top saying “What would you like to do in Wikipedia?” followed by six buttons each listing an answer to this question, and linking to the corresponding tutorial page. These six buttons will be: create your username, create your userpage, edit an existing article (fix a typo), add a reference, create a new article, and send a message.

Landing page will be designed in a simple way to avoid any visual distraction for the visitor. Each button will provide a detailed graphical explanation on how to perform each of those actions. To understand the workings of the program in greater detail please click here (this program design is just a rough draft and may change as required).

Why Telugu Wikipedia?

As per Wikimedia Stats Telugu speaking population is around 8 crore. Telugu Wikipedia has about 18 lakh page views per month and 21 active editors (5+ edits in a month). In a community with such large numbers of speakers but extremely low number of Wikipedia editors, there seems to be a lot of scope and opportunity to increase Wikipedia's reach and awareness amongst Telugu speaking population and more so amongst reader of Telugu Wikipedia to start improving and expanding Wikipedia articles and foster the growth of Telugu Wikipedia community.

Telugu Wikipedia at a glance July 2012

Number of speakers of other Dravidian languages like Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil is relatively low but have higher number of page views and active editors as compared to Telugu as seen in the table on the right. KA, ML and TA Wikipedia communities have run different programs over time to increase it's reach, spread more awareness and invite new editors. Some of these programs were TamilWiki Media Contest, Tamil Wikipedia Contribution Campaign, Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program, Kannada Medical Project, etc. Telugu Wikipedia requires a similar high impact project that can help them grow their community.

Comparison of Telugu Wikipedia with other langauge Wikipedias.

Cross pollinating ideas

Tamil and Arabic Wikipedia communities have already experimented with Editor Growth & Contribution Program and have produced amazing results. Ravi from Tamil Wikipedia and Haitham from Arabic Wikipedia were actively involved in running the contribution programs on their respective language Wikipedias and have offered help to run similar project on Telugu Wikipedia and provide regular guidance and support.

Next steps ahead

Strong community support will be required to run such a program. The larger Telugu Wikipedia community will plan a meet up sometime in October in Hyderabad to take this program forward. Special thanks to Dr. Rajshekhar who has offered to organise this meet-up.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/editor-growth-and-contribution-on-telegu-wikipedia

Feedback to Draft Copyright Rules, 2012

pranesh — 2012-10-04T04:53:47Z

The Centre for Internet & Society submitted its written comments on the Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 to Mr. G.R. Raghavender, Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP&CR), Ministry of Human Resource Development.

G.R. Raghavender
Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP&CR)
Copyright Office
Department of Higher Education
Ministry of Human Resource Development
4th floor, Jeevan Deep Building,
Parliament Street
New Delhi — 110001

Dear Sir,

This submission contains comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on the Draft Copyright Rules, 2012. I apologize for the slight delay in submitting these.

Yours sincerely,
Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director
Centre for Internet and Society

Relinquishment of Copyright

Analysis

The law in India allows anonymously and pseudonymously created works to be copyrighted as well, as is clear from section 23 of the Copyright Act. However, rule 8 as it currently is does not allow such authors to relinquish copyright. Relinquishment of copyright is a very different kind of act from registration of copyright, and hence it is not necessary to seek the same categories of information from both. Certain categories of information sought during registration of copyright ("class of work", "language of the work", "nationality of author") are required not because they help identify a work, but because they help in indexing the work ("class of work", "language of work") or in ensuring that the work is copyrightable in India ("nationality of author"). Such considerations do not matter when it comes to relinquishment of copyright, i.e., when a work is allowed to pass into the public domain. Further, technological progress has made it difficult to determine the answer to a question like "country of first publication", "nationality of the publisher", etc. If a work has been uploaded by an author on to his blog, is the publisher the author or the person hosting the blog? If an Indian author residing in India first publishes a work on the server located in Argentina, is the country of first publication India or Argentina? The answer to these questions does not make a difference to the issue of relinquishment of copyright. The only information that is required for relinquishment of rights is a) what work is being put in the public domain, b) by whom, c) from when.

Furthermore, the current requirements of rule 8 cannot easily be satisfied by using most of the popular means of relinquishing copyright (such as the CC0 — Creative Commons Zero — licence).

Recommendations

Rule 8 be modified to read: A public notice issued by an author relinquishing his or her rights as per subsection (1) of section 21 of the Copyright Act, shall include the following details: (a) Title of the work (b) Full name, or pseudonym, in case the work has not been created anonymously (c) Date of issuance of the notice (d) If copyright in the work is registered under section 45, the registration number.

Rule 9 be modified to read: Any one of the following shall constitute public notice of relinquishment of copyright: i. Mentioning of the notice on the work, or cover of the work, or in the metadata of the work if the work is electronic; or ii. Publication in a newspaper; or iii. Publication by the author on a publicly-accessible website

Rule 10 be modified to add the following sentence: The author shall forward a copy of the public notice to the Registrar of Copyright if copyright in the work has been registered under section 45 and on receiving such notice, the Registrar of Copyright shall post the same on the website of the Copyright Office.

Statutory Licence for Cover Versions

Analysis

Rule 34(2) is redundant and does not contain any detail not already present in the existing proviso to section 31C(1) of the Copyright Act. Additionally, Rule 35 also does not contain any detail not already present in the existing parent provision, section 31C of the Copyright Act.

Recommendations

Rules 34(2) and 35 be deleted.
Rule 37 should be modified to add a sub-rule requiring maintenance of records online.

Indexes

Analysis

In rule 71(3), it requires that the indexes be maintained in the form of cards. These are presumably physical cards. It is unclear why the rule should not require the maintenance of these indexes online to facilitate search by the public. Further entries 13 and 14 of Schedule II are from a time when the transaction costs incurred by the Registrar of Copyright for providing extracts from an Index were non-negligible, and hence it would have been necessary to charge a person for such services. With the capabilities of electronic systems, such retrievals are almost costless, and can be done without the intervention of the Registrar of Copyright. Hence entries 13 and 14 should not be made applicable to online retrievals. If copyright societies can be required to provide information free of costs on their websites (as per rule 65), the Registrar of Copyright should be required to do so too.

Recommendation

Modify sub-rule (3) of rule 71 to read: "Every Index shall be available online as a downloadable database, with an online search facility."

Modify the second sentence in rule 72 to read: "The online search or inspection of the Register of Copyrights and Indexes can be utilised free of cost."

Storage of Transient or Incidental Copies of a Work

Analysis

It is not clear enough from the language of rule 74 that it applies only to s.52(1)(c) and not to s.52(1)(b). Since only s.52(1)(c) has a complaints mechanism, this should be made clear.

Importantly, to protect the interest of the public, the intermediaries should be asked to give public notice regarding the alleged infringing copy to ensure that the take-down mechanism is not abused, and secondly to ensure that the public can independently verify that intermediaries are following the requirement in rule 74(4) of restoring storage of the work if no court order is forthcoming within 21 days.

Lastly, there is no clear precedent in India to treat a uniform resource identifier (URI) as 'place' for purposes of section 51(a)(ii) of the Copyright Act, 1957. Therefore it is necessary to further clarify the meaning of the term 'place' as used in current Rule 74(2)(d). This would be best served by using the correct technological term ("URI") instead of the word "place".

Recommendation

Modify sub-rule (1) of rule 74 to: "Any owner of copyright may give a written complaint as per clause (c) of subsection (1) of section 52 of the Copyright Act to a person who has facilitated..."

Add sub-rule (6) to rule 74: "The person responsible for storage shall put up a public notice thereby notifying all persons requesting access to the alleged infringing copy by stating reasons for restraining such access whether during the period of 21 days from the complaint from the copyright owner, or pursuant to an order from a competent court."

Modify rule 74(2) to read: "Details of the specific uniform resource identifier (URI) where transient or incidental storage of the work may be taking place."

Making or Adapting the Work by Organizations Working for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities

Analysis

Rule 75 requires organizations making use of the exception granted under s.52(1)(zb) to maintain records. This could not have been the intention of the legislature in passing s.52(1)(zb), since that provision does not require any maintenance of records. Indeed, none of the exceptions ennume-rated in s.52(1) require the maintenance of records. This is in contrast with s.31B, which is also applicable to organizations working for the benefit of persons with disabilities, but only those that are doing so as a for-profit venture. Rule 29(6) already requires the Registrar of Copyright to notify the grant of a licence under s.31B in the Official Gazette. That provision may be modified to add that the Registrar of Copyright maintains these records in a centralized database that can be queried online.

Recommendations

Delete rule 75, and modify rule 29(6) to include a centralized database.

Technological Protection Measures

Analysis

Most experts seem to hold that s.65A of the Indian Copyright Act does not affect circumvention tools, as it only deals with the act of unauthorized circumvention and not with the tools, in sharp contrast with s.1201(a)(2) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US, which criminalises the "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provision, or otherwise trafficking in any [circumvention] technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof". The Indian law has conciously chosen not to emulate the DMCA in this respect, as the WIPO Copyright Treaty does not require it.

The broad understanding of "facilitation" contained the Copyright Rules unfortunately seem to undermine this clear distinction. If facilitation is understood to include offer to the public, provision, or distribution, as seems to be the case in Rule 79(3) and 79(4), then law becomes unworkable with each and every website that allows for the downloading of any software that can be used to play DVDs, etc., must specifically keep a register of downloaders from India. This is unnecessary, and goes beyond the intent of s.65A, which is to cover those who actively facilitate circumvention and not those who make available the tools to circumvent. This distinction should not be blurred.

Recommendation

Delete sub-rules (3) and (4) of rule 79.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/feedback-to-draft-copyright-rules-2012

Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala

Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:18:36Z

Patiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.

When the veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani agreed to come forward to spread the message of Punjabi wikipedia among Punjabi speakers it opened a way to revive and build the Punjabi Wikipedia community. Once Guglani's support was confirmed we looked for suitable places to conduct the introduction workshop for Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani himself suggested Patiala, Ludhiana, and Amritsar as the probable places to conduct the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshops. Prof. Rajinder Brar, Head of the Punjabi Department agreed to provide full support to conduct a workshop at Patiala.

About 30 participants including students and teachers attended the workshop. Guglani played a pivotal role in organizing the workshop. Shiju Alex gave ample support. The workshop began with a welcome message by Prof. Rajinder. Guglani then took the participants through a brief presentation (http://bit.ly/Rnki2r) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia. To our surprise two of the participants, Satdeep Gill and Paramjeet Singh were already aware about the Punjabi Wikipedia and they had created their accounts sometime back even though they didn't do much editing. The presence of Satdeep and Paramjeet and their previous experience with Punjabi helped us during the course of the workshop. Guglani taught one of the participants to create a user account and do the wiki editing. He showed them Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing.

This was followed by a question-answer session where the participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions. The workshop ended with a small photo session.

We are happy to share that Satdeep has become quite active after this workshop and as of now is one of the very active users in Punjabi Wikipedia. We are sure his presence will attract more Punjabi people from Patiala to Punjabi Wikipedia.

More pictures of this workshop is available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-16Aug2012

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala

WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground

Rahul Cherian — 2012-09-28T04:41:08Z

After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year. However, due to pressure from the European Union and the United States, and their insistence on several untenable provisions, there is a real risk that the TVI could become unworkable on the ground.

The following is a list of concerns that must suitably be addressed if the TVI is to make a realistic dent in the “book famine” in which only a few per cent of books are available in accessible formats that persons with print disabilities can read.

Definition of authorised entity to be widened.
The current definition of authorized entity prescribes 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.
Authorised entities must be required to follow simple rules and procedures when converting and distributing works in accessible formats.
As is proposed now, authorized entities could be required to follow complex rules and procedures with respect to the permitted activities. In this connection it is critical to note that:
- Smaller organisations will not be in a position to keep organised records. Therefore smaller organisations that serve rural or small populations must not be subject to a requirement to keep records where they do not distribute accessible formats in electronic form.
- There must be no requirements for organisations to apply Technology Protection Measures to accessible formats in electronic form.
- While organisations can inform beneficiary persons to whom they supply accessible formats that there must be no subsequent distribution to non-beneficiary persons, an organisation should have no obligation to oversee the use by the beneficiary persons they supply accessible formats to, or any responsibility for misuse by beneficiary persons they supply accessible formats to.
- There must be no requirement to share the records that organisations are required to keep with any person or entity other than in the eventuality of copyright infringement proceedings.
The rules and procedures must therefore be simplified to reflect the above.
The exception must automatically kick in if the relevant accessible formats are not available in the market on the same day as the mainstream format.
At present there is no clarity on when the exception kicks in and the existing wording can be interpreted such that the exception may apply only after significant time has passed after the books are available in the market in the mainstream format. If a work is made available in the market in a mainstream format it is essential that beneficiary persons can enjoy the work in the relevant accessible format at the same time. Failure to do so is discriminatory towards beneficiary persons. In this connection, the TVI must expressly clarify that if the accessible format copy is not available on the same day as the mainstream format, the exception automatically applies and authorised entities and beneficiary persons can create accessible format copies on the same day that the mainstream format is commercial available.
This will also be an incentive for rights holders to take steps to ensure that accessible format copies are made commercially available on the same day as mainstream formats.
“Making available” to be possible through wire and wireless means.
One of the proposed changes to the TVI is the clarification that “making available” accessible format copies to the public should be as per Article 8 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty thereby expressly providing for communication to the public, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. Given that technology is making it increasingly possible for beneficiary persons to access accessible format copies over wire and wireless means, this is clarification is very critical.
The Authorised Entity in the exporting country must not have any obligation to verify any form of legal eligibility in the importing country.
As per the current wording of the TVI an authorized entity in one Member State:
- Must, when exporting to beneficiary person in another Member State, verify whether that other Member State would permit that beneficiary person to make or import that accessible copy; and
- Can only export to an entity or organization in another Member State that the originating authorizing entity has identified as another authorized entity.
It is obvious that authorised entities in one country cannot verify the above with any degree of certainty and therefore it is impossible for authorised entities to comply with this requirement. Moreover, as in the case of all copyright exceptions and limitations, rights holders have the right to take copyright infringement action against any person or entity that operates outside, or exceeds, the exception. This requirement relating to the verification legal legibility must therefore be deleted.
Member states having the flexibility to decide whether to link exceptions to commercial availability.
At present, the draft TVI provides Member States the flexibility to decide whether to confine permitted activities to instances where there is no commercial availability of accessible format copies. This flexibility is critical for Member States since the economic and distribution ground realities in each Member State vary widely and only a Member State can decide this issue conclusively for its own circumstances. Any attempt to change this position in the TVI must be opposed.
In short, barring the above issues, the Treaty appears to heading in the right direction. The upcoming intersessionals in Geneva (17-19th October 2012) to discuss the text of the Treaty will be crucial to decide the fate of the Treaty. Watch this space.

Rahul is the founder of Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability Law and Policy and he advices the World Blind Union on legal issues relating to the WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/wipo-treaty-for-the-visually-impaired

Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh

Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:08:03Z

A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian.

The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.

Day 1: Introductory Session

There was news coverage about this session in the Hindustan Times. Members of the British Library (members above 16 years) were informed about the event through the British Council's mailing list. About 32 participants attended this session on Day 1. These included people from different age groups and backgrounds. Amazingly there were more elderly folks than the youngsters! Most of them were from Ludhiana, Mohali and Panchkula (Mohali and Panchkula are two nearby cities).

Subhashish gave the welcome address and asked the participants to introduce themselves and speak about their Wikipedia experience and interaction as a user. Many of them asked questions in the beginning itself which was quite beneficial as we got to spending some time to know each other. The participants were taken through the presentation by questioning about "Who edits Wikipedia and why they edit it", and since the participants continued asking a lot of questions in between, the intro session was longer. Most of them were still not believing that Wikipedia articles could be edited by common men like them. So Subhashish decided to do some vandalism. One of the participants volunteered for creating her user account, and the year when Chandigarh was declared as being the "cleanest city" of India was changed. She then corrected it. Subhashish explained how experienced editors correct such mistakes. The participants were briefed about a few formatting options like bold, italics, hyperlinking and creating heading levels, etc., and showed the "help" tab through which they could learn more. Majority of them had doubts about the credibility and they brought examples of many articles having wrong information. So the rest of the session was spent discussing about the low visibility being one of the reasons of articles with wrong information and how more editor contribution is essential for articles in the Indian context. The participants were also shown articles with "cleanup / more citations needed" maintenance tags and told how they could be improved.

Day 2: Editing Workshop

Ten participants from the previous day (including a sports-blogger, a techie, four students, a ELT trainer, a pediatrician and a lady from Ludhiana who created her user account on Day 1 and brought her father for Day 2) came over for this workshop. There were four new student participants as well. Subhashish and Piyush spoke briefly about what is intended for the editing session. All the participants created their user accounts. Some of the participants helped the ones who were new to create their user accounts. The participants chose various articles including articles of local importance such as Banka Bihari Temple in Chandigarh, paratha (few of the participants raising queries on why it is not spelt "paraNtha", Assam tea, and so on.

Figure 1: Above is a picture of participants doing Wiki editing

The audience listened patiently and asked interesting questions like "what is there for me", "what we are going to do next", etc. They all gathered together for a photoshoot, discussed on setting a wiki club to stay connected and agreed to continue editing after the session is over. The participants were also excited to hear that the Chandigarh British Library Wikipedia Club would be India's third Wikipedia club.

Figure 2: Above is a picture of the participants on Day 2

Meeting with British Library Staff

After the session got over there was a meeting with British library's Deputy Manager Christina and IT Head Varinder. We were joined by a columnist from Tribune and one participant. We explained how the wiki club will function and how it would help them as well. Being a library they could involve many of their members in this. A woman editor from Ludhiana has showed interest for conducting workshops in her town. There was a sports-blogger and techie who explained how the local blogger community (over 125+ bloggers) meet up regularly and blog actively. This is a community we could explore more to promote Wikipedia amongst techies. We found that the British Library was quite open to ideas and showed interest for this collaborative model. The participants also asked about defining positions for the wiki club so that people having different interest could take up the lead for different activities.

Post event steps:

Emails with thanks and appreciating their interest were sent to the participants.
Formal opening of the club was done on Wikipedia and participants and new editors have been informed.
Help/support desk on Facebook was set up to provide online support.
Press releases were sent to newspapers.
Distributing work among new editors has begun.
Discussion for next meetup and keeping them updated on regular basis is being implemented.

Meetings were also held with the curator of Chandigarh museum and with Sheetal Prakash, former professor in Public Administration at Punjab University who could help us in reaching out to Punjabi media.

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop

Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:16:44Z

For those who might not be aware, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the first Indic Wikipedias where community started editing way back in 2002. However, after the initial few edits all activities got stopped and it was inactive over the last decade. Recently we conducted a few workshops that led to the revival of Punjabi Wikipedia. This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012.

Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. The interest and enthusiam showed by Surinder encouraged long-time Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani to join this workshop.

About 25 participants came over for this workshop. The College of Computer and Information Technology (CCIT) supported in hosting this event.

Sarabjit Singh, CEO of the organization introduced the invited guests and explained briefly about the session. Surinder thereafter made a presentation explaining the basics of Wikipedia editing. Guglani, one of the old and active editors of Punjabi Wikipedia talked about the Punjabi Wikipedia and its present situation. He then invited one of the participants and helped her creating her user account and edit an article. Janmeja Singh, a Punjabi language researcher spoke about unicode standards and the importance of Wikipedia for Punjabi language. Gurjeet Singh, another new wikipedian demonstrated Punjabi typing using commonly used keyboards with Roman characters for those who were not aware of typing in Punjabi.

We then started the editing session. Out of them 15 new editors (of which 13 were female) edited various articles. We showed them the typing support page (http://bit.ly/Uw8WaV) on Punjabi Wikipedia and distributed the same in printed form (http://bit.ly/Rk9wde). Guglani, Subhashish and Surinder helped editors with basic editing and referencing. New Wikipedians were also informed about the Punjabi Wikipedia Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/Pr7tBE ).

Above is a picture of all the participants from the Punjabi Wikipedia workshop

The workshop was covered in Signpost (http://bit.ly/SSvUYh). There was some media coverage as well:

Daily Ajit: http://bit.ly/OWPozC
The Tribune: http://bit.ly/UMrDvs
Hindustan Times: http://bit.ly/UMrNTn
PunjabInfoline: ‪http://bit.ly/UZhoT8
YesPunjab.com: http://bit.ly/OcMANc

Photos: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:First_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop,_Ludhiana

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop

Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report: January – June 2012

Shiju Alex — 2012-09-28T15:41:31Z

The following is a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. The author provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.

The period of analysis is editor contributions between January 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012. (Read last year’s report here). The data for this report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at http://stats.wikimedia.org. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this information.

Some of the important points from this report are:

As always Indic wikipedia communities that are focused on community building had done well. Progress is slow but the results are steady and sustainable.
The communities that have made substantial progress in community building are Urdu, Oriya, Assamese, and Malayalam. (among this, for Urdu Wikipedia most of the activity is from Pakistan). The most recent entry to this club is Punjabi which will show up in the statistics of next few months.
Providing adequate support for newbies is very much required after each outreach. But many communities are failing here. This is affecting the conversion rate even though many outreach activities are happening across the country,
As seen in the past the readership of Indic language wikipedias is still growing up.

This report is presented in the following sequence.

Community
Content
Readership

Community

As community is the backbone of every Indic language Wikipedia, it is important that the respective language wiki communities give adequate importance to community building. Many language communities are still not understanding the importance of building the community. To achieve the goal of building free knowledge database in the respective language we need participation from maximum number of speakers of the respective language. The following table gives information on two important parameters about the community in the respective language Wikipedia:

Number of users who had 100 or more edits in a month (high active Wikipedians)
Number of users who had at least 5 or more edits a month (active Wikipedians)

User growth in Indic language Wikipedias during 2012 January-June

Some of the important information that we can make out from this table are:

The number of high active editors (editors with more than 100 edits per month) are the backbone of each language wikipedia. Apart from doing normal article editing they are the users maintaining the wiki. Tamil and Malayalam continue to be on the top spot with almost 24 active users . Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, and Urdu also showed growth in the number of high active users.
Assamese Wikipedia is showing a reduction in the number of high active users even though its number of active users increased. This means that Assamese Wikipedia requires some more current active users to take up the role of wiki adminship and similar leadership roles.
The number of active users (editors with more than 5 edits per month) give an overview of the overall activity in wikipedia. Here also Malayalam and Tamil continue to be on the top. Some of the languages that showed notable growth in the number of active users are Urdu, Oriya, and Assamese. As we know there are lot of community building activities happening in both Oriya and Assamese. Along with community building activities both the communities are making sure they are providing sufficient support to newbies using various options. And there efforts are showing up in the form of community strength.
The number of active members in Odia has increased to 25 which means community has grown 3 times over the past 6 months.
The number of wiki editors per million for most Indic languages is still below 1. This shows that awareness about Indic language wiki projects is still an issue for most Indic Wikipedias. From this statistics (http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm), we can see that for Sanskrit the number of editors per million speakers has become 280 which is one of the highest in the world. No other Indic language Wikipedia is near Sanskrit in this parameter. Malayalam comes second with 3 editors per million and Assamese and Bishnupriya Manipuri comes third with 2 editors per million. Tamil is in the fourth place with 1 editor. For all other Indic languages the number of editors per million population is below 1. This shows that still the penetration of respective language Wikipedia among the speakers of a language is very low. We need more outreach programs to reach the speakers of the respective language.

Content

The number of articles is an important parameter which has misguided some wiki communities. However, it is a very important parameter if communities are increasing the number of articles in a way helpful to the readers of the wiki.

Hindi continues to be on the top spot with 1,02,902. During the past 6 months almost 2000 articles got added to Hindi Wikipedia.
Telugu Wikipedia crossed the 50,000 article milestone is one of the major accomplishments during this period. I remember reading the news about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the 30,000 article milestone in June 2007 which shows that it took almost 5 years to reach 50,000 article milestone. As pointed out by User:Veeven in his blog post (about Telugu Wikipedia crossing the 50,000 articles), Telugu Wikipedia needs more support from Telugu speaking population to build the free knowledge project in Telugu. The current number of active users in Telugu Wikipedia is not showing justice to the huge speaker base (more than 8 crores) of Telugu.
Another major milestone was Assamese Wikipedia crossing the 1,000 article milestone.
Tamil and Malayalam are the two language wikipedias that added most number of articles during this time period. Both the language wikipedias added close to 3000 articles.
Sindhi, Newari (Nepal Bhasha) and Bishnupriya language wikipedias showed reduction in the number of articles. There are 2 reasons for this:

There is no active community to add new articles (see the first table for the number of active users)
Spam/vandalism pages were deleted by stewards/global sysops.

Readers (Pageview)

Number of people visiting the website continue to increase for all Indic language wikipedias and the total visits for all Indic language wikipedias combined is close to 4 crore now.

Please note that the information available in the below table is the total visits (page views) for a language wikipedia for a month from all the platforms combined. It includes visits by readers and editors. This is NOT the list of Number of Unique Visitors to the website.

(The number of readers shown in the below table is in lakhs)

(The Number of Readers shown in the above table is in lakhs)

For most of the Indic languages readership has gone up. For Assamese and Odia it almost doubled.
Among big languages unlike the number of active users when it comes to readers most Indic languages are doing justice to its speaking population volume. So even though many of our speakers are not editing the respective language wikipedia they are reading it. Bengali and Telugu are two languages that behaves different here which shows that awareness is very low for both the languages.
As the Indic language support in smart phones and different OSs is in better position now, I am sure the readership is going to increase further in future.

Still a major percentage of our speakers (I mean speakers who has access to internet) doesn’t know that there is a Wikipedia exists in their own mother language and they not using it is a big issue. If our reader base is not increasing it will affect the community growth also. Hope things will improve as at least few language communities are involved in various awareness and outreach programs.

Originally posted at http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2012-january-2012-june/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/indic-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-jan-june-2012

Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace — CIS’s Upcoming A2K Research Initiative

Jadine Lannon — 2012-10-30T06:23:53Z

Pervasive technologies have flooded the Indian market and are changing the ways in which the average Indian accesses knowledge but very little is understood about these technologies, particularly when it comes to their legality. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) plans to begin a research project that aims to understand how pervasive technologies interact with Intellectual Property laws and what can be done to protect these technologies from being labelled “illegal” and eradicated from the Asian market.

Between 2000 and 2012, mobile phone subscriptions in India increased from 3.578 million to 893.86 million — an increase of almost 250 per cent.[1] In fact, mobile device sales were expected to reach 231 million units in 2012, an 8.5 per cent increase from 2011[2] and an incredible leap from the 21 million units sold in India in 2004.[3] While mobile phone penetration has been rising steadily in India,[4] the cost of mobile phones has plummeted, meaning that the ability to purchase and use mobile phones in India is becoming more and more widespread, especially in the marginalized classes. Mobiles are not the only technology that has experienced this phenomenon; indeed, many different types of pervasive technologies (mass-market networked communication technologies) have become increasingly more accessible across the board in Indian society.

When I use the term pervasive, I am referring to those technologies that are the most accessible to and used by the typical Indian. These technologies are characterized by their ability to provide access to media without significant cost to the user through both their low cost and their features. Mobile phones, netbooks and media players, as well as hardware, software and associated content are all considered to be pervasive technologies. For research purposes, CIS will only consider those technologies that cost under USD 100 or about INR 5,400. Considering that in 2011 it was estimated that about 75 per cent of the mobile devices sold in India cost below USD 75,[5] this is not a restrictive figure.

Although these technologies have become near ubiquitous in India and similar developing markets, very little is actually understood about how they interact with Intellectual Property (IP) laws. The pervasive technology industry exists somewhere between formal and informal and legal and illegal (as Carolyn Nordstrom would put it, these technologies would be il slash legal, or il/legal),[6] and can shift in and out of the legal/formal and illegal/informal realm depending on the stage of production; this is why they are often referred to as “gray market” technologies (though in some cases, it may even be appropriate to call them extra-legal). This lack of compliance with IP laws have made technologies both quite cheap to purchase and a popular platform for software, hardware and content innovation. The result is that these technologies often contain the newest and most interesting features and they provide the most “bang-for-your-buck” for content and value-added services. Thus, a consumer can buy a grey market technology that will have a wide array of features and services for a much lower price than would be paid to one of the larger manufacturers for an equal or even lesser product.

It is the low cost but highly sophisticated state of these pervasive technologies that is changing the way that people across the world access information and media, particularly those individuals and groups that routinely face barriers to mainstream structures of access. For those that were left on the wrong side of the infamous “digital divide”, pervasive technologies have been arguably the most effective means of providing real access to knowledge to the masses within India and across Asia, even more so than directed development initiatives. Indeed, pervasive technologies are not the future solution for access to knowledge; they are the current reality.

Although pervasive technologies are plausibly the most effective tools of access for knowledge in the marketplace in emerging economies like China, Indonesia and India, very little scholarly research has been done on pervasive technologies in the developing world, especially research that acknowledges the significant role that pervasive technologies have had in bridging the digital divide. This absence of appreciation for the significance of pervasive technologies in developing economies, coupled with a lack of understanding around their complex interaction with national and international IP regimes, may lead to a policy vacuum within which the existence of pervasive technologies could be jeopardized. Accordingly, CIS will begin a new access to knowledge research initiative that aims to understand the relationship between pervasive technologies and Intellectual Property. Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace will span over two-and-a-half calendar years (30 calendar months) and will recruit researchers from China, India, and other parts of Asia. Interaction will also be established with members of like-minded projects in Africa and Latin America. This research will begin as soon as it is approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The current project proposal is available for download as a PDF document (299 Kb).

The immediate aim of the research is to understand the legal environment, in which pervasive technologies exist, but simply generating comprehension is not enough; pervasive technologies must be allowed a more formal space in the Indian market. As part of the research project, CIS plans to carry out both an advocacy phase and dissemination phase in order to use the research outputs to create a more widespread understanding of the importance of pervasive technologies as access to knowledge tools. We hope that the research will encourage the formation of IP reforms and norms that recognize the role that pervasive technologies play in providing access to knowledge and enable their continued participation in the Indian market and society.

As the formal research project has yet to commence, I will be working on a small section of the Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace research on pervasive mobile phone technologies. CIS currently possesses 12 mobile phones that fall into the definition of pervasive technologies, though we will hopefully add to our collection as the research continues. The aim of this research is to document as much information about the life-cycles, hardware, software and content of each phone as possible in order to generate a better understanding of how these phones exist and interact with IP regimes and norms. The blog series on this research should begin in the next couple of weeks.

[1]. Data available on the International Telecommunications Union Data Explorer at http://bit.ly/MIfEYO
[2].Gartner Inc. Gartner Says Indian Mobile Handset Sales to Reach 231 Million Units in 2012, http://bit.ly/tKe7nU(November 22, 2011).
[3].Gartner Inc., ‘Forecast: Mobile Terminals, Worldwide, 2000-2009 report’ (July, 2005), but cited information can be retrieved from http://bit.ly/PTAOFC
[4].International Telecommunications Union, 'The World in 2009: ICT Facts and Figures' available at http://bit.ly/qtwGU
[5].Gartner Inc. Gartner Says Indian Mobile Handset Sales to Reach 231 Million Units in 2012, http://bit.ly/qtwGU (November 22, 2011).
[6].Nordstrom, C. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 256.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-access-to-knowledge-in-the-market-place

Entertainment industry and Internet piracy in focus

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T10:00:54Z

The first-of-its-kind initiative by the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala Police to register cases against 1,010 Internet users for uploading or downloading the Malayalam film Bachelor Party has sparked a debate between social media experts and legal puritans on what the law actually says.

Krishnadas Rajagopal's article was published in the Hindu on September 17, 2012. Pranesh Prakash and Prashant Iyengar are quoted.

Internet users and anti-monopoly advocates say the police action against movie downloaders is “questionable.” They argue how the Copyright Act, 1957, has given wide exception to those who disseminate copyright works for “personal and private use.”

Legal puritans, on the other hand, quote the same 1957 law and the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, to argue that the State police have not done anything wrong.

They say the act of uploading and downloading a copyrighted cinematographic work amounts to publishing and transmitting it, respectively.

They cite Section 66 of the IT Act, 2000, that says a “hacker,” if found guilty, can get three years’ imprisonment, a fine up to Rs.2 lakh, or even both.

That’s not all. Section 43 of the same statute prescribes that a “hacker” may have to cough up Rs.1 crore in compensation in case of “damage to the computer system.”

Middle line

Some others draw the middle line about the police’s drive. They say that though downloading is as illegal as buying a pirated CD from the market and “ignorance of law is no excuse to escape prosecution under an existing law,” the sheer magnitude of registering mass cases against downloaders, probably on a global scale, is impractical.

“It is questionable whether downloading for personal use by itself constitutes an offence under the Copyright Act, 1957. The Act has created a wide exception for personal and private use,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager for Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance and Freedom of Speech at The Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

The usage “personal and private use” in the Act can be better understood in the contrast — that is, downloading without any intention to “disseminate the cinematographic work to a community you are not provisionally associated to.”

Legislative intent

Prashant Iyengar, Assistant Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for Intellectual Property Rights Studies, Jindal Global Law School, says the legislative intent behind the wide exceptions given to dissemination of work in the 1957 law is actually strengthening the public domain.

“In India under the Copyright Act, we have a robust regime of fair dealing rights to ensure that information cannot be monopolised at the expense of the public’s access to information,” he says.

He refers to Section 52 of the Act that allows reproduction of literary, artistic, musical, and dramatic works for research and private uses without any “quantitative restriction” on the amount that may be copied. “However, cinematographic works do not fall under this exception,” he says.

Under Section 51, a single copy of a cinematographic work could be “imported” to India for personal and domestic use. This would not amount to copyright infringement.

“But it is currently unsettled in law whether Section 51 would protect users downloading movies for their personal use. On the other hand, if you receive a copy of a movie CD by post, this section would clearly apply,” Mr. Iyengar says.

Pavan Duggal, senior Supreme Court lawyer specialising in cyber laws, differs in his opinion. As far as he is concerned, the law is clear against copyright infringement.

He says unauthorised downloading of movies also attracts action under the IT Act, 2000. “The legal perspective is that when you upload a pirated copy, you are doing an act of publishing and when you click the ‘download’ button, you are transmitting data in an electronic format for the purpose of diminishing the value of electronic information,” he says.

“The Kerala Police have not done anything fundamentally wrong by registering cases against uploaders and downloaders. When I am creating a film, I have copyright to both cinematic and electronic versions. In case of infringement, I can act by suing for damages, injunction, in addition to exposing the person to criminal liability under the Copyright Act,” Mr. Duggal says.

However, Mr. Iyengar vehemently counters the point. He asks a “pertinent” question — how the Kerala Police conducted their probe and how the Internet Protocol addresses were obtained when Internet service providers have strict privacy obligations against disclosure of any such details, except to government authorities.

“In this case, one hears that a private investigation firm called ‘Jadoo Infotech’ was involved in conducting ‘cyber-patrolling,’ which is not authorised by any law. They would be guilty of the digital equivalent offence of ‘lurking house trespass’,” Mr. Iyengar says.

But Nandagopal Rajan, an associate editor with a technology magazine in Delhi, has a simple logic grounded in law.

“Anybody who is downloading illegally cannot seek protection. You are actually doing something illegal. On the flip side, how many people can you prosecute?” he asked.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-the-hindu-sep-17-2012-krishnadas-rajagopal-entertainment-industry-and-internet-piracy-in-focus

August 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-09-11T14:53:44Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of August 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis of the latest list of sites blocked by the Indian government from August 18, 2012 to August 21, 2012, the India Report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012, and press coverage related to the recent North East exodus.

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:

Special Section on Freedom of Expression

We usually cover Freedom of Expression under Internet Governance. However, in the month of August there has been much discussion regarding the North East exodus from Bangalore and the blocking of a number of websites by the Indian government from August 18 to 21, 2012. This special section covers reportage and original content from CIS:

Featured Research

Analysing Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism & Rioting Edition) (by Pranesh Prakash): Pranesh Prakash did a preliminary analysis on a leaked list of the websites blocked from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government. There were a total of 309 specific items (those being URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a handful of websites) that were blocked. In this analysis, Pranesh examines why these have been blocked, are the blocks legitimate, are there any egregious mistakes, why the whole list hasn’t been put up, why can one access items that are supposed to be blocked, what should the government have done, etc. The analysis was quoted/cross-posted in the following places: Wall Street Journal (August 25, 2012), The Hindu (August 24, 2012), LiveMint (August 24, 2012), Global Voices (August 24, 2012), Outlook (August 23, 2012), FirstPost.India (August 23, 2012), IBN Live (August 23, 2012), News Click (August 23, 2012), Medianama (August 23, 2012) and KAFILA (August 23, 2012).

Columns

To regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Herald, August 26, 2012): “Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.”

Social media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore (by Nishant Shah, First Post, August 25, 2012): “I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.”
What lurks beneath the Network (by Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, August 24, 2012): “There is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown Anna Hazare spectacles), there is this increasing belief in the innate possibilities of social media as providing ways by which the world as we know it shall change for the better. Young people are getting on to the streets and demanding their rights to the future.”
Censoring the Internet: A brief manual (by Sunil Abraham, Tehelka, August 23, 2012): “Blocking websites on the Internet should be proportionate to harm they intend. However, the government of India's approach is against the principles of natural justice.”
The Perils of 'Hactivism' (by Chinmayi Arun, LiveMint, August 20, 2012): “Civil disobedience includes accepting the penalty for breaking the law. Untraceable hackers are far removed from this ethic.”

Foreign Media Coverage

India blocks more than 250 Web sites for inciting hate, panic (by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post on August 20, 2012): “A blanket ban does not necessarily lead to a reduction in the circulation of rumors because people become more vulnerable in a communication vacuum.”— Sunil Abraham.
India’s ethnic clashes intensify within social-media maelstrom (by Stephanie Nolen, Globe Mail, August 23, 2012): “Now for a change, the government has legitimate grounds to censor speech...but they’ve cried wolf on so many occasions before.” — Sunil Abraham.
India limits social media after civil unrest (by Mark Magnier, Australian Financial Review, August 24, 2012): “Before, the government’s had no grounds for censorship, it was only acting on the bruised egos of bureaucrats and officials... this time, it’s got a legitimate right given the disruption of public order. But it hasn’t done so very effectively.” — Sunil Abraham.
New Delhi Expands Curbs on Web Content (by R Jai Krishna and Rumman Ahmed, Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2012): “The government's move to block several Twitter handles is a clear case of administrative overreach...This action means citizens are less likely to believe that the government can use its powers responsibly.” — Sunil Abraham.
Govt in line of fire over web censorship (by Surabhi Agarwal, Livemint, August 24, 2012): “Both Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta seem to be having a right wing ideology, but while the former’s account is blocked the latter’s is not...The difference is on the kind of content which has been posted.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India's social media crackdown reveals clumsy govt machinery (by David Lalmalsawma, Reuters, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Internet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades (by Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press, August 24, 2012): “The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable.” — Pranesh Prakash. This was also covered in Bloomberg Businessweek (August 24, 2012), Khaleej Times (August 24, 2012), ABC News (August 24, 2012), Seattle Times (August 24, 2012), Vancouver Sun (August 24, 2012), Kansas City. (August 24, 2012), Times Colonist (August 24, 2012), Merced Sun-Star (August 24, 2012), Yahoo News (August 24, 2012), SanLuisObispo.com (August 24, 2012), Terrorism Watch (August 25, 2012), Sci-Tech Today (August 26, 2012).
How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help (by Gopal Sathe, Livemint, August 24, 2012): “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed [...] the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India’s Internet Curbs Under Legal Cloud (by Rumman Ahmed and R Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2012):” The four orders that were sent to the ISPs don’t say under which section or under what power these orders are being sent...They were sent without invoking any statute or without invoking any law.” — Pranesh Prakash.
After Violence in India, a Crackdown Online (by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, August 25, 2012): “I don’t see this as politically motivated censorship...I see this as gross ineptitude by the government.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Inde: la tentative de contrôler l'internet est "illégale" (Agence France Presse, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India threatens action against Twitter for ethnic violence 'rumors' (originally posted by Ben Sheppard in AFP and published in the China Post, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Blocked websites: Where India flawed (CIOL, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
India: Social Media Censorship to Contain ‘Cyber-Terrorism'? (by Aparna Ray, Global Voices, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Delhi defends Internet blocking (Gulf Today, August 25, 2012): “The officials who are trusted with this don’t know the law or modern technology well enough.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India Blocks News Website Pages for 'Spreading Fear' over Assam Violence (by Gianluca Mezzofiore, International Business Times, August 24, 2012): “The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumours and it did a really bad job of that.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Internet clamp outrage (Gulf Daily, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown (by Devidutta Tripathy and Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Reuters, August 24, 2012): “This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Indian government defends Internet blocking (AFP, August 23, 2012): “I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people.” — Pranesh Prakash. This was cross-posted in the following: The National (August 25, 2012), MSN News (August 24, 2012), StarAfrica.com (August 24, 2012), Jakarta Globe (August 24, 2012).
Criticism mounts over India censorship (by James Crabtree in Mumbai and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco, Financial Times, August 24, 2012): “I am not questioning their original motives, but I do think this is excessive and incompetent censorship.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Facebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship (by Mark Bergen, Forbes, August 29, 2012): “Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered away goodwill...It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.” — Sunil Abraham.
Internet Analysts Question India’s Efforts to Stem Panic (by Vikas Bajaj, New York Times, August 21, 2012): “The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech.” — Sunil Abraham. This was cross-posted in NDTV on August 22, 2012. A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2012, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Moves by India to Stem Rumors and Panic Raise Questions.
India limits social media after civil unrest (by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2012 and cross-posted in Channel 6 News on August 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India Debates Misuse of Social Media (by Anjana Pasricha, Voice of America, August 21, 2012 and re-posted in Chosunilbo on September 4, 2012): “Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating.” — Sunil Abraham.
Officials Raise Questions over Indian Government’s Efforts (by Bruce Totolos, French Tribune, August 22, 2012). “The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication.” — Sunil Abraham.
India seeks a tighter grip on social media (United Press International, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

National Media Coverage

Internet expert Pranesh Prakash criticizes Indian cyber blockades (Economic Times, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Govt orders blocking of 300 specific URLs including 16 Twitter accounts (Times of India, August 23, 2012): “The blocking of many of the items on the list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a large number of the items ought to be removed.” — Pranesh Prakash.
NE exodus: List containing 309 blocked URLs leaks online (tech 2, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.
Govt cracks down on Twitter (Hindustan Times, August 24, 2012): “The blocking was done without due process of law...the government should have engaged with the social media platforms since a majority — 217 out of 310 — of the block orders were aimed at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Twitter users hit back at government ban (originally posted in Reuters and carried in the Hindustan Times, August 24, 2012): “This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly.” — Pranesh Prakash.
When #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’ (Hindustan Times, August 26, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s tweet is quoted.
Regulating the Internet by fiat (by V Sridhar, Hindu, August 26, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Twitter handles: How and why govt erred and what it can do to be smarter & more effective (by TV Mahalingam and Shantanu Nandan Sharma, Economic Times, August 26, 2012): “Perhaps, for the first time, the Indian government had legitimate reasons to censor speech.” — Sunil Abraham.
Some ISPs block Wordpress domain across India (tech 2, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Details emerge on government blockade of websites (Hindu, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown (INDOLink, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India Blocks Facebook, Twitter, Mass Texts in Response to Unrest (by Simon Roughneen, Media Shift, August 28, 2012): “In the older forms of governance, which were imagined through a broadcast model, the government was at the center of the information wheel, managing and mediating what information reached different parts of the country. In the [peer-to-peer] world, where the government no longer has that control, it is now trying different ways by which it can reinforce its authority and centrality to the information ecosystem. Which means that there is going to be a series of failures and models that don't work.” — Nishant Shah.
Tata Photon unblocks Wordpress.com (by Rohini Lakshane, tech 2, August 30, 2012): “This is not the first time an ISP has gone overboard in implementing censorship, be it copyright issues, piracy or inflammatory content. In 2006, the government had chastised ISPs for over-censoring content and blocking unintended websites and pages...ISPs have numerous grouses against the government. They do not possess the technical capabilities to implement the government's orders, at times, whether about surveillance or censorship.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Northeast exodus: Is there a mechanism to pre-screen social media content? (by Wahid Bukhari, Merinews.com, August 23, 2012): “Given the amount of content uploaded on the larger social networks, pre-screening content is just not possible, while removal upon complaint is. They don't have editors like newspapers do; importantly, they shouldn't.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Haphazard censorship? Leaked list of blocked websites in India (IBN Live, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Government asks Twitter to block fake 'PMO India' accounts; site fails to respond (Economic Times, August 23, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Videos

FTN: Is it time to regulate social media? (IBN Live, August 21, 2012): Sunil Abraham, Pavan Duggal, A Mukherji and Nikhil Pahwa spoke to CNN-IBN Deputy Editor Sagarika Ghose in Face the Nation episode that was telecasted in IBNLive on August 21, 2012. Sunil said “if one looks at the initial orders that the government sent these intermediaries those were very broad instructions. The order was addressed to all intermediaries under the IT Act.” Watch the full video on IBN Live.
Govt vs Tweeple: Has clampdown hit free speech? (NDTV, August 23, 2012): Has the Government crossed the line by ordering the blocking of several Twitter accounts, many belonging to prominent journalists? The debate was featured in NDTV on August 23, 2012. Sunil Abraham spoke to Sonia Singh of NDTV. Sunil said that “we should focus on designing of the censorship regime in the country and the lack of compliance with the principles of natural justice.” Watch the full video on NDTV.
Is the govt caught in the 'censorship' web? (NDTV, August 26, 2012): In “We the People” Pranesh Prakash responded to Barkha Dutt’s question on what does a government do in a time of social unrest. See the full debate on NDTV.

Events Organised

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian (CIS, Bangalore, August 27, 2012): Christopher Soghoian gave a lecture on the role companies play in assisting government surveillance.
The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School: The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School was hosted in Bangalore by CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.
Biometric Identification: Specified Error, Accuracy and Efficiency, Considered for the Operations of the UIDAI — A Talk by Hans Varghese Mathews (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2012): Hans Varghese Mathews gave a public lecture on biometric identification.

Events Participated

Sixth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi, August 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in the meeting.
APNIC 34 Conference (Phnompenh, Cambodia, August 23 – 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria in the session on Internet Governance Plenary. The event was organised by APNIC.

Events Hosted

Meetup for Bangalore's designers (CIS, Bangalore, August 11, 2012): CIS hosted the meet-up in Bangalore.
Visit by students from Hindustan University, Chennai (CIS, Bangalore, August 16, 2012): Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok gave a lecture to students from the Hindustan University.
Interface Intimacies (TERI Complex, Bangalore, August 18 – 20, 2012): CIS conducted a research workshop with Audrey Yue and Namita Malhotra.

Upcoming Events

Thinking with Data@CIS (CIS, Bangalore, September 16 – 18, 2012): The Thinking with Data course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) will be screened at CIS, Bangalore. The screening will be followed by online discussions with the faculty through Skype or Google+ Hangouts. Screening starts from September 12.
Cartonama Conference (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, September 22, 2012): The Cartonama Conference is centred around geospatial data, mapping and location based services. HasGeek supported by CIS is organising this event.
UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes (Alternative Law Forum, Infantry Road, Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore, September 24, 2012): CIS in collaboration with Alternative Law Forum invites the public to a talk with international experts, Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States.

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

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

The following are the new outputs:

Auctioning and Allocation of Spectrum (by Snehashish Ghosh): Auction of spectrums was introduced in the telecommunication market after the failure of the administrative process of allocating spectrum. Auctions use a price mechanism to allocate spectrum. Auction of spectrum can be used to increase efficiency and earn maximum revenue.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The main objective of the TRAI Act was to establish the TRAI and the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal. Snehashish also touches upon the amendment to the TRAI Act, government control over TRAI, scheme of the TRAI Act, constitution of TRAI, its powers and functions, grounds and procedures for appeal to the tribunal, etc.
Broadband Wireless Access – Standards (by Jürgen Kock): Jürgen tells us about the broadband wireless access standards, why we need technical standards, who define BWA standards, WiMAX standards and long term evolution.
Mesh Networks (by Ravikiran Annaswamy): Ravikiran tells us the definition of Mesh Networks, its importance, applications and the things to explore in future.
National Telecom Policy, 2012 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The National Telecom Policy, 2012 was approved by the Union Cabinet on May 31, 2012. Snehashish tells us about the vision of the National Telecom Policy, 2012, its background, the strategies (broadband rural telephony and universal service obligation fund), licensing, convergence and value-added services, spectrum management, etc.
New Telecom Policy, 1999 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The New Telecom Policy, 1999 was formulated on the basis of the report of Group on Telecommunication. In this unit, Snehashish talks about the objectives of the Policy, its targets, the new category of service providers, role of the regulator, other mandates to the Policy, amendment to the New Telecom Policy, 1999, etc.
National Telecom Policy, 1994 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The National Telecom Policy, 1994 was formulated for the purpose of opening up the Indian markets for foreign direct investment as well as domestic investment in the telecom sector. Snehashish throws light on the objectives of the National Telecom Policy, 1994, the status of telecom services prior to the implementation of the aforesaid Policy; value added services, hardware and technological aspects, basic services, and outcomes of the National Telecom Policy.

Column in Business Standard

Decision Analysis for Interest Rates - II (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, August 2, 2012): “India needs to make practical choices that prioritise growth. This is the second column. The previous column was published in the Business Standard on July 5, 2012. It explained how lower interest rates could improve growth by increasing net profits.”

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:

Key Research

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012 — India Report (by Pranesh Prakash): The India Report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012 was published on the A2K Network website. According to the report, India's Copyright Act is a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable. However, the compulsory licensing provision have not been utilized so far, because of both a lack of knowledge and more importantly because of the stringent conditions attached to them.

Press Coverage

Copyright Law: More Than a Moral Obligation (by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, Businessworld, August 9, 2012): “So far, things have worked well because sepia-tinted photographs have generally become part of the public domain. But now, only photographs by photographers who died before 1951 are part of the public domain. This has shrivelled up the public domain in photographs since it is even more difficult to trace the photographer...than to estimate the age of a photograph, determining whether a photograph is in the public domain is laden with uncertainty. The use of historical photos in books (and Wikipedia) will be badly affected.”— Pranesh Prakash.

Accessibility

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

Blog Entry

Ring Side View: Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Rahul Cherian): As the negotiations between Member States progressed it became clear that the United States and the European Union were blocking the Treaty while everybody else was pushing hard for the Treaty. The United States and the European Union were pushing for some form of non-binding instrument that would be more in the nature of a recommendation. Further coverage of this is at Huffington Post and in the Guardian.

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:

Public Talk

Decoding Digital Natives (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, August 31, 2012): Nishant Shah gave a public lecture.

Openness

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

Event Hosted

Bangalore Force.com August Meetup (CIS, Bangalore, August 19, 2012): John Barnes, CTO Model Metrics gave a lecture at the event organised by Bangalore Force.com.
Technology Evangelists and Religious Evangelists — A Talk by Katherine Sydenham (CIS, Bangalore, August 10, 2012): Katherine Sydenham from the University of Michigan School gave a lecture.
Data-Driven Journalism, Data Literacy & Open Government — Talk at CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 1, 2012): The event was co-organised by Open Knowledge Foundation and CIS. Lucy Chambers and Laura Newman gave an informal talk on ‘Data-Driven Journalism, Data Literacy, and Open Government'.

CIS is hiring
*Jobs*
CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the following posts:

Research Manager: CIS is seeking an individual, full-time, for a period of 12 months, beginning from October 2012. The Research Manager is expected to contribute to conceptualising, managing and executing research projects in the field of Internet and Society, build knowledge networks of researchers towards collaborative and open knowledge production and dissemination, developing and executing the monitoring and evaluation processes for humanities and social sciences based research, supporting and managing academic, popular and hybrid publishing projects from existing and new research and initiate innovative and creative areas and methodologies of studying the Internet and its practices in India and the larger Global South, to develop key research clusters and networks. Send in your applications to admin@cis-india.org.
Researcher/Editor (Accessibility): CIS is hiring for the full-time position of a researcher for its accessibility programme. The job will entail working on researching on national and international policies and best practices in the field of accessibility of information and technology for persons with disabilities. To apply, please send your CV and three examples of writing to nirmita@cis-india.org
Programme Director – Access to Knowledge: CIS is seeking a Programme Director for its New Delhi office. The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages and will manage a team of four staff members.
Programme Officer – Internet Governance: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in legal research and policy work to be part of its internet governance (IG) programme. The candidates must have good knowledge of Indian and international law on freedom of expression and privacy, demonstrable research skills, have strong communication skills and be media savvy with the ability to convey complex legal issues clearly to a general audience, open to travel and work independently.

To apply for the posts of Programme Director and Programme Officers, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) or Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three references.

About CIS

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

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

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CIS is grateful to its donors, 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/august-2012-bulletin

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012 — India Report

pranesh — 2012-08-16T10:23:36Z

Pranesh Prakash prepared the India Report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012. The report was published on the A2K Network website.

Summary

India's Copyright Act is a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable. However, the compulsory licensing provision have not been utilized so far, because of both a lack of knowledge and more importantly because of the stringent conditions attached to them. Currently, the Indian law is also a bit out of sync with general practices as the exceptions and limitations allowed for literary, artistic and musical works are often not available with sound recordings and cinematograph films. There are numerous other such inconsistencies. Positively retrogressive provisions, such as criminalisation of individual non-commercial infringement also exist. India's Copyright Act is a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable. However, the compulsory licensing provision have not been utilized so far, because of both a lack of knowledge and more importantly because of the stringent conditions attached to them. Currently, the Indian law is also a bit out of sync with general practices as the exceptions and limitations allowed for literary, artistic and musical works are often not available with sound recordings and cinematograph films. There are numerous other such inconsistencies. Positively retrogressive provisions, such as criminalisation of individual non-commercial infringement also exist.

It is unfortunate that the larger public interest in copyright-related issues are never foregrounded in India. For instance, the Standing Committee tasked with review of the Copyright Amendment Bill has held hearings without calling a single consumer rights organization, and without seeking any civil society engagement, except for the issue of access for persons with disabilities. This was despite a number of civil society organizations, including consumer rights organizations, sending in a written submission to the Standing Committee.

This lopsidedness in terms of policy influence is resulting in greater imbalance in the law, as evidenced by the government's capitulation to a handful of influential multinational book publishers on the question of allowing parallel importation of copyrighted works. Furthermore, pressure from the United States and the European Union, in the form of the Special 301 report and the India-EU free trade agreement that is being negotiated are leading to numerous negative changes being introduced into Indian law, despite us not having any legal obligation under any treaties. Such influence only works in one direction: to increase the rights granted to rightsholders, and has so far never included any increase in user rights.

It is true that copyright infringement, particularly in the form of physical media, is widespread in India. However this must be taken in the context that India, although fast-growing, remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Although India's knowledge and cultural productivity over the centuries and to the present day has been rich and prodigious, its citizens are economically disadvantaged as consumers of that same knowledge and culture. Indeed, most students, even in the so-called elite institutions, need to employ photocopying and other such means to be able to afford the requisite study materials. Visually impaired persons, for instance, have no option but to disobey the law that does not grant them equal access to copyrighted works. Legitimate operating systems (with the notable exception of most free and open source OSes) add a very high overhead to the purchase of cheap computers, thus driving users to pirated software. Thus, these phenomena need to be addressed not at the level of enforcement, but at the level of supply of affordable works.

Source URL: http://bit.ly/QEJf5l
Click to download the report [PDF, 201 Kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/consumers-international-ip-watchlist-report-2012

Ring Side View : Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired

Rahul Cherian — 2012-08-13T04:34:22Z

As a legal advisor of the World Blind Union and part of the World Blind Union delegation to the 24th meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that concluded on July 25, 2012 I had a ring side seat to the negotiations that happened between Member States in relation to the Treaty.

On call almost 24 x 7 to answer questions and clarify positions to Member States on aspects relating to the Treaty and the ground reality faced by the print disabled community, those were possibly the most grueling 10 days of my life.

Progress at the last 3 SCCRs was painfully slow. At the start of this SCCR on July 16 2012 the single biggest hurdle to progress on the Treaty was the stand that the African Group had taken at the earlier SCCRs with respect to a comprehensive text covering exceptions and limitations to copyright for education, libraries, archives and disabilities. See my discussion with Jamie Love from Knowledge Ecology International on this issue. It was evident that while a comprehensive text had its merits, it would be impossible to make progress on this comprehensive text because, other that for exceptions for disabilities, the issues relating to education, libraries and archives had not reached the level of maturity required to progress to a Treaty. So it was essential that exceptions for disabilities were de-linked from exceptions for education etc. This is exactly what the African Group did much to the excitement of the WBU team.

Much was left to be done over the next few days including discussion on the text of the working document which prepared by Chair after SCCR 23, available here. Normally, discussions on text happen at the plenary session attended by Member States as well as accredited organizations such as the World Blind Union, my organization Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability Law and Policy and others. This process, while adding to transparency and more participation is sometimes slow and the request of some Member States considering the urgency of the matter, discussions were taken out of plenary into a closed room round table discussion. All Member States could participate and many did. Unfortunately, accredited organizations were not invited to attend. Full credit to Member States in terms of effort put into this effort as they worked well beyond normal working hours on most days in an attempt to reach consensus on the text.

Another critical outcome we had hoped for was that there would be consensus between Member States that the instrument would be in the form of a Treaty. As the negotiations between Member States progressed it became clear that the United States and the European Union were blocking the Treaty while everybody else was pushing hard for the Treaty. The United States and the European Union were pushing for some form of non-binding instrument that would be more in the nature of a recommendation. Further coverage of this is at Huffington Post and in the Guardian. The drawbacks of a soft law as opposed to a Treaty is obvious in that a soft law has no binding force as opposed to a Treaty. Rumor has it that the reason for the United States not supporting the Treaty is that the publishing lobby is apparently a huge contributor to President Obama’s re-election campaign and that he could ill afford to alienate this lobby by pushing for the Treaty. The European Union’s opposition to a binding Treaty was despite a resolution adopted by the European Parliament in February 2012 calling on the European Union to support a binding Treaty.

We had hoped that SCCR 24 would close with agreement on the text, agreement that it would be a Treaty and finally that the SCCR referring the Treaty to the upcoming General Assembly in October 2012 to call for a Diplomatic Conference in 2013 to expressly agree on the Treaty.

However, this was not to be. Although much progress was made on the text, the text remains incomplete, with a lot of brackets in the text on undecided points. There was no consensus that the instrument should be a treaty. And lastly there was no decision on referring the issue to a diplomatic conference.

The next steps as outlined in the conclusions to SCCR 24 are the following:

an inter-sessional meeting of the SCCR be held in Geneva between the 2012 General Assembly and the 25th session of the SCCR to continue work;
the 25th session of the SCCR will attempt to conclude or advance substantially the text of the document; and
that the General Assembly convene an extraordinary session to be held in December 2012 to evaluate the text from SCCR/25 and to make a decision on whether to convene a diplomatic conference in 2013.

SCCR 24 made more progress on this issue that any of the previous SCCRs I have attended. We are very optimistic that the Treaty will become a reality of the next 18 to 24 months with the increased pressure being exerted on the US and the European Union by the blind groups in these jurisdictions respectively. Needless to say, the Treaty will benefit developing countries the most since the majority of persons with print disabilities are in these countries. India and other developing countries are mindful of this and are pushing as hard as possible to make it happen.

My next post will be on the pros and cons of the text that was proposed at the end of SCCR 24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/ring-side-view

Copyright Law: More Than A Moral Obligation

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T03:59:47Z

It was a cozy and warm atmosphere in a bookstore in South Delhi — with plenty of cushions thrown on the floor — that I attended a delightful book launch for children. The book was displayed prominently, along with some fabulous original illustrations done by the author, from which the book illustrator had been “inspired”. I clicked some photographs with my smartphone. The publishers, based in another city, couldn't attend the event. So, I thought why not mail it to them, they are fraternity. Soon, a newsletter popped into my mailbox from the same publisher, with a lovely write-up of the book launch accompanied by my photographs, but with no acknowledgement given to me. I was disappointed.

This column by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose was published in Business World on August 9, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

After pondering over it, I decided to bring it to the publisher’s notice. To me, it was the principle of recognising the IPR (intellectual property rights) of the creator and giving due credit that I felt was at stake here. This was the reply I received, “So sorry. It was a slip up as I had said that you should be acknowledged. But since that is not the usual practice — simply because no one had asked — it was overlooked.” An apology received and accepted. I did not stop at that. I requested that in the next newsletter it should be rectified and on the blog, the photographs uploaded should go with credits.

To explore larger issues surrounding copyright, and for publishers in general, management of copyright is a very important part of their business. In May 2012, the Indian Parliament passed a few amendments to the Copyright Act. (It is still a bill, at the time of writing this column.) A victory to a large extent for the music industry, but it has made very little difference, so far, to the publishing industry. Plus, the debate surrounding Clause 2(m) of the Indian Copyright Act is still an open chapter. As per the clause, a book published in any part of the world can easily be sold here. Thus, diluting the significance or infringing upon an exclusive Indian edition. The Parliament Standing Committee investigating the pros and cons of Clause 2(m), made a “forceful recommendation” for its amendment, but it was not included in the bill. So the HRD Minister has referred it to an NCAER expert committee constituted.

However, another amendment relevant to the publishing industry has been the increase in copyright term for photographs. “This will make using older photographs impossible without hunting down the original photographer,” says Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer and copyright expert and programme manager at Centre for Internet and Society. “So far, things have worked well because sepia-tinted photographs have generally become part of the public domain. But now, only photographs by photographers who died before 1951 are part of the public domain. This has shrivelled up the public domain in photographs since it is even more difficult to trace the photographer (and date of death) than to estimate the age of a photograph, determining whether a photograph is in the public domain is laden with uncertainty. The use of historical photos in books (and Wikipedia) will be badly affected.”

Having been a publisher for years, I tend to be very careful about issues involving copyright. Dig deep and you will find anecdotes that illustrate the crying need for understanding copyright issues. For example, an illustrator submitting files to a reputed art director could be told that the illustrations are not up to mark. Unfortunately, when the book is published, the ‘new’ illustrations are pale imitations of the original line drawings submitted by the illustrator.

Or for that matter, a playwright being asked to create a script, but is never acknowledged or even paid the royalty due since the director believes that the core idea for the play is hers. ‘The playwright merely gave it a form’ is a common retort. Or, a couple of editors discovering their original research (and highly acclaimed globally) has been blatantly plagiarised by a well-known writer and published by an equally prominent publisher. Despite having marshalled all the necessary evidence, the editors are unable to file a case, since the court fee is a percentage of the damages sought and is beyond their reach. So, these cases stagnate with no redressal and the creators are left frustrated and angry.

The core issue is, how many professionals in the publishing eco-system actually know what is copyright or how to exercise their rights? After all, it is only a concept, albeit a legal one, which gives the creator of an original work exclusive right(s) to it for a limited period of time. Establishing and verifying the ownership to copyright is a sensitive issue. A good example of how an organisation can facilitate, disseminate, inform and empower a literary community on IPR and related topics is the Irish Writers Union.

According to their website, it is “the representative organisation for one of the major stakeholders in any discussion about copyright: Irish authors. While we understand that copyright legislation might be a barrier to innovation in certain industries, the IWU believes that any change to copyright law must be managed in such a way as to ensure that no damage is done to Ireland’s literary activity. ...literature earns hard cash for Ireland. Both in the form of its contribution to the €2bn annual gain from cultural tourism and in the considerable revenues deriving from the success of sales of Irish works, Irish publishing and writing is an activity that should not be jeopardised by any legal change that weakens the value of copyright ownership to the creators of original literary works. ...We note that if anything, copyright law in regard to literature should be strengthened to protect rights holders.”

As Shauna Singh Baldwin, a Canadian-American novelist of Indian descent, comments upon the significance of copyright in an e-mail conversation with me, “The breath of the individual creator, his/her imagination and speculation gives life to a work of art. To create something new, you take ideas from many sources, recontextualise them, find unexpected connections between them, and create something new — and beautiful. If we continue to be ashamed of our own imaginations and so fearful of mistakes that we must copy the tried and true, we will never create, only innovate.”

As for the rejoinder and photo credits I had requested for my photographs, the publisher implemented it immediately. And I was glad.

Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is an international publishing consultant and columnist.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-businessworld-in-jaya-bhattacharji-rose-august-9-copyright-law

July 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-10-09T11:46:15Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of July 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, an analysis of the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act and CIS statement on Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives made at WIPO.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the following posts:

Research Manager: CIS is seeking an individual, full-time, for a period of 12 months, beginning from October 2012. The Research Manager is expected to contribute to conceptualising, managing and executing research projects in the field of Internet and Society, build knowledge networks of researchers towards collaborative and open knowledge production and dissemination, developing and executing the monitoring and evaluation processes for humanities and social sciences based research, supporting and managing academic, popular and hybrid publishing projects from existing and new research and initiate innovative and creative areas and methodologies of studying the Internet and its practices in India and the larger Global South, to develop key research clusters and networks. Send in your applications by September 5, 2012 to admin@cis-india.org.
Programme Director – Access to Knowledge: CIS is seeking a Programme Director for its New Delhi office. The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages and will manage a team of four staff members.
Programme Officer – Access to Knowledge and Openness: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in policy research and advocacy to be part of its Openness and Access to Knowledge programmes. The candidates must have knowledge of Indian and international law on copyright, demonstrable research skills, public-speaking skills, open to travel and work independently.
Programme Officer – Internet Governance: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in legal research and policy work to be part of its internet governance (IG) programme. The candidates must have good knowledge of Indian and international law on freedom of expression and privacy, demonstrable research skills, have strong communication skills and be media savvy with the ability to convey complex legal issues clearly to a general audience, open to travel and work independently.

To apply for the posts of Programme Director and Programme Officers, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) or Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three references.

Internet Governance

Featured Research

Constitutional Analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (by Ujwala Uppaluri): Ujwala Uppaluri provides a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, and examines its compatibility with Articles 14, 19, 21 of the Constitution of India.
Overview and Concerns Regarding the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act (by GeneWatch UK & the Council for Responsible Genetics, US): The 2007 DNA Profiling Bill pending before the Parliament attempts to create an ambitious centralized DNA bank that would store DNA records of virtually anyone who comes within any proximity to the criminal justice system. The Bill contains provisions limiting access to and use of information contained in the database, and provides for the deletion of a person’s DNA profile upon their acquittal.

Columns

Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful Hackers (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, July 13, 2012): If there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated government machinery has been trying to control and contain the burgeoning online spaces, only to be put in their place by the new-age tech-ninjas that have risen as the new heroes in our digital times.
Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet Freedom (Sunil Abraham, Thinking Aloud, July 17, 2012): Sunil Abraham’s open letter to Hillary Clinton was based on a presentation made during a panel discussion at a Google sponsored conference titled Internet at Liberty 2012 in Washington DC on May 24, 2012. The present article published in Thinking Aloud is an updated version of the blog entry published by CIS earlier this year.

Event Report

Privacy Matters — Medical Privacy (Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, Pune, June 30, 2012): Privacy India in partnership with the Indian Network for People living with HIV/AIDS, CIS, IDRC, and Society in Action Group with support from London-based Privacy International, held a public discussion on "Medical Privacy". Elonnai Hickok introduced the draft book Privacy in India: A Policy Guide that Privacy India had been compiling. The participants discussed medical privacy in India, the legal aspects of medical privacy, Supreme Court views on medical negligence, confidentiality and privacy, best practices on medical privacy in various health settings, etc.

Ongoing Event

The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School: The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School is being hosted in Bangalore, India by CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. The IACS Summer School brings together South and East Asian experts from different disciplines as faculty for graduate and advanced research students to engage with key issues of larger social, cultural and political concerns in cultural studies in Asia.

Upcoming Event

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian (Centre for Internet and Society, 194, 2-C Cross, Domlur Stage II, Bangalore (Near Domlur Club and the TERI Complex)): Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse, firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to assist the government — How? — Find out — Christopher Soghoian will give a lecture on the role companies play in assisting government surveillance.

Events Organised

Privacy Matters — Consumer Privacy (India International Centre, New Delhi, July 7, 2012): Privacy India, in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society, International Development Research Centre, Society in Action Group and Privacy International, invite you to a public conference focused on discussing the challenges and concerns to consumer privacy in India.
The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore, July 27 and 28, 2012): The event was organised by HasGeek and supported by CIS. The first day covered the technology track and talks from business and industry were held on the following day.

Events Participated

Speak Easy: Citizenship, Freedom of Expression and Online Governance (American Centre, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi, July 31, 2012): Chinmayi Arun, a Fellow at CIS spoke at this event organised by the YP Foundation, Youth Ki Awaaz, Change.Org and RTI Anonymous.
Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum 2012 (Aoyama Campus, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, July 20, 2012). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session on international public policy and internet governance issues pertaining to the internet. The event was organised by APrIGF.Asia.
Fifth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (New Delhi, July 22, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting held under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.
Fourth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Planning Commission, New Delhi, July 9, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in the fourth meeting on privacy issues under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.

News & Media Coverage

A Net of Hatred (Samar Khurshid, Hindustan Times, July 14, 2012): “The problem is...that internet conversations become extreme. Liberals don’t get embroiled in heated arguments while fundamentalists, dedicated to extreme ideologies, tend to win out." Web censorship...is in vain as the net is too vast to control.”— Pranesh Prakash.
Post-website attack, cops hot on pursuit of Anonymous hackers (The Times of India, July 11, 2012): “Anonymous consists of a large bunch of activists who gained some credibility in India after they organised offline protests. But this operation doesn't serve any purpose and brings down their credibility as details of those who filed complaints have been revealed.” — Pranesh Prakash.
The kids are all on Facebook (Shikha Kumar, Daily News & Analysis, July 8, 2012): “Children’s interaction online should always be under parental supervision. Censorship and control is not the responsibility of the government, but of parents.” — Sunil Abraham.
Freedom debate takes a new course (Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, July 1, 2012): “Under Indian copyright law, ISPs cannot be liable for copyright infringement committed by their users. So while it is good that the court clarified that its order was limited in its scope, it is possible to read even this as going far beyond that which is allowed under the law.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Access to Knowledge

WIPO

CIS participated at the 24^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights held in Geneva from July 16 to 25, 2012. The outcomes are listed below:

India's Opening Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at SCCR 24: The opening statement of the Indian delegation was delivered by G.R. Raghavender on July 19, 2012. The statement called upon all countries to conclude textual work on the treaty and call for a Diplomatic Conference to finalize it.
CIS's Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement on July 20, 2012.
CIS's Statement on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement specifically on the Chair's Non Paper on the Protection of Broadcasters which was released on July 23, 2012.
CIS's Statement on Exceptions & Limitations for Libraries and Archives: Pranesh Prakash delivered the statement on the issue of exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives on July 25, 2012.
Transcripts of Discussions at WIPO: The proceedings were live streamed. Copies of the unedited transcripts are hosted for archival purposes.

International Press Coverage

U.S. support sought for treaty to allow blind people access to copyrighted works (Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, July 24, 2012): “The vast majority of visually disabled people live in poor, developing countries where very little money is spent on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere...The treaty would end the book famine that they currently face.” — Pranesh Prakash.
US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books (Paige McClanahan, The Guardian, July 30, 2012): “We in developing countries have found our voice and we are not going to back down. When people are demanding their basic rights, no power in the world is strong enough to stop them getting what they want.”— Rahul Cherian.

National Press Coverage

EU stalls treaty talks to allow copyright waiver for print disabilities (The Hindu, Priscilla Jebaraj, July 25, 2012): “[The treaty] would allow organisations working for the blind to import and export accessible works without seeking the copyright holder's permission, since very little money is spent in developing countries on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Accessibility

Blog Entry

Accessibility of Government Websites in India — Test Results

Openness

Blog Entries

Unpacking Openness: From Seemingly Transparent to Definitely Opaque: Nishant Shah was in Netherlands recently and as part of his trip had given a public lecture to an audience at Kennisland. One of the respondents wrote a small write-up of the talk. This was originally published on the Kennisland website on July 25, 2012.
2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics (by Rebecca Schild): The 2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics convened a panel on Open Access. There was consensus amongst the panelist that the “big question” facing the open access movement no longer remains "if" or "why" open access, but rather "how" open access. The panel proved instructive for shifting the discussion away from ideology towards concrete questions facing the open access agenda and its implementation.
Open Government Data (by Pranesh Prakash): Pranesh Prakash provides an analysis of the chapter that CIS published in this report with Transparency & Accountability Initiative.

Grant Award

Wikimedia Foundation awards grant to Centre for Internet and Society to expand Access to Knowledge in India: Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society to expand their Access to Knowledge program in India. This information was published by Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer on the Wikimedia Foundation website on August 1, 2012.

Digital Natives

Book Review

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies: Nishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.

Digital Natives Newsletter

Citizen Activism the Past Decade: The deadline for contribution to the Digital Natives newsletter expires on August 15. Nilofar Ansher gives a list of topics that contributors can explore in this blog entry.

Columns

Across Borders (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, July 5, 2012): “Digital Natives are not only a mobile-wielding generation, but also a mobile generation. They are fluid, not necessarily tied to the geographies of their origin, and often imagine themselves, as travelling across different networks and systems, like the information traffic on the internet. This dislocation of the fixity of where we are from and who we are is one of the most exciting results of the digital turn.”
Revisiting Techno-euphoria (Nishant Shah, DML Central, July 5, 2012): “The gadgets and tools we use are, actually, only material manifestations of the digital — which operates at the level of a paradigm or a context, through which we are slowly reshaping the material, social, and cultural notions of who we are and how we connect to the world around us.”

Event Participated

10th International ISTR Conference (Universita Degli Studi Di Siena, Italy, July 10 – 13, 2012): Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session, "Theoretical Grounding of Civic Driven Change". He gave a public lecture on Beyond Normative Citizenships: Exploring the ‘New’ in Digital Activism.

Telecom

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The following are the latest outputs:

Fixed Line Telephones (by Jürgen Kock): This module discusses the features and the various stages of the development of fixed line telephones, its early history, the basic principle of a fixed line telephone system, plain old telephone service, digital telephones, cordless phones to today's features of fixed line telephones.
Different Forms of Video Communication (by Tina Mani): In this module, Tina Mani takes us through some of the common forms of video communication such as video calling, video conferencing, telepresence and video sharing.
Broadband Policy, 2004 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh tells us that the Policy was laid down by the Government of India in order to realize the potential of broadband services. It aimed at enhancing the quality of life by implementation of tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, entertainment, etc.
Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, 1955 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish examines the purpose of the legislation, the persons affected by it, the administrative bodies which come under the Act, the penalties (including the consequences in case of non-compliance), appeal process and the debates surrounding the legislation.
The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh throws light on the main objective of the Act — that of regulating the possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus.

RTI Application

Use of DPI Technology by ISPs — Response by the Department of Telecommunications : Smiti Mujumdar on behalf of CIS filed requests under the Right to Information with the Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, BSNL and MTNL, asking a number of questions related to the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology by Internet Service Providers (ISP) in India and corresponding regulations. A scanned version of the response from the Department of Telecommunications is hosted online.

Column in Business Standard

Decision Analysis for Interest Rates (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, July 5, 2012): The discipline of systematic evaluation through applying process-flow and decision analysis — in this example, of financial logic — can help make reasoned, practical decisions, whether for interest rates, or for resolving issues in power supply, or in telecommunications, spectrum and broadband.

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

US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books

praskrishna — 2012-08-02T13:56:36Z

Copyright fears stall talks on books being translated into braille for blind and visually impaired people in the global south.

This article by Paige McClanahan was published in the Guardian on July 30, 2012. Rahul Cherian, a Fellow at CIS is quoted.

The US and the EU are blocking a treaty that would give the world's blind and visually impaired people – 90% of whom live in the developing world – easier access to published works in formats they can use.

A "treaty for blind people" has been under discussion at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) since 2008, but negotiations have made little progress. In the latest round of talks in Geneva, which ended on Wednesday 25 July, negotiators deferred a decision on the issue once again, to the dismay of activists.

"This is not just a legal issue – for us, this is a moral issue. It's about human rights," said Teresa Hackett, programme manager at Electronic Information for Libraries, a non-profit group based in the Netherlands.

There are about 256 million visually impaired people in the developing world, according to an estimate by the World Health Organisation. In many rich countries, blind people have ready access to works that have been translated into braille and other accessible formats such as audio and large-print books, although, according to the EU, only 5% of books are accessible to blind people in wealthy states.

However, under existing copyright law, poorer countries can't access those translations without getting the express permission of the copyright holder. Few developing country governments have managed to do that, meaning that their blind and visually impaired populations are left with barely anything to read. The EU estimates that less than 1% of books are accessible to blind people in poorer countries.

"The Spanish organisation Once has well over 100,000 [translated] books that they would like to send to Latin American countries, but they can't simply because of this copyright barrier," said Dan Pescod of theRoyal National Institute of Blind People. Libraries in five Latin American countries – Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile – have fewer than 9,000 accessible books between them, he said.

A treaty at WIPO could change that. A binding agreement would mean people in the global south could get immediate access to books that have already been translated into accessible formats in other countries. A treaty would also lead to enormous cost savings, as expensive translation has to be replicated in every country that wants to produce an accessible form of a given book.

The European parliament passed a resolution in February calling on the EU to support a binding treaty for the blind, but it does not appear to be having much impact. "The EU and the Americans are blocking the treaty – that's what's going on," said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). "It's shameful what they're doing." He added that the administration of President Barack Obama has changed its position on the treaty over the past few years. In 2008 Obama's transition team were making positive noises, but since then the administration has become less enthusiastic.

Europe and the US are home to some of the world's biggest publishing companies, many of which don't like the idea of an international treaty that would restrict their intellectual property rights. Observers speculate that the Obama administration may be loth to upset the publishing industry, a major campaign supporter, this late in an election year. "What we can see in the [negotiating] room is that primarily it's the business interests that dominate," said Hackett.

Activists are hoping for a legally binding treaty, but US and European delegates have been pushing for a softer "instrument" that would offer only guidelines and recommendations.

"We really don't want to establish a precedent of developing a series of treaties that specifically focus on … limitations and exceptions to the rights of copyright owners," said Alan Adler of the Association of American Publishers, in an online interview with KEI. Discussions are due to begin again in November, after the US election.

Despite the setback, activists insist they will keep lobbying for a binding treaty. "We in developing countries have found our voice and we are not going to back down," said Rahul Cherian, of Inclusive Planet, an Indian nonprofit, in a statement to Wipo delegates last week. "When people are demanding their basic rights, no power in the world is strong enough to stop them getting what they want."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/us-and-eu-blocking-treaty