Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:33:29Z

A three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.

The workshop started with a short introductory presentation followed by a learning session on how to edit the Wikipedia. Since there were lesser number of computers, participants were divided in groups of 2 or 3 at the maximum. Each group made at least 3 edits with the help of volunteers present in the room.

A follow up session will be organised in January or February of 2013 to organise an edit-a-thon for all the interested and enthusiastic participants.

A special thanks to everyone who helped organising this event, especially to Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick, Debanjan - all from the Wikipedia family and Nitin Volvoikar, the Head of Journalism Department from St. Xavier's.


Above is a picture of the whole group of participants at the St.Xavier's College at Mapusa, Goa

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-in-st-xaviers-college-goa

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction

nitika — 2013-01-25T06:30:54Z

Last month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments.

All efforts invested in discussions and planning the workshop over multiple mail trails, conference calls, one-on-one calls paid off extremely well. Over 35 participants attended the two-days workshop and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.

Most of the participants had already created their usernames before the first session, as it was instructed to them earlier, though there were some participants who created their user accounts during the session. Despite creating a ticket for releasing the IP from the "seven accounts creation limit" we ran into an IP block. This was the second time we encountered such a problem. We will look more closely into this matter for smoother operations in future.

It was pre-decided by the organisers that the first session will be theoretical while the second session will be a complete hands-on-traning session. Hence, the first session started with a general introduction about Wikipedia, the five pillars, how Wikipedia works, a brief introduction about the Wikipedia community, and the state of Wikipedia in India.

The following day participants pre-selected articles that they wanted to edit during the course of the second session. They were taught how to do minor edits, add edit summary, add references, view history and page statistics, and also briefed about the importance of publishing articles, and user talk pages.

The two day long workshop came to an end with a meeting organized by all the participants to decide what should be their next steps. The workshop created a lot of enthusiasm in the participants. They got to know how individual researchers and professors build pages on Wikipedia, and they too can start by contributing one page at a time. They also showed keen interest to understand how monthly meet-ups are organised in other cities so that they could also organise meet-ups in Goa starting 2013 (the proposed date was January 16, 2013 — when Wikipedia's anniversary can be celebrated).

The feedback received from the participants was extremely positive. In the meanwhile there have been some discussion about forthcoming workshops — we have already received inquires from five more institutes to organize similar events in Goa. It seems like the initial seeds have been sown for a flourishing Wikipedia community in Goa.

A special thanks to Prof. Alito Siqueira from Department of Sociology Goa University, Harriet Vidyasagar from OLPC, Prof. Gopakumar from Goa University, Debanjan and Frederick from Wikipedia community and the CIS team for making this workshop a huge success.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/two-day-wiki-workshop-in-goa-university

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — December 2012

praskrishna — 2013-01-10T13:33:41Z

This is the fourth Access to Knowledge newsletter from the CIS team in Delhi! During the month of December we had organised the Marathi wiki workshop, a workshop at NMAIT in Karnataka and a workshop at SRM University in Chennai.

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). In this issue we bring you updates from the Marathi wiki community and workshops organised in NMAIT in Karnataka and SRM University in Chennai.

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

CIS Office in Delhi

The A2K team consists of three members: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Education Program

Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, December 8, 2012). Organised as part of the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society’s initiative of focusing on Indian languages. Nitika Tandon participated in the event.

Workshops Organised by CIS:

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Noopur Raval participated in the event.

Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

# Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

Video

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programs such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom.

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

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-december-2012

December 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-16T05:15:27Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society wish you all a great year ahead. In the December 2012 newsletter, we bring you the draft early chapters of our “National Resource Kit” project for persons with disabilities (covering four southern states); and accessibility-related comments on the Twelfth Five Year Plan; the draft research on pervasive technologies and access to knowledge that we presented at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in Brazil; our comments on the privacy implications of including RFID tags in the proposed Rule 138A of the Motor Vehicle Rules, a report on the open access lectures delivered by Prof. Leslie Chan during his tour of India, reports of Wikipedia-related workshops conducted across three cities, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Research Manager (Digital Humanities project), and Policy Associate (Access to Knowledge and Openness) and Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

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:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS received a grant of INR 54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation for Creating a National Kit of Laws, Policies and Programs for Persons with Disabilities on August 16, 2012. Anandhi Vishwanathan from CIS and Shruti Ramakrishnan from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are the researchers presently working for this project. Early draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from the readers:

The Tamil Nadu Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Karnataka Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Kerala Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).
The Andhra Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Event Organised

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15 – 17, 2012). The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was organized by Fundação Getulio Vargas, American University Washington College of Law, Columbia University, Open AIR, and ICSTD. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Pranesh was one of the moderators in the Roundtable Discussion on Priority Policy Forums, Research and Analysis Needs and Commitments.

Research for the Global Congress

For the 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest event, CIS conducted research. Jadine Lannon (based on research by Annapoornima and Rohan George and with help from Yogesh Kumar did research on documentation of phones and their patent, Amba Kak did research on copyright and mobile licensing, Vikrant Vasudev conducted research on patent pools and valuation methods, Hans Varghese Mathews did research on mathematical models of patent pools and Nehaa Chaudhuri did research on analysis of 3Gand 4G patent pools.

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 Report

Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report (by Yogesh Londhe, December 10, 2012). Event was hosted at CIS office in Bangalore. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event held in CIS office in Bangalore on December 1 and 2, 2012.

Events Participated

‘Information & Networks’ Partners’ Meeting (organised by International Development Research Centre, Canada in Rio de Janeiro, December 11 – 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke in session on Open Business and IP.

Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India (Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala, Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library and SDM Institute for Management Development, December 17 – 20, 2012).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia Project)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Events Organised

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, December 8, 2012).

Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

News / Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

Videos

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.
Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012). Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist gave a talk.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.

Upcoming Event

Meta Refresh (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, February 22 and 23, 2013).

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:

Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules

Comments on the Proposed Rule 138A of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 Concerning Radio Frequency Identification Tags (by Bhairav Acharya, December 3, 2012).

Columns/Op-eds

Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech (by Sunil Abraham, Economic Times, December 5, 2012).
The Worldwide Web of Concerns (by Pranesh Prakash, Deccan Chronicle, and Asian Age, December 10, 2012).
The Trouble with Hurried Solutions (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, December 15, 2012).
Tomorrow, Today (Nishant Shah, The Indian Express, December 29, 2012).

Event Organised

Meeting of the Network of Internet & Society Centers (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Center for Technology & Society, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Center for Civic Media, NEXA Center for Internet & Society and CIS, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6 – 8, 2012).

Upcoming Events

DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).

Events Participated

Second International e-Governance Conference (organized by the National Committee for Corporate Governance Electronic Iraq and the United Nations Development Programme, Rashid Hotel, Baghdad, December 2, 2012). Sunil Abraham presented on "Review of the Legal Environment in Iraq for Effective e-Governance".
Seminar/Artist Talks : "Outresourcing" with the Transmediale Collective (organised by the Berlin - Transmediale new media collective, December 3, 2012, Bangalore). Sharath Chandra Ram presented a White Paper.
World Conference on International Telecommunications (organised by ITU, December 3 – 14). Chinmayi Arun participated as a civil society representative.
Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, December 6 – 8, 2012).
Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012 (organised by Estonian Institute of Human Rights and Google). Malavika Jayaram participated as a panelist.
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp (Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, Rio, Brazil, December 13 and 14, 2012). Elonnai Hickok made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.
Economic Impact of Internet in India (organised by Aspen Institute India, December 21, 2012). Chinmayi Arun attended this event.

Blog Entries

Transcripts from WCIT-12 (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Section 66-A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Cases (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points (by Elonnai Hickok, December 28, 2012).
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary (by Elonnai Hickok, December 31, 2012).
Mining the Web Collective (by Sharath Chandra Ram, December 31, 2012).

Video

Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai (CIS, Bangalore, December 18, 2012). Preetam Rai gave a lecture.

Media Coverage

66A ‘cut & paste job’ (by GS Mudur, Telegraph, December 3, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.
Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns (by Surabhi Agarwal, December 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Debate on Section 66A rages on (Vasudha Venugopal, The Hindu, December 10, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Hacktivists deface BSNL website (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 13, 2012).
Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 16, 2012).
The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web (by Rahul Jayaram, India Today, December 18, 2012).
‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’ (DNA, December 19, 2012).
No fear of losing internet freedom till Jan 15: Experts (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
UN agrees to review agencies governing Internet (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt (The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
A note of dissent on cash transfers and UID (The Hindu, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.
The year social media came of age in India (by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

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:

Newspaper Column

Inflation Control Through Structural Reforms (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, December 11, 2012).

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:

Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).
Market Structure in the Telecom Industry (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Book Review

Not Just Fancy Television (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, December 8, 2012): Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Media Coverage

What does it mean to be a digital native? (by Oliver Joy, CNN, December 8, 2012).

About CIS

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

Follow us elsewhere

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

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

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

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

A Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT

subha — 2013-01-04T16:30:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi collaborated with Metawings Institute to spread the words about Wikipedia for Indian languages. A one-day workshop was organized to educated the students on contributing to Wikipedia on December 21, 2012. About 170 engineering students took part in this event.

The workshop began with interaction with the students about their understanding. I asked few questions like what is Wikipedia, who edits articles on Wikipedia, is it paid or free, did they ever try to edit Wikipedia, etc. I took them through a presentation to explain basics of Wikipedia, five pillars, notability and copyright issues related to vandalism. One of the students were called to create his user account. Students were showed the simpler sign up process. To explain how articles are edited we introduced errors in the article on Bengaluru and made it the capital of India for few minutes! Students were explained how Wikipedia editors correct mistakes like these in real time and correct facts are published in Wikipedia. A majority of the students asked about the authenticity of articles which is open to anyone. So I got a chance to refresh the page and show how the error introduced was reverted within a few minutes.


Above is a picture of the participants from the Wikipedia Workshop at Karkala

The session went on with such interaction and students were explained more about the importance of citing references to add credibility to the facts they can add on Wikipedia articles.

We also had Dr. Ashok Kumar, prof, Computer science department, a wikipedian and columnist for Kannada newspaper Udaya Vani. Dr. Kumar introduced Kannada Wikipedia to the students. At the end of the session I had a discussion with him about organizing more workshops for Kannada Wikipedia and supporting participant students. Special thanks to Metawings for finding the venue and supporting for the event.

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

New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups

noopur — 2013-01-05T01:46:41Z

This blog post is a brief recap and snippets of my conversation with Harsh Kothari, a volunteer on Gujarati Wikipedia on what we've been doing to help with MediaWiki groups.

Earlier in December, Harsh posted an e-mail to announce India's first MediaWiki group in Ahmedabad. The group is in its final stage of approval. The e-mail also generated curiosity among community members, some of whom had discussed starting similar technical initiatives earlier on the list.

I came across the idea of MediaWiki groups while Harsh, Yuvi Panda, Sheel and I were trying to conduct a mini hackathon in Delhi. The mini hackathon was a great success and very helpful to Harsh and Sheel. That is when we realized that the best way of repeating such training sessions would be to help foster the interaction of all technical volunteers within a city. Harsh told me Quim Gil from the Wikimedia Foundation had already proposed this and it would be best if I helped him frame a proposal for a MediaWiki group in India. I was told by Yuvi and Harsh that from their discussions on IRC with Quim they all agreed that local groups would serve better than a single national group given the expanse of India.

I thought this post would lend some perspective on how we could go about supporting technical outreach in India specifically for two reasons one, because Indian language Wikipedias could massively benefit from increased functionality — new gadgets, referencing and more. Apart from this, as we all might have encountered during our outreach sessions in technical colleges, there is great interest among students in contributing to MediaWiki but not enough resources or people who could spread the word.

A local MediaWiki group could serve multiple purposes supporting the relevant language Wikipedia as well as attracting and fostering a FOSS community in their city. It could also take up the responsibility of conducting events — small and large including hackathons, workshops and more. Especially in the context of smaller cities, towns and large university campuses, setting up a technical group similar to a LUG would be very beneficial. There will definitely be challenges, as questions come by and none of these groups can follow a standard model. But, I believe a major advantage of technical groups would mean faster resolution of bugs, more frequently updated infrastructure and consequently more activity on relevant Wikipedias. I have contributed to the proposal and am helping shape the first group. In case you want to set one up in your city or university, or wish to be put in touch with people who can help please do write to me at noopur@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/new-avenues

A Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai

noopur — 2012-12-27T05:57:34Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.

The three-hour workshop was mostly interactive. Since most students had a fair idea of what Wikipedia is and who writes articles on Wikipedia, they had many queries on who the 'editors' were, who selects them, how one can become an editor, how to determine reliability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles and so on. This was a pattern that I observed in many workshops that we conduct where people who have a level of ease and familiarity with using Wikipedia to get information, have often wondered if the information they are using is reliable or not. This also gives us a chance to explain how their contributions can make the encyclopedia more inclusive, informative and reliable.

One student was called upon to create a user account and instead of answering his query on patrolling edits, I encouraged him to vandalize a popular article just to see how quickly it is reverted and the correct version is restored. Some students were also interested in knowing about Indian language Wikipedias. So, I invited a student to create his account in Tamil Wikipedia and create his user page subsequently.

After the workshop the students wanted to stay in touch and receive more information on Wikipedia projects they could contribute to and filled up contact forms.

Special thanks to Metawings for helping us out with the logistics and to the student coordinators at SRM University for their cooperation!

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

WIPO To Negotiate Treaty For The Blind In June; ‘Still Some Distance To Travel’

praskrishna — 2012-12-21T11:50:04Z

In a swift 15 minute session this morning delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization extraordinary assembly agreed to convene a high-level meeting in Morocco in June to finalise a treaty on international exceptions to copyrights on books in special formats for visually impaired people.

This article by Catherine Saez was published in Intellectual Property Watch on December 18, 2012. Rahul Cherian is quoted.

After long informal discussions yesterday with the assembly chair, Ambassador Uglješa Zvekić of Serbia, the decision document [pdf] was issued this morning.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said, “It is a great decision. Of course we are all aware that there is still some distance to travel before we have a treaty, but this decision, I think, places us one further step along the road and in a very good position to be able to deliver the objective, namely a very positive outcome of this exercise, with a good treaty that improves the situation of visually impaired persons and the print disabled.”

The General Assembly decided that a diplomatic conference should be convened in June 2013, in Morocco, with a mandate to negotiate and conclude a treaty.

Furthermore, the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) will meet in a special session for five days in February to expedite further text-based work on the draft treaty, document SCCR/25/2 [pdf] “in order to reach sufficient level of agreement on the text.”

The assembly also directs "the Preparatory Committee to meet at the end of the February SCCR meeting to decide, if needed whether additional work is required with the objective of holding a successful Conference in June 2013," the decision says. It also states that the preparatory committee will invite observers.

The assembly decision has five paragraphs. With respect to paragraph 4 of the decision (on the special work session in February), Zvekić said, “we agreed to state for the record that in this paragraph, the phrase ‘additional work’ means additional work by either the SCCR or the preparatory committee, so that the preparatory committee can decide that either itself, the SCCR, or both may have additional work to do in order to prepare a revised text for the diplomatic conference.”

Document SCCR/25/2, which contains the draft articles as approved by the last SCCR session in November, "will constitute the substantive articles of the Basic Proposal for the Diplomatic Conference," the decision says, “with the understanding that any Member State and the special delegation of the European Union may make proposals at the Diplomatic Conference.”

The assembly also established a preparatory committee, which met at the close of the assembly this morning to work on modalities of the diplomatic conference, such as the draft rules of procedure, the list of states and organisations to be invited, and the agenda, dates, venue and other organisational questions.

Blue Sky with Some Clouds

The new consensus on a diplomatic conference and on a legally binding treaty to create exceptions and limitations to copyright for the benefit of visually impaired people cannot eclipse the fact that the draft text still reflects profound divisions between countries.

In February, delegates will have to tackle remaining issues, such as the inclusion of the three step test and commercial availability, on which they currently are at a standstill. Both inclusions are favoured by developed countries, in an effort to protect their right holders.

Yesterday morning, the delegation of Barbados said the treaty should be effective, and “while acknowledging the importance of safeguards,” it is important that “provisions in the text would not unduly restrict authorised entities from making accessible formats available under national law exceptions.”

“Provisions should not render the text nugatory through exposing authorised entities to possible liability and making their work administratively burdensome,” the delegate said.

In a press release [doc] issued today by the World Blind Union (WBU), Maryanne Diamond, leader of the WBU Right To Read campaign, said, "The decision of the WIPO Extraordinary General Assembly today is a very significant milestone on the road to a treaty. It means governments have kept the work on track to agree a binding and effective treaty in 2013, which if completed would allow blind people to access many thousands more books."

"The work is far from over, though. We urge all parties to now negotiate a simple, binding and effective treaty. A good treaty will really help us to end the book famine in which only some one to seven percent of books are ever made accessible to us," the release said.

Rahul Cherian, from Indian WBU member Inclusive Planet, also said in the release that "the objective of this treaty must be that of helping blind and print disabled people to get accessible format books, especially in developing countries. To achieve this goal, it must be workable and simply worded so that blind and print disabled people and their organisations can use it to really make a difference."

Currently in many countries, copyright law prevents charities from making accessible copies of books, and from sending them to others in countries speaking the same language, the release said. "The WIPO treaty sought by the World Blind Union would remove these copyright barriers and open up a new world of reading to blind people."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ip-watch-catherine-saez-december-18-2012-wipo-to-negotiate-treaty-for-the-blind-in-june

International treaty to make books accessible to the blind

praskrishna — 2012-12-21T11:36:11Z

It would make it legal to send accessible books across borders.

The article by Ramya Kannan was published in the Hindu on December 20, 2012. Rahul Cherian is quoted.

In a move that is likely to take more books closer to some 285 million people in the world, the Extraordinary General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has referred the Treaty for Visually Impaired Persons to a diplomatic conference in June of 2013.

The treaty would allow specialist organisations to make accessible copies of books in all signatory countries; make it legal to send accessible books across national borders and make more books available for the blind.

There are an estimated 285 million blind and partially-sighted people in the world, of which the largest percentage lives in India. Like everyone else, blind people need books for education, pleasure and inclusion in society, but unlike others, these books are not accessible to them.

Books have to be converted into ‘accessible formats’ — audio, Braille, or large print — for the visually impaired. However, the fact is that about only 1 to 7 per cent of all books published are available in these formats.

“In many countries, the copyright laws prevent making accessible copies of the books, or importing them from nations where it is available,” said Rahul Cherian Jacob, who heads the Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability Law and Policy. He helped in drafting the Treaty and is the legal adviser to the World Blind Union on the Treaty.

Some developed nations have huge budgets that would allow them to make books in accessible formats. For instance, the U.S. had about $400 million a year to spend on making such books, while countries like India have very little funds available for the purpose, he said. Even if these books were available in the U.S., they were not accessible in India, because of import restrictions.

Sam Taraporevala, Director of the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged and vice president and chairman policy formulation, Daisy Forum of India, said this could not have come at a better time for India. It was in last June that the amendment to the Copyright Act was passed, making a special exception to make accessible books.

G.R. Raghavender, Registrar, Copyrights, told The Hindu, “While the WIPO treaty looks at the blind and print-disabled, in June, Parliament introduced wider exceptions for physically disabled. Authorised entities will be allowed to produce accessible versions of books on a not-for-profit-basis without seeking for special permissions.”

However, even with this, owing to import restrictions, books already available in accessible formats in other countries could not be brought into India. They would have to be reprinted, Mr. Jacob noted.

"This is the real benefit of the treaty if it kicks in," Dr. Taraporevala said. Books could be sent across nations without restrictions, and this would mean a significant increase in the number of books available.

"However, what we do need to move towards a scenario where publishers will attempt to move towards equal opportunity publishing. The ideal scenario will be to make available every book that is published in accessible formats. Hopefully if all goes well, there will be something on the ground by the end of next year," he said.

The Cabinet should give the nod for India signing and ratifying the international treaty for it to come into force. However, given the overwhelming positive reception to the recent amendment to the Copyright Act, getting approval would not be an issue, rights activists said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-ramya-kannan-december-20-2012-international-treaty-to-make-books-accessible-to-the-blind

Access to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka

praskrishna — 2012-12-19T07:20:31Z

The Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with Metawing Technologies (P) Ltd. is organizing a Wikipedia workshop at NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka on December 21, 2012, from 9.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

Over 100 students are expected to participate in this workshop. The primary aim of the workshop is to educate them about Wikipedia in Indian languages and tell them how they can contribute to Wikipedia.

CIS is willing to bear the travelling expense for upto two wikipedians to and from Bangalore (or any other place in Karnataka that is close to Karkala).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/a2k-workshop-at-nmamit

Accessible Broadcasting in India

srividya — 2013-01-28T03:37:40Z

A report based on ITU's "Making Television Accessible Report" prepared by the Centre for Internet and Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-broadcasting-in-india.pdf

Marathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences

nitika — 2013-02-04T04:55:56Z

The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is taking up a number of activities and conducting workshops focusing on Indian languages across cities. A series of workshops in Marathi, Kannada and Bangla have been planned with Wikipedia sessions in each of these events.

The Marathi workshop was organised on December 8, 2012 at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). It was a three-hour workshop.

Following preparations were made before the session:

Yogesh Khandke and Kartik Nadar from Mumbai community visited the venue three days prior to check technical requirements.
Programme participants were suggested to select a subject of their choice and find sufficient resources to add information during the course of the event. This proved to be extremely helpful and an efficient way. Participants didn't spend any time looking for resources during the event; they were already ready with the content they wanted to add.
Programme participants were requested to create usernames before they came for the session.
A tailored presentation was made ready.
A ticket was raised to release the IP address of TISS computer labs. Despite the ticket being resolved the IP address got blocked after creation of seven accounts. We will be looking deeper into this problem to make sure that we do not face such issue again.
Multiple conference calls were organised between the conductors — Yogesh, Nikita and Nitika.

Details of the event

The morning session of this workshop focused on digital humanities and social sciences research, and exposed students to different kinds of resources. The afternoon session focused on Wikipedia literacy and Marathi-language computing. There were be about 25 participants (MA and PhD level) and 5 conductors - Yogesh, Nikita, Moksh, Kartik and Nitika.

Nikita gave a brief 40 minutes introduction about Wikipedia using a presentation followed by a hands on session which was led by Yogesh and supported by rest of the conductors. Many of the participants were comfortable with Marathi computing while some were struggling. There were a few participants who were editing in other languages including Hindi and Malayalam. Kartik & Moksh jointly led the session with educating participants about Wikimark ups, page view stats, article and user talk pages. Rest of the conductors pitched in with insightful examples, comments and answers. The participants raised some really interesting questions and were completely involved the workshop. Several participants showed interest to organise similar workshops at other institutes they are connected with.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/marathi-wiki-workshop-at-tiss

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T05:20:38Z

The Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, on December 3, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia Workshop organized in IIT, Kharagpur, West Bengal.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-iit-kharagpur

WIPO SCCR 25 Day 5, November 23, 2012 (Full Text)

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T00:55:55Z

Rough transcript of proceedings from WIPO SCCR on Day 5, November 23, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-25-day-5-november-23-2012.txt

WIPO SCCR 25 Day 4, November 22, 2012 (Full Text)

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T00:52:46Z

Rough transcript of proceedings from WIPO SCCR on Day 4, November 22, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr-25-day-4-november-22-2012.txt

Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — December 2012

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A Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT

New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups

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WIPO To Negotiate Treaty For The Blind In June; ‘Still Some Distance To Travel’

International treaty to make books accessible to the blind

Access to Knowledge Workshop @ NMAMIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka

Accessible Broadcasting in India

Marathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Details of the event

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur

WIPO SCCR 25 Day 5, November 23, 2012 (Full Text)

WIPO SCCR 25 Day 4, November 22, 2012 (Full Text)