Centre for Internet and Society

Kannada Wikipedia Orientation Workshop at IISc, Bengaluru

Gopalakrishna A — 2017-12-19T16:16:29Z

A Kannada Wikipedia orientation workshop was held at the Entrepreneurship Centre, SID, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on 26 November, 2017. The day long event was aimed at adding content to Kannada Wikimedia projects on topics such as ecology, environment, wildlife and sciences of Karnataka. The event was organised by Gubbi Labs in conjunction with CIS-A2K. Gubbi Labs is a research collective and social collective run by environmental scientists. The event was attended was attended by 8 participants of which one member was female.

The participants created six articles and expanded one article. The impact of this workshop was the fact that participants were made aware of the importance of open access data. It helped initiate another similar workshop in Mysuru. Upon sharing the idea for projects like Wiki Loves Butterfly Idea, a participant was interested in starting a project titled 'Wiki Loves Spiders'. We are hoping to take this project forward on Kannada Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru

WTO-MC11 in Buenos Aires: What is at Stake for India and its People

Admin — 2017-11-24T14:09:00Z

On November 21, 2017, Anubha Sinha attended a civil society workshop on "WTO-MC11 in Buenos Aires: What is at Stake for India and its People". The workshop was co-organised by the Third World Network, Focus on the Global South, South-Solidarity Initiative of Action Aid, and the Forum on FTAs at the Seminar Hall 1 & 2, New Block, India International Centre, 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi.

As the Eleventh Ministerial Conference (MC11) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Argentina draws near, it is important to create awareness among broad constituencies in India about the issues on the table, especially the challenges facing developing countries. We need to jointly learn about the linkages between these global policy decisions and their grass root level impacts. The issues at stake during the forthcoming Ministerial; agriculture domestic subsidies, permanent solution on public food stockholding (PDS), special safeguard mechanism, fisheries subsidies, and the new issues around e-commerce and investment facilitation are all of great interest to India and its people and will impact a range of constituencies including farmers, trade unions, fisherfolk, internet and IP activists, patient groups, women and indienous communities and so on. So it is imperative that all of us are involved and part of a wider consultation, so as to know the negotiating process, what is on the table and most importantly to amplify peoples' voices both at the national and global levels.

Programme Agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/wto-mc11-in-buenos-aires-what-is-at-stake-for-india-and-its-people

Training

Admin — 2017-11-23T15:44:37Z

The Rotary Club of Salem in association with the Centre for Internet and Society – Access to Knowledge, India and Salem Tamil Sangam is organising series of “Wikimedia training and orientation” programme for the youth on December 9 and 10 and also from 16 –17 at Rotary Hall in the city.

The news was published by the Hindu on November 20, 2017.

This training of trainers programme is aimed at increasing the digital content in Tamil and make them to be part of open knowledge movement of Wikimedia movement, R. Venkatachalapathy, president of Rotary Club of Salem said in a statement here on Sunday.

Interested candidates can register their names in group or individually at Rotary Club of Salem on or before November 25.

Interested candidates can register their names by visiting Wikipedia

https://ta.wikipedia.org or

https://en.wikipedia.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindu-november-20-2017-training

Helping Institutions Embrace Open Access

Admin — 2017-11-27T15:11:34Z

World over, a large number of universities and institutions are making way for open access repositories. Why have Indian researchers shied away from it?

The article by Manupriya was published in the Wire on November 17, 2017

On October 28, 2017, a group of panelists in the faculty hall at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), discussed the framework of policies that can help academic institutions embrace open access in letter, spirit and action. The discussion was a part of week-long activities organised by DST Centre for Policy Research (DST–CPR) at IISc to increase awareness and acceptability for open access publishing in India.

The panel included Jayant Modak, deputy director, IISc, Satyajit Mayor, director of National Centre for Biological Sciences and inStem, Padmini Ray Murray, vice-chair, Global Outlook: Digital Humanities, N.V. Sathyanarayana, chairman and managing director, Informatics India Ltd and Madan Muthu, visiting faculty at DST–CPR at IISc. The discussion was anchored and moderated by Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society.

Open access is a form of publishing that makes the fruits of research, such as journal papers and other forms of data accessible to anyone interested in it, without a cost. World over, a large number of universities and institutions are beginning to give up the library subscription model of publishing to make way for open access, owing to the latter’s lower cost and higher visibility.

In India too, funding agencies like DBT and DST have laid out guidelines that require researchers to submit their research output in open access repositories. Ironically though, most researchers have shied away from submitting their work in the repositories. Which raises the question, why?

In fact, this was one of the first questions that the panelists debated upon. Abraham initiated the discussion by asking the panelists – What are the weaknesses of DBT–DST policy on open access? Why have a large number of scientists not followed the guidelines laid by the policy? Is it because the policy document does not talk about any punitive measures for scientists in the event of not depositing their work in the institutional repositories (IRs)? And, how can the policy be improved?

Modak opened the argument by saying that we as a nation are good at making provisions but bad with implementation. He agreed that scientists are yet to warm up to the idea of open access but was disinclined on using punitive measures to force scientists into submitting their work in IRs. Mayor, in agreement with Modak, said that the policy document is advisory in nature and sort of lacks ‘teeth’. However, he too was against the use of punitive measures.

Murray, the third academician on the panel said that though the policy talks about staying away from publisher-based metrics like impact factor to assess a scientist’s work, it does not provide any information about what alternative metrics can be used to measure it. She suggested that the accessibility of a scientist’s work and how much effort she has put in to make it easily available to non-scientists could be used as a metrics for measurement. She also drew attention to the fact that the policy completely bypasses the requirements of independent scholars and those working in languages other than English. “Which institutional repository should they deposit their work in?”

Sathyanarayana, the fourth panelist and a strong advocate of open access said, the policy document “lacks an aggressive strategy” to drive a disruptive and “fundamentally voluntary model” of adopting open access. He asked the other panelists and the audience, “why have repositories like ResearchGate become so successful and attractive for researchers? Why can’t open access IRs be modelled along the lines of such repositories? His argument was that the IRs can be fashioned in a way to make them a ‘convenient step in the process of research’”. One suggestion that he offered was that IRs can be structured as a paper submission platform. So that anybody who is interested in publishing their work first puts it up in the IR and only after that the process of going to a journal begins.

Muthu, the fourth panelist and a long-time crusader for open access in India said that scientists in India have stayed away from the open access publishing because they don’t fully realise that in traditional models of publishing, you surrender all copyrights of your work to the publisher. He added that more scientists can be encouraged to adopt the open access model of publishing by making IRs institute-managed, easier to use and as a mandatory step in the process of publishing.

Mayor added to this argument by saying that the idea of submitting (unpublished) work in an IR is quite similar to the concept of pre-print archives which are fast becoming a powerful way of sharing work. Almost all top journals accept work that has been published in a pre-print archive. In fact, in the physical sciences, people have been using pre-print archives for a long time and now slowly, even the biology community is warming up to it.

Murray emphasised on the need to talk to students about open access and making them aware of the ways to design their metadata so that it is amenable to open access repositories.

As the discussion inched closer to its final moments, it veered off towards the costs of open access publishing. Modak said that in the last year alone, the amount of money IISc has spent for publishing papers has doubled. If all researchers start opting for open access (OA) journals/hybrid-OA journals that charge the authors nearly double of what traditional journals do, then publishing papers will become unsustainable.

To this, Sathyanarayana said, it may appear that the cost of publishing in OA journals is high, but on a macro-level, when you consider the cost of publishing and accessing all the papers published in a year, then the OA model costs much lesser. He added that scientific publishing is the only business in the world where authors (creators of proprietary material) give away all their rights to publishers.”

Backing up the points made by Sathyanarayana, Murray said that in traditional models of publishing the publishers make close to 400% profits. We need to think about, “how much labour we as academics put in for publishers’ profits?”

It is authors’ inertia that is stopping open access from becoming the obvious model of publishing, said, Muthu.

In conclusion, Abraham summed up the arguments and acknowledged that there are many dimensions to open access and an institutional policy on OA cannot be framed in a vacuum. Common people need to participate in the debate to shape the direction the policy takes.

Apart from the panel discussion a poster competition and a quiz competition were organised as part of the OA-week activities. DST–CPR was joined by the student’s council at IISc, Centre for Contemporary Studies, JRD Tata Library and IndiaBioscience in organising the activities.

This article was originally published on IndiaBioscience. Read the original here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/manupriya-wire-november-17-2017-helping-institutions-embrace-open-access

35th SCCR: CIS' Question to Dr. Rostama on her Study on the Impact of the Digital Environment on Copyright Legislation

sinha — 2017-11-19T07:50:49Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017, posed this question on the agenda 'Other Matters' on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 17 November, 2017.

Thank you for the presentation, Dr. Rostamma.

My question relates to provisions allowing reverse engineering of computer programmes. You mentioned that 81% of member states (with the scope of your study) have exceptions for compilation and interoperability of computer programmes.

Can you comment, qualitatively, on how open/ strict you have found the limitations and exceptions to be in your study? Is there a member state that stands out in its treatment of limitations and exceptions for computer programmers, and/or users of such digital objects?

Answer: I would not like to make any qualitative comments.

Read Dr. Rostamma's study here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/35th-sccr-cis-question-to-dr-rostama-on-her-study-on-the-impact-of-the-digital-environment-on-copyright-legislation

Marathi Wikipedia workshop for Sandarbh Science magazine writers

manasarao — 2017-12-19T15:53:30Z

A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was recently conducted for the writers at Sandarbh Science magazine.

On 18 November, a introductory Wikimedia workshop was conducted for the writers at Sandarbh Science magazine.

Sandarbh Society is a registered society and public trust established with the main objective of publication on science and education. They also conduct lectures, demonstrations, workshops and other such activities in addition to networking of school teachers interested in bringing in innovative approaches in education.

The workshop was aimed at introducing Wikimedia projects and creating/editing Wikipedia articles to the writers. Participants were completely unaware about Marathi Wikipedia and editing. They were trained in basic editing skills and search for the concerned articles, categorisation and translation from other language wikipedias. Participants worked on articles and made edits. Images were also added to Commons and into articles. 59 articles were edited. 11 participants took part in the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-workshop-for-sandarbh-science-magazine-writers

35th SCCR: CIS Statement on GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment

sinha — 2017-11-17T10:03:21Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017, made this statement on the agenda 'Other Matters' on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 17 November, 2017.

We would like to reiterate the importance of GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment.

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit organisation in India that undertakes research on internet and digital technologies from an academic and policy perspective.

In an environment of monopolies controlling the distribution of digital goods and services, which connect users and creators, such a comprehensive study assumes significant importance, especially for creators in the global south.

We are especially concerned with the methods by which platform intermediaries are enforcing their private IP rules on creators worldwide, and if there are fair systems in place to address takedown, and the subsequent restoration of works unfairly taken down from their platforms. It must be noted that there is a serious lack of transparency as far as the conduct of such intermediaries go, and often actions are taken without appropriate justification/explanation.

It is equally important that we continue to build on limitations and exceptions for libraries, museums, archives, educational institutions, researchers, and users’ in the digital environment.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/35th-sccr-cis-statement-on-grulac-proposal-for-analysis-of-copyright-in-the-digital-environment

35th SCCR: CIS Statement on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

sinha — 2017-11-15T13:35:02Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 35th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 13 November, 2017 to 18 November, 2017, made this statement on the agenda for Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives on behalf of CIS on Day 3, 15 November, 2017.

The Centre for Internet and Society, in agreement among others, believes that an international binding instrument to govern exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives is critical.

In several countries, their set of limitations and exceptions do not serve all intended beneficiaries in a comparably equal manner. For example, for the work of archives in India, there is very little that allows such institutions to do in terms of making copies for preservation and noncommercial dissemination. India, like many other countries here has a rich cultural heritage – and doing any activities with old audiovisual material involves identifying rightholders and clearing rights connected to orphan works and traditional cultural expressions as well. Imagine the onerous task of an archive of clearing all these rights in connection with appropriate agencies, and of course clearing additional permissions from authors and performers. In our research, we discovered that most archives in India miserably fail on this front, causing valuable material being locked in storage rooms for decades.

Needless to say, accessibility to this national wealth of knowledge in archives also supports the mission of libraries, museums and educational institutions and researchers.

So Mr. Chair, we strongly believe that an update to the international copyright system via a binding instrument would serve many countries well. It would empower all countries to fill in such deficiencies in relation to libraries, archives, educational and research institutions, museums and persons with disabilities.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/35th-sccr-cis-statement-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-libraries-and-archives

Gender Equality in the Workplace

Admin — 2017-11-26T03:12:49Z

The workshop was conducted by Samvada at the Centre for Internet & Society's office in Bengaluru on November 15, 2017.

Why is it important for a workshop on sexual harassment to address the larger question of gender equality in the workplace? And how does an understanding of equality help prevent and address sexual harassment?

At this moment in time, we are witnessing an unprecedented “outing” of incidents of sexual harassment and the men who are responsible for them. The worlds of filmmaking and academia are reverberating with discussions on the nature of the workplace and what women have had to suffer in silence because of the ways in which power is distributed between genders.

Now more than ever it’s important for us to understand what sexual harassment is, the structures that support it, the experiences that surround it, and ways of addressing it within our workplaces, so that we don’t lose ourselves in the following: a) a flattened and ahistorical idea of how power functions within our daily work; b) polarisations between men and women that denies all dialogue and self-reflection; and c) purely legalistic ideas on what harassment is and how to deal with it. The 1-day workshop will do the following:

Encourage the staff of CIS to understand how power functions in relationships within the organisation
Offer historical, social and legal understandings of sexual harassment at the workplace
Set up participatory discussion on the experiences of both men and women within the workplace
Help carve out a way forward in both prevention and redressal of SH

The sessions will take the form of participatory discussions and activities, that will draw on the experiences, opinions and histories of the CIS staff.

Anita Ratnam is the Founder and Executive Director of Samvada (Bangalore), an organisation that has been working with youth on issues of social justice and sustainability since 1990. The organisation runs 6 Youth Resource Centres/Yuva Samvada Kendras in different parts of Karnataka, and also established Baduku Community College in Bangalore in 2007, as an effort to build alternative livelihoods for youth. She is also Co-founder and Partner at Anekataa, an organisation that works on gender diversity at the corporate workplace. In the last 30 years she has written and taught on a range of issues related to youth rights, gender justice, crafts and traditional occupations, communalism and pluralism, and sustainable development. Her publications include “Traditional occupations in a modern world: Career Guidance, Livelihood Planning, and Crafts in the Context of Globalization”, in Handbook of Career Development: International Perpsectives (eds. Gideon Arulmani, Anuradha J Bakshi, Frederick TL Leong and AG Watts) and a host of media publications on issues ranging from garment industries, caste and development, the ban on night shift work for women, sex education, racism and rape, and gender and religion. She has also contributed to and helped shape the emergence of many organisations that work on human rights-related issues in Karnataka and elsewhere in India.

Nitya Vasudevan is currently working at Baduku Community College (Samvada) as Convener of Centre for Wellness and Justice. She also co-coordinates the project on “Strengthening Gender and Sexuality Education” (AJWS) within Samvada, and conducts workshops with students on gender, marriage, relationships and sexuality. Her publications include “The State of Desire and other flights of fantasy: Sexuality, Pornography, Technology”, in Law Like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law (co-authored with Namita Aavriti, eds. Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta), “’Public Women’ and the ‘Obscene’ Body: An Exploration of Abolition Debates in India”, in The Sexual History of the Global South: Sexual Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America (eds Saskia Wieringa and Horacio Sivori), “Between Ooru, Area and Pettai: The Terms of the Local in Tamil Cinema of the 21^st Century”, in the journal Positions (Rice University, upcoming issue); and a set of columns for TimeOut Bengaluru. She is also a co-organiser of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival along with a team of eight others who work on the festival simply out of a mad love for good cinema, performance and art.

Together, both have coordinate and conducted (along with other Samvada staff) a series of workshops at all the offices of Greenpeace India International, on “Gender Sensitivity and Diversity at the Workplace” (2016).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/gender-equality-in-the-workplace

India – the last telecom licensing frontier

Admin — 2018-01-02T15:36:47Z

Rohini Lakshané was quoted in the article.

The Pervasive Technologies project paper "Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey" [PDF] was cited in the article along with Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India.

Link to the article: https://the-ken.com/india-last-telecom-licensing-frontier/

Note: The Ken website is paywalled but this article is free to read by registering for a basic access account.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/india-2013-the-last-telecom-licensing-frontier

CIS-A2K signs MoU with Telangana Government

manasarao — 2017-11-08T10:08:20Z

The Centre for Internet and Society recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telangana Government’s IT, Electronics & Communications Department with an aim to catalyse the development of the Wikimedia movement in Telangana and improve the state of free-licensed digital content in Telugu and Urdu. The Principal Secretary for IT Department Mr. Jayesh Ranjan and renowned Telugu Wikimedian and Theatre Scholar Pranay Raj were present for the occasion. Mr. Konatham Dileep, Director (Digital Media), IT Department and CIS-A2K Telugu Community Advocate Pavan Santhosh were signatories to the memorandum.

This MoU is the result of successive meetings between the Digital Media wing and Telugu Wikipedians, CIS-A2K members and the Wikimedia Foundation. These discussions enabled all stakeholders to come up with a comprehensive plan to develop the free knowledge movement in Telugu and Urdu.

Katta Srinivas, a historian, teach and long time Telugu Wikipedian, says, “As one of the participants in earlier discussions with the government, I am happy to see progress in this respect. Especially, [the planned] photo archives of museums, photos of historical places and other events can be free-licensed as part of these initiatives. This decision can lead other government organizations to take up similar initiatives in India."

Apart from these, some of the planned activities include releasing encyclopedic photos and media content from government archives, increasing awareness about free licenses and Wikipedia among government officials, etc.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-signs-mou-with-telangana-government

Indian Women Bureaucrats: Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Admin — 2017-11-08T02:03:45Z

We are all aware of the large reach and popularity of Wikipedia. However, what most people don’t know is that, according to a study conducted in 2011, globally only 9% of the editors on Wikipedia were women. And the percentage for India is even lower, just 3%.

This was published by Feminism in India on November 1, 2017.

Wikipedia recognises the systemic gender bias that is created because of factors such as these and thus enables its diverse range of users to edit and create Wikipedia pages, with reliable and authentic sources.

Feminism in India conducts monthly Wikipedia edit-a-thons with different organisations exploring various facets of gender in India, thus increasing content on women and marginalized communities on Wikipedia as well as training women to create and edit Wikipedia pages and hence increasing the number of women editors.

For October, we collaborated with The Centre for Internet and Society and co-hosted one on Indian Women Bureaucrats at CIS’s Delhi office. The edit-a-thon was aimed at creating/editing Wikipedia pages of Indian women bureaucrats who lack representation on the platform currently.

The CIS team prepared a list of women bureaucrats a week before the edit-a-thon, while most of the names did not have a page on Wikipedia, some had pages with very basic and limited information (stub pages). We used online resources for references.

We were a group of 4 participants in total. The event began with a discussion on Wikipedia and its gender gap and on the whys and hows of Wikipedia editing for new-comers.

After that, each participant chose one or more Indian woman bureaucrat absent from Wikipedia, and started digging through the internet looking for interviews, news reports and e-books to write comprehensive Wikipedia articles on them.

By the end of the day, the participants edited a total of 8 Wikipedia pages in English.

Anna Rajam George: Japleen
K. Prithika Yashini: Japleen
Ira Singhal: Tanya Kapoor
Supriya Sahu: Tanya Kapoor
Isha Basant Joshi: Tanisha Kapoor
Sivakami P: Tanisha Kapoor
Kanchan Choudhary Bhattacharya: Shinjinee
Shakuntala Gamlin: Shinjinee

Participants’ testimonies on their first experience of editing on Wikipedia:

Shinjinee: Attending the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was a great learning experience. I learned how to create and edit a Wikipedia page, so now I will be able to contribute towards bridging the gender gap that is there in the pages dedicated to important personalities.

Tanya: The Editathon was interesting. I did not know how to edit Wikipedia pages. It was for the first time that I was attending an Editathon organised by Feminism in India.
I learned new things about Wikipedia i.e. how to use citations, and insert paragraphs and links, etc. Overall, my experience was amazing. And will surely attend such editathons in future.

Tanisha: It was the first time that I participated in a Wikipedia editathon event. I am very grateful that I got this opportunity. I never knew that anybody can edit a Wikipedia page. Also, I learnt a lot of new things. I got to know how to create Wikipedia pages, what things one should keep in mind while editing a page. The coordinator was also very helpful. It was fun working with the members of FII. Will surely attend such events in future. It was a wonderful experience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/feminism-in-india-fii-team-november-1-2017-indian-women-bureaucrats-wikipedia-edit-a-thon

October 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-01-10T00:53:03Z

October 2017 Newsletter

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS submitted its comments on mobile accessibility guidelines to the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India. Between 1 to 16 September, an online discussion took place on the creation of social media guidelines and strategy for Telugu Wikimedia handles online. Manasa Rao captured the developments in a blog post. Padma Venkataraman in a blog entry chronologically mapped CIS’ efforts at enhancing financial transparency and accountability at ICANN, while providing an outline of what remains to be done. Shyam Ponappa's article on NPAs and structural issues was published in the Business Standard on October 5, 2017.

Highlights

CIS submitted its comments on mobile accessibility guidelines to the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India.
Between 1 to 16 September, an online discussion took place on the creation of social media guidelines and strategy for Telugu Wikimedia handles online. Manasa Rao captured the developments in a blog post.
Padma Venkataraman in a blog entry chronologically mapped CIS’ efforts at enhancing financial transparency and accountability at ICANN, while providing an outline of what remains to be done.
Shyam Ponappa's article on NPAs and structural issues was published in the Business Standard on October 5, 2017.

CIS in the News:

Attempted data breach of UIDAI, RBI, ISRO and Flipkart is worrisome (DailyO, October 4, 2017).
Sex, drugs and the dark web (Hindu; October 7, 2017).
Ahead of data protection law roll out, experts caution that it shouldn't limit collection and use of data (First Post; October 12, 2017).
#NAMAprivacy: The economics and business models of IoT and other issues (Medianama; October 18, 2017).
#NAMAprivacy: Data standards for IoT and home automation systems (Medianama; October 18, 2017).
Majority of top politicians' Twitter followers fake: audit (Furquan Moharkan; Deccan Herald; October 24, 2017).
Awards for those working on employment opportunities for disabled (Eastern Mirror; October 24, 2017).
Nibbling away into your bank account, salami attackers cart away a fortune (New Indian Express; October 25, 2017).
Nirmita Narasimhan wins the 18th NCPEDP-Mindtree Helen Keller Award 2017! (National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People; October 31, 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

Blog Entries

Odia Wikisource Turns 3 (Manasa Rao; October 22, 2017).
Wikimedia Workshop at Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at MGM Trust's College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aurangabad (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Orientation Program at Kannada University, Hampi (A. Gopalakrishna; October 24, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Solapur University (Subodh Kulkarni; October 24, 2017).
Discussion on Creation of Social Media Guidelines & Strategy for Telugu Wikimedia (Manasa Rao; October 24, 2017).

►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.

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Internet Governance
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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.

►Freedom of Expression

ICANN’s Problems with Accountability and the .WEB Controversy (Padma Venkataraman; October 24, 2017).
Why Presumption of Renewal is Unsuitable for the Current Registry Market Structure (Padma Venkataraman; October 29, 2017).
CIS’ Efforts Towards Greater Financial Disclosure by ICANN (Padma Venkataraman; October 29, 2017).

►Cyber Security

Participation in Event

CyFy 2017 (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; New Delhi; October 2 - 4, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

►Privacy

Blog Entry

GDPR and India: A Comparative Analysis (Aditi Chaturvedi; October 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

Securing The Digital Payments Ecosystem (Organized by NITI Aayog; October 9, 2017).

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Revisiting Per Se vs Rule of Reason in Light of the Intel Conditional Rebate Case (Shruthi Anand; October 4, 2017).

Event Organized

Emerging Issues in the Internet of Things (CIS, Bengaluru; October 23, 2017). Andrew Rens gave a talk.

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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:

Article

NPAs & Structural Issues (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; October 4, 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:

Articles

Digital Native: There is no spoon, There is no privacy (Nishant Shah; October 9, 2017).
Digital Native: Finger on the buzzer (Nishant Shah; October 22, 2017).

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About CIS
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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.

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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/october-2017-newsletter

Discussion on Creation of Social Media Guidelines & Strategy for Telugu Wikimedia

manasarao — 2017-10-24T14:42:24Z

Between 1 to 16 September, an online discussion took place on the creation of social media guidelines and strategy for Telugu Wikimedia handles online.

An online discussion of guidelines and policies for the various Telugu Wikimedia social media handles was conducted. User:Pavan santhosh.s suggested a set of strategies and guidelines that can be taken into consideration for an official Social Media Policy of Telugu Wikimedia Projects. These suggestions included defining objectives, guidelines (with do's and don'ts) and strategies for the Social Media Policy. User:Ravichandra supported the idea and suggested another objective(showcasing best quality works of Wikipedia). User:Viswanadh added some strategies (such as writing a series of posts about technical aspects that help Wikipedians). User:Pranayraj1985 suggested some don'ts in handling Wikipedia pages as well as handles while User:Rajasekhar1961 expanded the strategy to other sister projects(Telugu Wikisource and Wiktionary). Finally, User:Chaduvari suggested not to name any page as official to avoid possible conflicts. User:Swaralasika announced consensus and User:Pavan santhosh.s created a page based on the discussion in order for the community to reflect.

User:Pranayraj1985 said, "there are pages & groups for Telugu Wikipedia in Facebook for years. We are using them as major social media promotion channels. I(Pranay) am publishing content related to Telugu Wikipedia in those channels. Some of the community members also been admins of page and group. But once or twice, in Facebook page and group, unrelated posts were published and I informed this to Wikimedians active on Facebook and removed those posts. I am glad that this discussion happened and community came up with guidelines and strategy now. This is very much needed.

The guideline page can be found here.

Although the event was successful in creating guidelines, none of the input included women's voices as there were no female participants. Here's hoping there is a diversity of voices in future discussions.

With input from Pavan Santhosh S., Telugu Community Advocate, CIS-A2K.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discussion-on-creation-of-social-media-guidelines-strategy-for-telugu-wikimedia

Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Solapur University

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-10-24T14:09:24Z

15 September

A Marathi Wikipedia Workshop was held at the Department of Mass Communications at Solapur University. The workshop aimed to introduce Wikimedia and its sister projects to the students. The workshop comprised 25 participants with 10 female attendees.

Sharing their thoughts after the event, the participants were enthuse. Says Priyanka Lagshetti, "I never imagined that I can contribute to Wikipedia. I worked on various media related articles." Another participant, Ambadas Bhasake added, "This workshop showed us a innovative way to use internet productively and constructively"

While 19 new editors joined Wikipedia, participants worked on 60 articles and made around 90 edits. 15 images were added to Commons and into articles.

The meta page of the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-wikipedia-workshop-at-solapur-university