Centre for Internet and Society

34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions

sinha — 2017-05-30T05:51:42Z

Observers made the following statements on discussion around limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions on 3rd May 2017.

Communia:

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address for the limitations and exceptions for educational purposes. I would like to give a brief statement that by saying Professor Seng's studies, national countries had exceptions narrowly in various ways the copyright works of educational activities. These narrow exceptions prevent certain educational practices such as the quotation of entire image in a school presentation. When it comes to modern educational practices, namely those that occur in digital and online teaching environments, the legal standing is even more problematic. Indeed, certain acts which teachers are allowed to perform in face-to-face teaching may not be permitted in digital and online contexts. For instance, in the Netherlands, the law is clear that a teacher can show a movie from a DVD in class, but if the same teacher wants to show a video from a free publicly accessible website, it seems that you'll need to be -- you will not be able to do it. This is due either to inappropriate legislative techniques or to domestic policy decisions. In any case, what is certain is cross-border educational uses are compromised at the outset due to the current national copyright laws, including within regions that enjoy a high level of harmonization, such as the European Union. Therefore, continue to discuss this issue in the forum which we will lead toward from an internationally binding instrument as mandated by the General Assembly 2017 seems essential. Thank you.

International Federation of Journalists:

Good afternoon. We've already introduced ourselves. All these works are and remain one of the key raw materials for education. The international federation of journalists deeply regrets the educational and research institutions underfunded. No one is proposing, however, as far as I'm aware, that schools and colleges should get free electricity or free phone calls. Here, most clearly of all, the solution is collective licensing through collective management organizations that are democratically controlled by the rights holders they represent. There is a wealth of misunderstanding of the issues. I take as one example the very first statement on a pro education site and the magic of Internet indexing may enable you to identify it, are which demonstrates how ill thought out the costs of education can be, not withstanding the previous. This is addressed to the European Union. It says, quotes, we want you to have the freedom to teach without breaking the law. Good. Quotes, before teaching her students about how representations of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet have changed through the ages, a teacher may have to ask permission from the rights holders of every movie she wants to screen in class, unquote. It says, this is -- we want to relieve educators from this impossible task, but I'm aware of nowhere in the European Union and few countries in the -- what we're pleased to call the more advanced economies where this is an impossible task. The school just pays for a license from a collecting society and goes ahead with no further administration. In my home country, United Kingdom, the collecting societies are working successfully on streamlining the system of licensing and making it more efficient in time and cash. Personally, I do recognize that some categories of textbooks are overpriced...(Speaker went over time and was asked to stop).

International Authors Federation:

Thank you very much. As this is the first time the International Office Forum has taken the floor this session, we'd like to congratulate you, Chair, and your vice chairs on your election and thank the Secretariat on their work. The international authors forum represents authors from the text, screenwriting, and visual arts sectors and their interests in copyright, as members of 60 organizations representing well over 600,000 authors worldwide. In ran increasingly homogenized world, cultural diversity is important, authors maintain that in digital arts, literatures, language, and music. It is the authors works being considered in the proposals being discussed at WIPO. There are individual authors whose rights are involved in all countries. Those rights must be given primary consideration. They need fair remuneration if they are to continue the work everybody wants access to. Without payment, they will not be able to continue to create. The diversity and quality of content will suffer and the quantity of works produce produced will be limited. We believe that there are already international copyright provisions in place that work well to enable the development of licensing frameworks, which enable access, including cross-border access provision through educational institutions and ensure fair payment. Authors believe that these existing provisions contain sufficient flexibility for countries represented at WIPO to continue to work towards national solutions, such as licensing frameworks, which can be developed according to local needs. Thank you for your time.

Corporacion Innovarte:

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The study of exceptions for educational limitations in current legislation shows that there is a fragmentation, that it's not appropriate to the countries, and very often this is an insolvable problem for international and learning cooperation in the area of communication. In order to overcome these, we think it's ins dispensable to have an international agreement which will enable us to have a minimum of common exceptions and limitations which will make it possible to have compatible roles for cross-border use of educational resources. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Programme on Information Justice and IP:

Thank you, Chair. You and I are from countries that have educational exceptions that are open to the use of any work, for any education related activity or purpose, and by any user — subject to a fairness test that takes into account the rights of authors and rights holders. This openness in the exceptions environment enables innovations that promote access to learning materials, including through new technologies and over the internet. Tomorrow at a side meeting over lunch, Communia and American University will be presenting the outcomes of different research projects that examine the operation of user rights in practice. That research shows that wealthy countries are developing openness in these factors much more quickly and thoroughly than poorer countries currently. But the research also shows that this is not a developing country problem alone. Many wealthy countries as well lack exceptions that allow such basic practices as showing a movie, streaming a video or performing a play in a classroom setting. These problems are compounded when we deliver educational products across borders through distance learning. A lack of harmonization on these issues will produce a race to the bottom where teachers like myself are forced to not deliver the best materials possible for our students because of the lack of rights to do so in some countries.I would encourage the process going forward to focus on the value of educational exceptions that
cover all:

Works,
Apply to all users, and that
Extend to a full range of activities

Thank you.

Note: Source of the statement texts are WIPO's realtime transcription service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-observer-statements-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-educational-and-research-institutions-and-persons-with-other-disabilities

34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Proposal for Analysis of Copyright related to the Digital Environment

sinha — 2017-05-30T05:39:22Z

Observers made the following statements on GRULAC's proposal on analysis of copyright related to the digital environment on 5th May 2017. CISAC:

Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to thank the WIPO Secretariat for this initiative because I think it can contribute to a constructive discussion in this committee on a number of issues raised in the document proposed by GRULAC. CISAC would like to thank the two professors on their presentations on the work done in April, and we look forward in great interest to the presentation of the conclusions at the next meeting of SCCR in November. (CISAC) we have a number of -- I'd like to refer to the need to the transfer of values. The greatest challenge -- which is the greatest challenge facing creators, and then there's the changing role of Internet service providers. As very often the authors are marginalized by the digital economy and the value chain. And then the comments about the need to interpret WIPO treaties in the most faithful way possible to the original spirit and also prudence in implementing exceptions and limitations using other alternatives where possible, such as licenses. Thank you.

FILE:
Thank you, Chairman, and I congratulate you and your vice chairs on your guidance at this meeting, and I associate myself with these statements made by -- the statements made by states such as the USA, E.U.. I'd also like to congratulate GRULAC on this proposal and recommend the committee, in the face of all these studies, which are very interesting, that we performers believe there are priorities, including, for example, the very low or zero remuneration being paid to authors for our works and our performances on Internet in the digital environment, and so we would, therefore, recommend that mainly this study should focus on that and the GRULAC proposal should be a permanent item on the agenda, and as regards the discussion of the legal systems used -- so this should be included and also the three conclusions reached by the professor should be included on the agenda of this committee. And in all this, the market is developing so rapidly, so we should invent our norms as quickly as possible so that we can compete on an equal footing, on a level playing field in this market. Thank you.

Knowledge Ecology International:
Thank you very much. I was -- like others, we'd like to take a harder look at the study. One observation I would make is in the original GRULAC proposal, looming large were issues about economics, concentration of ownership in the area of distributing works, questions about the fairness of the distribution of revenue between creative people and distributors of works. I think in some ways that what was described as the study, although it looked very competent and a great cast of characters in terms of the researchers, I would -- I think you may want to examine whether there's more economics or economists that can be brought in to shed more light on the issues raised in the initial paper. And the last thing I wanted to say is we're -- and we've talked to some Delegates about this, or actually, I should say they've talked to us about it and we agree, that the issue of metadata as it relates to digital works is really a new topic that has come about because of the digitalization of works and the development of the Internet. We often feel that the metadata's managed on behalf of right owners but not necessarily on behalf of either the creative individuals or the audiences or the readers or the listeners, and so I think this is a -- related to the GRULAC proposal. It may be a subset, but I also think it's a topic that we would like to see explored more. Thank you very much.

PAAIG:
Thank you, Chair. I would like to focus on the role of limitations and exceptions in the digital environment for the priority of the committee at this time. There's things called non expressive uses, uses that are necessary for technological processes but do not compete with the copyright owner necessary to offer the services and Internet offer over it. We have been doing research on this topic and have been doing studies that suggest the presence of such exceptions is related to investment in growth of local digital technologies. We cannot have streaming without buffering, we can't have artificial intelligence, machine learning, text and data mining, Internet-based translation services without the right to use whole works for purposes that do not compete with the original, but only a small number of countries around the world provide these clear limitations and exceptions, and the lack of those limitations and exceptions is reducing local investment and local innovation in this area. As the experts note, the E.U. has taken a step in the right direction in this regard, creating a mandatory exception for certain technological processes in the directive. That model's not perfect. Many of these digital innovations that I mention actually require permanent copies. Nonetheless, the concept that we need a mandatory exception in this regard that can facilitate cross-border digital trade and local production and innovation should guide this committee. Thank you.

Corporacion Innovarte:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We're grateful for the work done by the Secretariat on this topic, as also the explanations from the professors that gave us their opinions. We think that the issue of guaranteeing fair remuneration for creators is extremely important. This item should be considered as a standing item on the committee's agenda. However, we also wanted to hearken back to what El Salvador said; in other words, there should be more participation and transparency in the work done in the group of experts in order to guarantee that all of the concerns and issues are covered that are related to this work. Finally, as to the checklists on contracts, this should include not just intermediary platforms such as YouTube, but also contracts between authors and producers or collective entities which also should be a subject of interest for this committee. Thank you.

Latin Artists:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Latin artists represents associations of actors and other performers in the audiovisual field. We are grateful for looking at the precarious situation of artists and other creators in connection with the use of their performances in the digital era. This was described, effectively, by GRULAC in its proposal. This affects not only musical work but audiovisual works as clarified by the Delegation of Brazil at the last session of this committee, and despite the fact that the same Delegation has referred exclusively today to music. In this situation, we think that the solution is not just exploratory studies, as we heard this morning. We also need to bear in mind that this scope exceeds the specific problems indicated in the GRULAC proposal, more particularly in the need to find appropriate formulas to guarantee that artists and other creators can benefit from the economic content of their performances in the digital era; in other words, formulas that guarantee that artists and authors can have fair remuneration in online use of their interpretation and performance and works. From this viewpoint, we think in the framework of the study we have to look not just at computers or databases. This can simply distract us from the questions we have before us, something that seems to be of concern to certain Delegations, as was expressed this very morning. In fact, ultimately, sir, if the debate that took place at the last session of this committee focused on the proposal of GRULAC, the study should focus exclusively on the problems identified in that proposal. That is all. At any rate, we are attentive to the conclusions which we hope will be reached and presented at the next session of this committee, and we hope that they will foster a debate that can no longer be delayed. Artists and authors need solutions. With all due respect, we cannot allow this time wastage to take place. We need an equitable sharing and the economic benefits derived from the digital use of their interpretations and works. Lastly, Latin artists understands that this question should be a standing independent item on the agenda of the committee. Thank you very much.

LCA:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to echo the statement of El Salvador and the United States that it will be very helpful to have written conclusions of the experts in advance so that we can react to them intelligently. Also, I would like to agree with the United States that the committee should focus on copyright issues and not more abstract market issues. If we start focusing on issues like the value gap, we also need to consider the value to authors of the free global distribution provided by Internet platforms. Thank you.

AADI:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the general association of performers and collective management of related rights of musical performers in the Republic of Argentina, I should like to congratulate you on your appointment as Chairman of this committee as also your new vice chairs. We wish them every success in their work with the cooperation of the Secretariat and the Delegations of the countries making up this committee. I have no doubt that you will have a successful outcome. Also, I'd like to congratulate professors to thank them for both of their presentations and also the Secretariat for its necessary and positive work to bring information to us. Since the first time that the GRULAC brought a document forward has welcomed this discussion. This was an informed document made available in December 2015 by the Delegation of Brazil. At that time and today, apart from a legal solution for each country, that has found four questions on this item, the document is 31/4, which plays a major role placing on the agenda the issue of performers' rights in a digital era to make the possible damage visible to them that are suffered by performers and artists as also to make it obvious who has caused this damage; in other words, major musical production companies. We have made this public and we have fought for obligatory reflective remuneration for artists and performers in my country. I would like to point out today we are not the only ones to have this stance. We have the extraordinary of Filia, which is a Latin America company of artists and performers, which stated at its annual meeting in October 2016, it is important for document SCCR/31/4, which proposes an analysis of copyright in the digital age to be made visible and to make obvious the various difficulties encountered as also to enable our artists to consolidate their work. I do not wish to dwell on these matters further, but I must say that on a daily basis, I see how major corporations make huge profits at the expense of performers. Is this some kind of a joke? But what we need is actions from whatever quarter can prevent their action and promote our action as performers in the digital era. Thank you.

Centre for Internet and Society:
Thank you Mr. Chair. On behalf of CIS, it is my submission that the study can additionally focus on all the key actors along the entire supply and value chain involved in content dissemination in the digital environment, complementing the study of the legal environments. This would shed considerable light on national legal frameworks and also provide us evidence of transparency, or the lack thereof in the businesses involved and the extent of low proportions of copyright and related rights payment to the creators and their unfair treatment. Thank you.

Electronic Information for Libraries:

Thank you, Mr. Chair. There were very many proposals on the interest of libraries, including the management of copyright limitations and exceptions in the digital environment, digital exhaustion, licenses, territoriality, and the interpretation of the three-step test. I'd like to thank the two professors for their presentations. We'd be very interested in the findings with regard to the review of copyright laws for digital uses that was dealt with at the start of the presentation. When we looked at data from the Crews study on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives, we found that in countries that have amended their copyright laws in the last five years, digital copying is expressly barred in over 1/3 of them, even for preservation reasons. My question is are you also considering in the work the evidence and examples of problems experienced by beneficiaries of certain exceptions, such as the library and archive community, when working in the digital environment, as presented to this committee by the community over the last number of years? That would help to further inform the discussion and the possible conclusions. Thank you.

Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property:
I would like to support that aspect of the GRUAC proposal that focuses on the role of limitations and exceptions in the digital environment as a top priority for this committee.
There is an increasing recognition that so-called non-expressive uses – uses necessary for technological processes that do not compete with the copyright owner – are necessary to enable the internet and the services that are offered over it.
We at American university have been doing studies that suggest that the presence of open exceptions for technological processes isrelated to investment and growth of local digital technologies. Countries with more open exceptions do better at attracting investments in fields such as software engineering. We cannot have local streaming services without local buffering rights. We cannot have local search, artificial intelligence, machine learning, text and data mining, and internet based translation services without local rights to use whole works for purposes that do not compete with the original.
Only a small number of countries around the world provide the clear limitations and exceptions in these areas. And only a small number of countries have robust industries in related fields. But all these services are international by nature, and therefore the lack of harmonization of enabling rights is increasingly perceived as a barrier to trade.
As the experts note, the EU has taken a step in the right direction that can serve as a model in this regard – creating a mandatory exception for certain technological uses in the INFOSOC directive.
That model is not perfect. Many digital innovations I have mentioned use entire works on a basis that might not be viewed as temporary. Nonetheless, the concept that we need a mandatory exception in this regard to facilitate cross border digital trade is salient, and should guide this committee.
Thank you.

Note: Source of the statement texts are WIPO's realtime transcription service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-observer-statements-on-proposal-for-analysis-of-copyright-related-to-the-digital-environment

Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India

ting — 2017-05-23T11:09:23Z

Since June 2016, Ting-Yi Chang from the University of Toronto has worked with the CIS-A2K team to conduct action research on the Wikipedia gender gap in India. The research aims to improve the understanding of the gender gap (imbalance) issue in the Indian Wikipedia communities while examining local interventions.

This post is an extraction from the Wikipedia Gender Gap Bridging Toolkit - South Asia Edition which will be published on Wiki (Commons and meta) in late May 2017. The toolkit is a derivative of the gender gap research initiative.

Wikipedia has a wide gender gap in participation and content coverage. The editor survey in 2011 showed that among the active editors worldwide only 9% identified themselves as female. While research and initiatives have been proposed and conducted to “bridge the gender gap,” mass majority of these studies are done in the Western context (English/European language Wikipedias and communities). The movement dynamics and situation of other Wikipedian communities are not well explored or documented. Of the few studies that did focus on non-Western contexts, this action research is one of the few to look at the issue in India.

Due to the timeline of the research and the limitation of space in this post, we will only discuss the preliminary findings of the study, specifically for the following questions:

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ (regardless of one’s activeness in editing) experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

In Q1, we used open coding to find recurring themes in the qualitative data collected through 18 semi-structured interviews with 21 female Wikipedians, and label them to find certain patterns of answers. To answer question 2, discussion and infographics will be presented to summarize the 64 survey responses we have gathered.

Q1: What are existing female Wikipedians’ experience in the Wikimedian communities?

Western-based research and survey has shown that a plausible reason behind the gender gap on Wikipedia is the discriminatory and unwelcoming environment within the editor communities. Research was much needed to explore the reasons in the Indian context as we cannot simply apply the same results or rule out the possibility of the same situation. Among the 9 reasons that Sue Gardner, the former Executive Director of WMF, had pointed out in her 2011 blog post, we deem the “misogynist atmosphere” as the most problematic - it signals an unhealthy environment and structure for diversity and long term growth.

Thus, 18 private interviews were held to understand the positive and negative experience that existing female (Indian) Wikipedians have faced in the communities. In this question we are specifically looking at the interaction and interpersonal relationship between community members (editors), hence it does not include experiences like discouragement from speedy deletion or technical difficulty in editing.

In each of the two categories (positive and negative), we use three labels to cover the recurring themes mentioned. In “positive experience,” these are (a) emotional support and respect, (b) bonding and friendship, and (c) other support. In “negative experience,” the three labels are (a) neglected or belittled, (b) sexist comments, and (c) safety concern.

It is interesting to note that although in most (Western-based) research, the positive and negative experiences were in the online context, our interviewees (Indian female Wikipedians) had mostly pointed out experiences that were either offline or in non-specified context. Comments on the online interaction dynamics were fairly rare and neutral, while negative experiences mostly occurred in the offline settings.

This can indicate that the communities’ offline interaction dynamics leaves a much more significant impression (sadly, especially when it is negative) to female Wikipedians on their overall community experience. Additionally, it seems that compared to the Western/English context, Indian Wikipedian communities are more close-knit and active offline, that is, the editors are more likely to know each other personally. This dynamic is a great plus to create positive experience such as strong bonding and emotional support. However, it may also be more toxic when the experience is negative as compared to if the experience was online and anonymous. In other words, sexist comments, deliberate neglect, and safety concerns can have an aggravated effect when faced personally.

In numbers, more positive experiences were mentioned than negative ones when a neutral question was asked (such as “How do you think about the community?” / ”what is your experience in the editor community so far?”). Most negative experience were only revealed when a negative-oriented question was asked (such as “Have you had any negative or uncomfortable experience so far?”). This may be interpreted that the interviewees’ overall experiences are positive with only occasional negative encounters. However, this interpretation can still be biased if we consider the possibility that:

There is a lack of trust between the researcher and the interviewees (i.e. Interviewees may have the intention to provide a more pleasing/non-controversial answer), or
the selection of our interviewees was already biased since “existing” female Wikipedians can be those that have not experienced much negative experience (i.e. the female editors who were upset by more negative experiences and had already quit editing were not reachable when the interviews were conducted, or they might simply be uninterested in participating in the research).

Q2: What are new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in gender gap bridging events) attitude and preference toward these gender gap bridging activities?

As indicated in our last question, the offline interaction and activities seem to be very crucial in determining a female Wikipedian’s overall experience in the community. In other questions throughout the semi-structured interview, we had asked existing female Wikipedians - who had been active in gender gap bridging event conduct - to discuss what can make an event more welcoming to women. Below are some of the answers given:

A women-only event (although some also criticized that this approach often made the gender gap a “women-only” discussion)
Female tutor’s presence
Offline events where women can meet others face to face (although some had mention that they prefer to participate online - which makes them feel safer and more comfortable)
The chance for participants to socialize and make friends
Write about women-related topics (although some had argued that a gender gap bridging event should not promote the tokenizing logic that (only) women should (only) edit on women-related topics)

As you may notice, there are divergence of ideas regarding the points A, C, and E. In order to cross-check all these ideas, a survey of 11 scale-rating questions was developed to understand the new female Wikipedians’ (who participated in a gender gap bridging event) attitude and preferences. Three clusters of questions were formed - general experience, cross-checking questions, and attitude.

Below is an infographics on the 64 responses we had collected: (You may click on the image at the top of this page (under the blog title) to zoom in)

From the infographics above we can see that event participants’ overall experience are positive. However, it may still be far from perfect as there were 2 respondents who “fully disagreed” with the statement “I find the event environment safe, friendly, and welcoming.” There are still more than 40% of the respondents who thought editing is difficult (or somewhat difficult), which means improvement is needed in our event tutorship or a re-estimation participants’ skill levels is needed. Participants’ attitude towards the events was also mostly positive as indicated in the last two questions.

Cross-checking (A): Do women prefer a women-only event?

During the events, the presenters and resource persons usually encouraged male participation in the initiatives and stressed that the gender gap bridging efforts cannot be a further segregation between men and women editors. Hence, we do expect this to influence the answers given to the statement “I still prefer a women-only event.” Still, more than one-third of the participants indicated their preference in women-only events; we expect the actual rate to be even higher if the said factor was not present.

Cross-checking (B): Is the presence of female tutor(s) important? (Does a tutor’s gender matter?)

Question 5 and 6 show very interesting results. In the offline (in real life) event context, there seem to be more disagreement on the statement “I would prefer a woman to be my tutor.” These responses can be affected by the fact that majority of the tutors in Wikipedia events were still men, and if a participant had generally positive experience throughout the event, they might not be against the idea of having a male tutor again. Nonetheless, interestingly, the answer turned the other way around when the scenario changed to an “online” setting. More respondents then agreed that they would prefer a women as their tutor. This may be a sign that women are more alert and defensive when it comes to online interaction with people in the opposite sex.

Cross-checking (C) : Do women prefer offline (in-real-life) events over online ones?

Over 50% of the respondents chose “fully agree” to the statement while only 5 respondents chose either fully or partially disagree. We can conclude that women who had experience in an offline (in-real-life) event would still prefer the same setting in the future. However, of course, we cannot be sure how many women may have turned down this first event experience because it was offline. In other words, we do not know if the preference of women who had never attended any events. However, what we know is that mass majority of those who had one offline event experience would prefer the offline setting over an online participation.

Cross-checking (D): Does socializing matter to women?

Majority of the respondents fully agreed with the statement “I would like to socialize with and know more Wikipedians.” This is one of the very few questions where no one disagreed to. Although we cannot calculate the personal utility of socializing or conclude that socializing is “necessary” to make women feel more comfortable, we can assume that it will be a positive addition to the events if women can make new friends in the communities.

Cross-checking (E): Are women interested in women-related topics? Or would they have preferred to write about their expertise areas?

From the survey, we found that more women actually showed interest in writing on women-related topics than on their domain knowledge subjects. Over 80% of the respondents agreed that they were interested in writing more about women (and related topics) while slightly fewer women said the same about their expertise knowledge. Only 8 out of 64 respondents expressed a preference for writing on their domain knowledge topics over women-related topics. Hence, it seems that women-related topics are a good place to start (for one’s first Wikipedia event experience) as most women enjoyed it. One thing we are not able to estimate is how long can this interest be sustained.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/preliminary-research-result-on-wikipedia-gender-gap-in-india

April 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T12:59:17Z

Welcome to the CIS newsletter for April 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In a report on the information security practices of Aadhaar, Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali documented numerous instances of publicly available Aadhaar numbers along with other personally identifiable information of individuals on government websites. CIS along with like minded organizations made a submission to the Government of India to frame a feasible accessibility guidelines for mobile apps since there is no single standard in existence at the moment. A two-day 100 Women Edit-a-thon was held in March 2017 by CIS-A2K team along with Odisha's biggest newspaper Sambad. The event was inspired by BBC’s 100 Women series and edit-a-thons with the same name in December 2016. More than 20 female journalists participated and registered as new Odia Wikipedians. On March 31, 2017, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training released a Circular framing rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI Rules”). The Ministry invited comments on on the RTI Rules. CIS submitted its comments. In an article originally published in Hindu Businessline on March 31, Sunil Abraham lists out 11 reasons why Aadhaar is not just non-smart but also insecure. Shuttleworth Foundation has announced Sunil Abraham as Honorary Steward for its September 2017 fellowship round. CIS worked on a three part case study. The first case study on digital protection of traditional knowledge was published by GIS Watch in December 2016. The other two case studies along with the synthesis overview has also been published.

CIS in the news:

NGOs, individuals urge state CMs to curb Internet shutdown (The Times of India; April 4, 2017).
India’s National ID Program May Be Turning The Country Into A Surveillance State (Pranav Dixit; BuzzFeed News; April 4, 2017).
Privacy, what? Bengaluru police leaks 46,000 phone numbers on Twitter (Neha Vashishth; India Today; April 6, 2017).

Bengaluru cops' twitter handle in ethical storm (Umesh Yadav; The Times of India; April 6, 2017).

Opposition questions govt move to make Aadhaar must (Komal Gupta; Livemint; April 12, 2017).
Aadhaar: A widening net (Komal Gupta, Apurva Vishwanath and Suranjana Roy; Livemint; April 21, 2017).
Chemistry research in India 'still not in big league' (IANS and India Online News Portal; April 24, 2017).
Stop the Haphazard Internet Shutdown Says MP Jay Panda (Regina Mihindukulasuriya; Businessworld; April 26, 2017).
Now, Aadhaar details displayed in Mizoram too (Sebastian P.T.; National Herald; April 26, 2017).
After SPB-Ilaiyaraaja, Sony Music and Sun Network lock horns over copyrights (Priyanka Thirumurthy; Newsminute; April 26, 2017).
Analysis: Data Protection in India - Getting It Right (Suparna Goswami and Varun Haran; Info Risk Today; April 26, 2017).
India bans social media in Kashmir for one month (Telegraph; April 27, 2017).
J&K social media ban: Use of 132-year-old Act can’t stand judicial scrutiny, say experts (Shruti Dhapola; Indian Express; April 28, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles:

How Aadhaar compromises privacy? And how to fix it? (Sunil Abraham; Hindu; April 1, 2017).
Digital native: You can check out, you can never leave (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 2, 2017).
Aadhaar marks a fundamental shift in citizen-state relations: From ‘We the People’ to ‘We the Government’ (Pranesh Prakash; Hindustan Times; April 3, 2017).
It’s the technology, stupid (Sunil Abraham; Hindu Businessline; April 7, 2017).
Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Amber Sinha; Asian Age; April 10, 2017).
Digital native: Are You Still Having Fun? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2017).
Digital native: Snap out of outrage mode (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 30, 2017).

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

Submission

Mobile Accessibility Practices (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 12, 2017).

Event

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2017 (Organized by Prakat Solutions, Mithra Jyothi and CIS; Bengaluru; May 18, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

Note: All the following events were held earlier but the reports were published in the month of April:

Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jeewan Jyoti Women's Empowerment Centre, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, Aurangabad (Subodh Kulkarni; April 13, 2017).
Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: January iteration (Pavan Santhosh; April 15, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia stall at Vijayawada Book Festival (Pavan Santhosh; April 15, 2017).
Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jnana Prabodhini (Subodh Kulkarni; April 15, 2017).
Bargarh Manuscript Digitisation Project (Sailesh Patnaik; April 16, 2017).
Imperial College Orientation Program, Bargarh (Sailesh Patnaik; April 16, 2017).
Orientation & Training session for Environmental Activists in Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Shivaji University, Kolhapur (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Sangli, Maharashtra (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Guntur (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Vijayawada (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
Adikavi Nannaya University Telugu Wikipedia Workshop (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
Odia Wikipedia Workshop in IIMC, Dhenkanal (Sailesh Patnaik; April 17, 2017).
Sambad 100 Women Edit-a-thon (Ting Yi Chang and Sailesh Patnaik; April 18, 2017).
Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: February iteration (Pavan Santhosh; April 18, 2017).

►Copyright and Patent

National Conference on Intellectual Property Rights and Public Interest (Organized by Indian Law Institute; New Delhi; April 7 - 8, 2017). Maggie Huang took part in the event.

►Openness

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

Publication

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in India: Opportunities for Advocacy in Intellectual Property (Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda; GIS Watch and Association for Progressive Communications; April 23, 2017). Total 4 reports: Synthesis Overview, Access to Mobile Technology, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, and FOSS and Open Standards.

Submission

Comments on the Right to Information Rules, 2017 (Amber Sinha; April 27, 2017).

Event Organized

NASA Space Apps Challenge 2017 (CIS, Bengaluru, April 22, 2017).

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

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

►Privacy

Blog Entries

Analysis of Key Provisions of the Aadhaar Act Regulations (Amber Sinha; April 3, 2017).
Right to be Forgotten: A Tale of Two Judgements (Amber Sinha; April 7, 2017).

►Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Killing of Yameen Rasheed Reveals Worsening Human Rights Situation in the Maldives (Pranesh Prakash; April 25, 2017).
Internet Shutdowns in 2016 (Japreet Grewal; April 27, 2016).

►Miscellaneous

Blog Entry

Regulating Bitcoin in India (Vipul Kharbanda; April 20, 2017).

Event

Amutha Arunachalam - Stand Shielded of Digital Rights (CIS; New Delhi; May 5, 2017).

Participation in Event

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 27 Meetings (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; University of Waikato and Novotel; New Zealand; April 18 - 25, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meetings.

►Cyber Security

Event Organized

Dr. Madan M. Oberoi - Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations (CIS; New Delhi; April 7, 2017).

Participation in Event

Brainstorming Session on the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS 2017) (Organized by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology; New Delhi; April 12, 2017). Japreet Grewal attended the session.

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

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

34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment

sinha — 2017-05-15T10:42:28Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 34th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 1 May, 2017 to 5 May, 2017, made this statement during the discussion on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment.

Thank you Mr. Chair.

On behalf of CIS, it is my submission that the study can additionally focus on all the key actors along the entire supply and value chain involved in content dissemination in the digital environment, complementing the study of the legal environments. This would shed considerable light on national legal frameworks and also provide us evidence of transparency, or the lack thereof in the businesses involved and the extent of low proportions of copyright and related rights payment to the creators and their unfair treatment.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-cis-statement-on-the-proposal-for-analysis-of-copyright-related-to-the-digital-environment

34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

sinha — 2017-05-15T10:35:36Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 34th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 1 May, 2017 to 5 May, 2017, made this statement during the discussion on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CIS works on issues of access to knowledge and other digital rights in India.

I would like to share with you my experience which highlights the difficulty of building digital archives in India. Mr. Chair, earlier last year the government of India embarked upon the important project of digitizing the cultural audiovisual material stored in government and private collections to store material for preservation purposes, and set up a virtual network of these repositories to offer online access. My organization has been assisting them in this crucial public service mission. These works are oral traditions, dance, music, theatrical practices, cultural practices – all of which lie largely inaccessible and languishing in several small and large collections in India. Since, the Indian copyright Act does not contain an exception for the purposes of preservation by an archive; the entire project has suffered high costs in terms of money and time. Money, because the project had to get expensive legal assistance to set up processes to obtain rights clearance from all the performers who were a part of the works and copyright holders- some of which are orphan works, thereby compounding the problem. Further, partnering organizations also expressed legitimate fears of supplying their works, in case of a potential copyright and related rights violation that could implicate them with civil/criminal liability.

In such a scenario, for the benefit of other states to update their standards corresponding to this international legal instrument as well, it would indeed be useful to adopt the proposals mentioned in the document SCCR/26/3 that address these issues, and others.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/34th-sccr-cis-statement-on-the-discussion-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-libraries-and-archives

Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:59:43Z

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was held at the J.P. Naik Centre for Education and Development in Pune recently.

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was conducted in conjunction with VIgyan Ashram, a social work organization on 9 May, 2017. This was held at the J.P. Naik Centre for Education and Development. Vigyan Ashram conducts courses on Introduction to Basic Technology (IBT) or Multi Skill Foundation Course in various schools for integrating socially useful productive work with school curriculum. The goal of Wikipedia edit-a-thon was to attempt to integrate these objectives with Wikipedia Education Program and develop long term strategies. It also aims to build resources in the field of appropriate rural technologies on Marathi Wikipedia and equip its participants with the skills necessary to contribute to Wikipedia.

A total of 23 IBT coordinators from 18 schools(of 9 districts) participated in the workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/thematic-edit-a-thon-at-j-p-naik-centre-for-education-development-pune

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-06-07T09:24:35Z

On the 60th anniversary of the movie Mayabazar, Telugu Wikimedians celebrated Wiki Loves Mayabazar, an event to commemorate the cult Telugu film Mayabazar. As part of the celebrations, an edit-a-thon of the same name was held at Ravindra Bharathi in Hyderabad. Interestingly, the Cultural Department of Telangana Government sponsored the entire event.

In the Telugu speaking regions, there is a well-known appreciation of the cinematic arts. Mayabazar, released in 1957 captured the imagination of fans like no other film had before. Telugu Wikipedians decided to pay tribute to the movie by improving articles and content related to it on Telugu Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

The edit-a-thon was held on 30 April, 2017 at the monthly Wikimitra Vedika meetup of Telugu Wikipedians. A screening of the film took place followed by discussions on references, citations, film studies and articles related to the film. From 1 May 2017, the edit-a-thon took place online.

There were 15 participants of which only one member was female. Telugu Wikipedian, Kasyap hoped for more participation as this "is an interesting event."

However, the event was made popular by the wide ranging media coverage in print and electronic media.

Media pieces on the event:

1. ‘మాయాబజార్‌’కు వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి

(Eenadu Newspaper; 1 May, 2017)

2.‘మాయాబజార్’కు 60 ఏళ్లు.. వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి వేడుకకు సిద్ధమవుతున్న వికీపీడియన్లు! (Ap7am.com; 1 May 2017)Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-loves-mayabazaar

Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:45:18Z

A strategic symposium on Marathi Wikipedia and its sister projects was conducted on 29 April, 2017

The Marathi Wikipedia community held a symposium at the Gokhale Instititute of Politics and Economics on 29 April, 2017. This was an attempt to bring together various stakeholders for developing a strategic plan for Marathi language wiki projects such as Wikipedia, and especially Marathi Wikisource and Wiktionary. Over 70 persons were involved in the strategic planning efforts to take Wikisource and Wiktionary to existing Marathi Wikipedians and the general public at large. Eminent ecologist, Prof. Madhav Gadgil served as a resource persons for this event.

Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics and Rawat's Nature Academy took lead in organising this symposium. CIS-A2K facilitated the process. A total of 50 eminent personalities from various fields such as literature, linguistics, journalism, science forums, publishers, librarians, State Language & Culture Department honchos, active citizen forums working on different issues etc. took active part in the proceedings. They aim to act as anchors in future. According to the needs of Wikimedia projects, 12 Action Groups have been formed. Planning further sessions for May and June has begun over a common email thread.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/marathi-wikipedia-symposium-at-gokhale-institute-of-politics-economics

After SPB-Ilaiyaraaja, Sony Music and Sun Network lock horns over copyrights

praskrishna — 2017-04-27T16:49:53Z

In what seems to be the latest in an increasing number of cases of copyright violations, Sun Network on Friday was banned by the Madras High Court from using Sony Music copyrighted work.

This was published by the News Minute on April 26, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The order comes, despite Sun Network's claim that “it was the absolute copyright holder of films under the South Indian Cinematograph films". This instance, according to experts is yet another case that highlights the complex nature of copyrights and the need for reform in the act itself.

According to reports, Sony Music said it was forced to send a cease and desist notice to Sun Network on July 27 last year. This was after an exchange of letters between the two parties and meetings with councillors did not lead to a settlement. Sony reportedly wanted Sun to take prior licences before its works are either aired or adapted by artists to be recorded and aired. Sun Network, which has 33 TV channels in various south Indian languages, however, believed that it had the right to air this music owing to previous agreements that it had signed. The matter escalated over the last three years, where multiple warnings were issued.

"The problem here is that nobody is clear about exactly what rights they have. For a long time, the industry in the south was working with agreements that were not drafted properly. It was ambiguous and now when it comes under scrutiny, several problems arise," explains Swaroop Mumidipudi, an advocate.

"Sun Network’s case is actually not very weak. There are two competing copyrights here. The cinematograph film is one right where you get the image and sound together. Sony on the other hand could have the music rights. So in such a case it wouldn't have seemed wrong to Sun that they were playing the music. But if they changed the visuals that would be a problem," he adds.

Sony when contacted by The News Minute claims in addition to using the music, Sun was synchronising it with different visuals. "Approvals from music rights owners are mandatory before using (synchronization) songs with new visuals. The music could be existing songs, versions or underlying works," says Sridhar Subramanium, President - India and middle east - Sony Music Entertainment. "TV broadcasters, advertisers, film producers and internet companies who use existing music will now need to seek prior permission from copyright owners before communicating to the public including broadcasters," he adds.

Experts at the Centre for Internet and Society, however, claim, the issue is not that simple. "Figuring out who owns copyrigths and who licensed whom is complicated. You need to be cautious before you assume you have rights over something," says Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, CIS. He also comments that it must be a rude shock to think certain music comes under the realm of your agreement, only to be questioned later. "The Copyright Act that was last amended in 2012 does not address lot of practical problems. If even a low barrier of marking copyright somehow existed, then this confusion can be avoided," he adds.

This latest clash between two media giants, comes close on the heels of the tensions between music director Ilaiyaraaja and singer SP Balasubrahmanyam (SPB). The composer sent a legal notice to SPB, who was singing his songs in a tour abroad. The singer had claimed that he was not aware that prior permission was required but was forced to stop performing Ilaiyaraaja's songs for the rest of the tour.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-news-minute-priyanka-thirumurthy-april-26-2017-after-spb-ilaiyaraaja-sony-music-and-sun-network-lock-horns-over-copyrights

Continuing community engagement: Communities of interest and Quarrying

Manasa Rao — 2017-05-19T15:23:28Z

In telling the stories of Indian Wikipedians, we bring to you the story of Dr. Diptanshu Das, a doctor and avid Wikipedian, working with WikiProject Medicine who recently approached CIS-A2K with a technical request.

CIS-A2K has always believed in continuing our engagement with the communities and individuals we work with. This year in particular has been special to us thanks to our Train The Trainer alumni steadily achieving the goals they set out to achieve and continuing their Wiki journeys with more vigour. It is especially significant to us when our alumni come back to our resource and idea exchange platform to help develop their pet projects. For the first time, one such alumnus, Dr. Diptanshu Das, a doctor by profession and avid Wikipedian approached us in April 2017 with a request to our technical team. He wanted to know the number of articles that were tagged in both Category:WikiProject Pharmacology and Category:All WikiProject Medicine.

To provide some context, WikiProjects are generally article development projects undertaken by groups of editors on Wikipedia whose aim it is to achieve goals on specific topics and subjects on Wikipedia. For example, WikiProject Medicine manages and helps curate medical articles on Wikipedia. Similarly, WikiProject Pharmacology states that it "coordinates the development of Wikipedia articles and lists relating to the pharmacology and science of medications and other pharmacology-related topics." Working to define clearer guidelines for WikiProject Medicine of which he is a member, Dr. Das intended to find out how many articles were listed under WikiProject Pharmacology that were also tagged under WikiProject Medicine. As these two are closely related topics, the former being a sub-specialty of the latter, he felt it could cause an overlap which would mean that most of the sub-specialty articles would get lost in the "parent" category i.e. WikiProject Medicine.

CIS-A2K ran Dr. Das' request on Quarry, a public querying interface that lets one raise queries regarding databases in addition to managing them as an SQL(Structured Query Language) software would. Dr. Das had begun discussions with fellow Wikipedians to get their thoughts on the matter and wanted to provide data-specific points but was unable to gather consensus on developing a guideline. However, when CIS-A2K reported back to him, he realized that the overlap was not as significant as he had feared. WikiProject Medicine had 34,475 articles, WikiProject Pharmacology had 10,721 articles; only 2002 of these were tagged in both. Dr. Das, while relieved, believes that sub-specialty tagging would go a long way in helping improve articles such as those of WikiProject Pharmacology, many of which are still in Start and Stub classes.

"While collaborating on wiki is always good, it is important that an organization like CIS contributes its expertize," he says. CIS-A2K's presence as an idea exchange platform hopes to generate debate and discussions in addition to the physical resources and support we provide to communities. Dr. Das is also of the opinion that domain knowledge experts could make a real difference to Wikipedia by engaging with or creating WikiProjects that are specific to their interests and collaborate with other free knowledge champions around the world. CIS-A2K has attempted to encourage such communities of interest in the past so as to find an easier way to engage members of the general public and educational institutions as they are more likely to edit Wikipedia articles based on their personal hobbies and interests.

If you have requests for us please post them here or email Tito Dutta at tito@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/continuing-community-engagement-communities-of-interest-and-quarrying

Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, Aurangabad

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-04-19T11:44:41Z

A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal in Aurangabad

Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, a social work organisation working with underprivileged sections of society in Aurangabad partnered with CIS-A2K to conduct a Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon on 13 April, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to introduce Wikipedia to the participants and enable them to contribute to Wiki projects. The theme of the edit-a-thon was to build resources on topics related to rural development and women's empowerment. The four hour edit-a-thon was attended by 30 participants who made a total of 300 edits. 15 new articles were created and 60 images were uploaded to Commons.

The link to the event page on meta can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-savitribai-phule-mahila-ekatma-samaj-mandal-aurangabad

National Conference on Intellectual Property Rights and Public Interest

praskrishna — 2017-04-12T14:01:27Z

Indian Law Institute organized a conference on intellectual property rights on April 7 and 8 in New Delhi. Maggie Huang took part in the conference.

The Intellectual Property Rights regime was developed to protect the interest of producers of knowledge. It was aimed at rewarding creativity and inventiveness. It was also claimed by many that the nature of intellectual property was that of a ‘social contract’, one in which the state agrees to secure and protect the rights of individuals in consideration that the individual will reveal his/her creations. The regime of IPR provides access to important creations or source of knowledge to the public along with incentivising the creator by providing monopoly or more aptly ‘limited monopoly’ rights to commercially exploit their creations. The ‘limited monopoly’ right is for a temporary period and after the expiration of the temporary period, it falls into the public domain. The interesting part of the IPR regime is that the creator in exchange of the exclusive rights shares the knowledge or know how behind the creation of the work which the public could freely use to develop further innovations after the ‘limited monopoly’ term is over. The ‘limited’ prefixed to the monopoly word triggers the controversy, with many claiming public interest predominance over private rights and vice-versa. The Novartis v. Union of India case and the more recent The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of Oxford University v. Rameswari Photocopy Services case has brought this controversy to the fore in India. The new national IP Policy in India in 2016 also touched upon the area by declaring that the main aim of the policy is to push IPRs as a marketable financial asset, promote innovation and entrepreneurship while protecting public interest. In this light, this conference seeks to address the question whether IPR is based on public interest leading to public rights predominance over private rights or knowledge as a form of private property to be protected under IPR regime ergo public rights are nothing but exceptions. The conference aims to realize the IPR model apposite for countries like India.

For conference topics, see here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/national-conference-on-intellectual-property-rights-and-public-interest

Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-06-07T08:37:48Z

A digitization workshop was held at Vigyan Ashram, following the success of the introductory workshop in February.

On 5 February, an introductory Wikipedia orientation program was held in partnership with Vigyan Ashram, for 15 youths from Pabal and surrounding villages in Shirur, Maharashtra. Given the keen interest and enthusiasm of the participants, a follow up workshop was held on 3 April, 2017.

This workshop was attended by 30 participants who were trained on Wikimedia projects such as Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. They were given an orientation on digitization and OCR tools as well. The workshop aims to enable the training of resource persons who can go onto be employed at libraries and museums in order to help with their digitization efforts. The scanning of old encyclopedias in Marathi has also been proposed for the Wiktionary project.

Participants were taught how to upload books from the Internet Archive to Wikimedia Commons. Subsequently,there was also a demonstration of transferring books from Commons to Wikisource. There are two ways of doing this: the page by page OCR process or converting a complete book through OCR4Wikisource. As OCRS4Wikisource program runs only on Linux, limitation of machines at the event was a hurdle in providing all the participants a hands on experience. Therefore, the scanning activity could not be completed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-wikimedia-commons-and-wikisource-orientation-workshop-at-vigyan-ashram-pabal-pune-district

March 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T12:47:11Z

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

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

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

CIS in the news:

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

CIS members wrote the following articles

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

Submission

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

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►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entry

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

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

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

Events Organized

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

►Openness

Participation in Events

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

Blog Entries

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Internet Governance
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►Privacy

Submission

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

Participation in Events

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

Blog Entry

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

►Cyber Security

Upcoming Event

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

►Big Data

Blog Entry

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

Participation in Event

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

►Freedom of Expression

Event Organized

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

Participation in Events

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

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

Newspaper Column

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

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

Research Paper

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

Blog Entry

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

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