Centre for Internet and Society

25th Session of the WIPO SCP: Statement on Future work

rohini — 2016-12-16T23:01:40Z

Rohini Lakshané, attending the 25th session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) held in Geneva from December 12, 2016 to December 15, 2016, made this statement on Agenda Item #12, "Future Work".

Thank you, madam Chair.

On behalf of my organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society, India, I urge future SCPs to include the topics of standards as well as patents in the hardware and software domains. In many developed countries, the mobile phone is the only means of access to the Internet, and in turn, of access to knowledge and information. In a study published this year by CIS, we found that all mobile phone patents in India are owned by non-Indian entities. Like in the case of pharmaceuticals, we believe that a rise in prices should not drive affordable hardware out of the reach of the people. To that effect, I would like to reiterate that the SCP consider including this topic in future meetings.

Thank you, madam Chair.

See the agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/25th-session-of-the-wipo-scp-statement-on-future-work

25th Session of the WIPO SCP: Statement on Assessment of Inventive Step

rohini — 2016-12-16T22:27:03Z

Statement emailed by Rohini Lakshané on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society to the Secretariat for the WIPO Standing Committee for the Law of Patents, Twenty Fifth Session, with reference to agenda item 7, "Sharing session on examples and cases relating to assessment of inventive step including, but not limited to, the topics suggested in document SCP/24/3, paragraph 8.

Based on submissions by various stakeholders, the Indian Patent Office released a new set of guidelines for patent examiners to examine Computer Related Inventions or CRIs, in February 2016. The guidelines, inter alia, introduced a new three-step test, which The Centre for Internet and Society, India, had proposed to the IPO in its submissions. The test determines the applicability of section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, which excludes as inventions "a mathematical or business method or a computer program per se or algorithms".

The three-step test places a restriction on the patenting of software. An invention which merely uses or implements a computer programme is not granted patent on the basis of the inventiveness of the computer programme per se. Only if the contribution of the claim lies in both the computer programme as well as hardware, it would be considered for other steps of patentability. All in all, the new guidelines are in compliance with the legislative requirement for patentability of software.

Innovation in electronic hardware as well as in software is cumulative and often involves building upon previous inventions. Various small and medium enterprises in their submissions had requested a strict standard for patentability of software inventions. We hope that the implementation of these guidelines would enable start-ups and small and medium enterprises to innovate without the fear of patent infringement litigation.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/twenty-fifth-session-of-wipo-scp-statement-on-assessment-of-inventive-step

Writing skills improve with Wikipedia editing

praskrishna — 2016-12-15T02:21:23Z

Pavan Santhosh said that contributing to Wikipedia and working in Wikimedia community improves our leadership qualities and writing skills. In an awareness session conducted about "You can edit Wikipedia" in JKC college, Guntur, Santhosh explained how to create and improve articles about Wikipedia in this program. Principal I.Nageswara Rao presided over this meeting.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eenadu-december-3-2016-writing-skills-improve-with-wikipedia-editing

A Shortcut to Freedom

tito — 2017-06-28T09:58:47Z

In our everyday life we need access to knowledge and information, we need books (and magazines, newspapers), movies (and documentaries, animations), music for education and entertainment purposes. Now, a delighting fact is almost everything we need, from a 1965 book to the latest Bollywood movie’s MP3 song, is available on the web. You knock the door, and it opens. Why should we care for free knowledge then? We have a got “a shortcut to freedom”.

Scenario 1
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalaithaa died on 5 December 2016. Kamlesh, a college student from Chennai wants to post a few photos of the leader on his Facebook wall and page paying his tribute to her. He quickly searches on Google, finds a few photos, and posts on the wall.

Scenario 2
Nilima, a young girl from Mumbai, wants to use a latest Bollywood movie song as her mobile ringtone. She too searches on Google, and quickly finds the movie song with many options such as 64 kbps, 128 kbps, remix, reprise and a few issues such as misleading download buttons, pop-up advertisement windows etc. She selects one and puts it as her mobile ringtone.

Scenario 2a
A few days later, Madhuri, a friend of Nilima finds her mobile ringtone. Madhuri requests Nilima to send a copy of the music piece, and Nilima sends it over her mobile bluetooth.

Scenario 3
Lokesh Sanyal, a school teacher from Darjeeling, West Bengal, needs a book for his studies. He first goes to his local library and also asks his friends, but fails to get a copy of the book. Now, before buying a copy of the book, he thinks to check the world wide web to see if a free PDF copy the book is available, and hurrah!, he gets the book from Torrents or some other site.

We have almost everything we require. . .
If we make a list of our requirements of content such as movies, music, books, magazines, games, softwares, we’ll find almost everything is available on the web. You just need spend some time, (be careful about malicious web pages and downloads) and you will get what you want. It might be the movie released just a week ago, or a book published in 1990. It might a photograph of your favorite actress, or music piece of Amzad Ali Khan. Whatever we want, we get.

. . . but
Let’s ponder upon these questions:

Are you using a Windows operating system in your laptop or computer? Is the copy of the Windows OS original (if you are unsure about it then did you buy a copy of the OS with registration key or installed from a CD or pendrive given by someone freely)?
How many (hundred) times you have downloaded images, videos, music, games from the web without checking or knowing its license details?
Do you know that everytime you are sharing some music or video over your mobile bluetooth, there is a possibility that you are violating some copyright and which might be punishable?

The World Wide Web is not free. You get content, but with those come a large number of restrictions. Knowingly or unknowingly we violate copyright everyday. So what should we do?

Of course we have a shortcut — illegal downloading, piracy, as we know that no one really cares. We can ignore everything and carry on.
Or, there is a second option, join the free and open knowledge movement and try to get more and more content under the free licenses.

One option is easy, needs no hard work, on the other hand the second option is difficult to follow, needs a lot of hard work, although that should be the process. It’s completely upto you that which option would you prefer.

Image credit

Source: WIkimedia Commons, Author: W.carter, License: CC SA 4.0 International

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-shortcut-to-freedom

The Digital Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Questions Raised by the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in India

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — 2016-12-09T15:50:36Z

This is an edited version of part three of a study that considers the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) through aspects of intellectual property in India, namely, mobile patents, free and open source software, and India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. Through these, it demonstrates the potential of the internet in realising ESCRs.

The original report published by GISWatch can be read here. Aditya Singh Chawla, Parvathy Nair, Raji Gururaj and Balaji Subramaniam provided research assistance for this paper during their internships with the Centre for Internet and Society. Click to download the PDF

Introduction

The first problem one encounters in studying traditional knowledge (TK) is the extent and meaning of the term itself. No globally accepted definition of TK exists,^[1] and therefore no clear delineation of its scope. The definition adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is that TK is “knowledge, know-how, skills and practices that are developed, sustained and passed on from generation to generation within a community, often forming part of its cultural or spiritual identity.”⁴ While TK embraces traditional cultural expressions within its ambit, and includes distinctive signs and symbols associated with traditional knowledge,^[2] the scope of this report does not extend to traditional cultural expressions as they necessarily would fall under the purview of copyright law.

Before we frame TK in terms of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs), let us understand the phenomenom of biopiracy in a bit more detail using two examples, one connected to the right to food, and the other connected to health. Biopiracy is the use of intellectual property (IP) systems to legitimise control over biological products and processes that were previously used for centuries in non- industrialised cultures.^[3] The case of neem-related patents, through which bio-prospectors attempted to appropriate the royalty arising from a plant whose medicinal value was already in the public domain, is well documented.^[4] Another case worth noting is that of the “Enola bean”, in which Larry Proctor, a United States (US) citizen, purchased a package of Mexican beans of various colours, separated out the yellow ones, and spent three years selectively breeding the plants. He then named his line “Enola” and obtained patent protection for the bean, its plant, its pollen, and the method of producing it.^[5]^[6]

This case is far more worrying than the neem case for two reasons.^[7] First, it was a case that had an immediate and tangible impact on the producers of the commodity in that yellow Mexican beans were exported into the United States before the patent was granted, and the assertion of the patent led to significant reductions in bean exports, representing a quantifiable economic loss for bean farmers.^[8] Second, the patent was allowed to stand for almost a decade, amounting to half the life of a legitimate patent.^[9] This represents an incredibly unjust outcome – an invention (“specifically selected yellow beans”) arising from traditional knowledge in the public domain (since Mexican farmers had been cultivating and exporting these beans) being monopolised by a private entity illegally for almost a decade.

The differences between TK and other forms of IP are the following:

With other forms of IP, property rights are afforded to the innovator or creator, whereas communities own TK.
Other forms of IP are designed as incentive mechanisms for the creation of new property; however, there is no such incentive to create new property with TK.
IP is also time-bound, whereas TK is held in perpetuity from generation to generation.
The invention under IP must also satisfy the requirement for novelty and industrial application, whereas TK does not have these requirements.

Although patent law is not tailored to protect TK, it has been used to prevent misappropriation of TK.

The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

At the turn of the millennium, an expert group found that roughly 2,000 patents linked to India’s TK in medicine were being granted annually around the world.^[10] This expert group proposed the establishment of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL)¹³in order to reduce biopiracy. The TKDL was envisaged as “a home-grown effort to ensure patent offices around the world do not grant patents for applications founded on India’s wealth of TK that has existed for millennia.”¹⁴ In 2001 India launched the initiative, which digitised its wide repository of TK, with the hope of enabling the protection of this knowledge and preventing its misuse.

The TKDL is a digital knowledge repository of Indian traditional knowledge about medicinal plants and formulations, and practices used in Indian systems of medicine. Its knowledge base is primarily derived from Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga. These areas are being documented by collating the information on TK from literature existing in local languages such as Sanskrit, Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Tamil in digitised format. These have been made available in five international languages: English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese. While it is clear that the first three systems of medicine (i.e. Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha) are systems that have a corresponding system of traditional medicines, the framing of Yoga as a system of medicine is unclear as there is no medicine administered to the patient. Increasingly, however, medical procedures are being patented, and the Indian government in August 2015 shortlisted 1,500 yoga asanas to be included in the TKDL to prevent foreign parties from patenting them.^[11] This was in response to several yoga-related patents being applied for^[12] and granted^[13] around the world, notably in the United States.

The TKDL’s appeal lies in the manner in which it approaches attempts to patent TK (the “state of the art”) – it serves to pre-empt the granting of a patent, rather than to contest a patent’s validity after it has been granted. This, it is claimed, reduces the time taken to contest claims from a matter of years to a few weeks.^[14]

Defining the right

The protection of TK can be primarily placed within Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). In order to understand the relationship between TK and Article 15, we must first appreciate that TK is also scientific knowledge. There are two ways in which the right of the TK community can be mapped onto Article 15. First, the Article recognises “the right to take part in cultural life”, and second, “to enjoy the benefits from scientific progress and its applications”. This ensures that communities have the right to continue to operationalise and use TK. Further, Article 15 includes the right “to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production”. However, while this is a universal right, in practice it will only happen when national law recognises the property rights of the community, facilitates protection of these rights, takes legal action against infringements, and provides mechanisms for the collection and distribution of royalties. What might not strike the reader as obvious is that the benefits of protecting the moral and material interests in the world of TK accrue to the community, while in other forms of IP the rights holder is either an individual or corporation.

Article 11 of the ICESCR is also relevant to TK. It recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. Article 11 (2) (a) mandates that states parties to the Covenant take measures to “improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources.”^[15] TK is connected to food in multiple ways, such as ecosystem and landscape management, water management, soil conservation, biological control of pests and diseases, ecological agriculture and livestock practices, and plant and animal breeding – and most importantly, with regard to the latter, breeding and preserving varieties of plant and animal species. Suman Sahai, founder of the Gene Campaign,^[16] helps us understand the connection between food security and traditional knowledge. She argues that farmers are a community of women and men who have not only created several thousand breeds of food and cash crops, but also “identified valuable genes and traits in these crops and maintained them over generations through a highly sophisticated system of crossing and selection.”^[17]

There exist a host of international and national norms, both of a general and a specific nature, enunciating the right of indigenous communities to their traditional knowledge. One specific example is the World Health Organization’s approach to Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM). In this, it urges states to “prevent the misappropriation of T&CM by implementing the relevant international instruments in line with the WHO global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property, adopting or amending national intellectual property legislation, and enacting other defensive protection strategies.”^[18]

India has signed the Convention on Biological

Diversity (CBD), a treaty with 194 parties in total.^[19] The CBD provides for the respect, preservation and maintenance of “knowledge, innovation and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity”, and also for encouraging the wider application of such practices while ensuring that the benefits arising from such utilisation are shared equit ably with the communities in question.^[20] Having signed this convention, India has the duty to protect this knowledge without appropriating it, and the TKDL is a means to protect this right.

Such provisions have been included in India’s Biological Diversity Act,^[21] which was enacted in pursuance of India’s duties under the CBD. Restrictions on the granting of patents for inventions arising from research on biological resources,²⁶ the transfer of biological resources or knowledge,^[22] and the enforcement of equitable benefit sharing^[23] aim to serve as effective legal bars to biopiracy and unauthorised use of traditional knowledge.

Successes of the TKDL

Since the inception of the TKDL, in just under two years, and in Europe alone, India has succeeded in using this resource to bring about the cancellation or withdrawal of 36 applications to patents traditionally known as medicinal formulations.

Between 2001 and 2015, out of a total of 189 pharmaceutical applications which include medicines, therapeutics, etc., 21 were granted while 17 were rejected. An additional 30 were deemed withdrawn and another 31 were abandoned. At the time of writing, 90 have their examination still in progress. Out of the 10 applications under cosmetics, seven are under progress while one each has been accepted, rejected and deemed to be withdrawn. There was only one application under agriculture which was rejected. The domain of food had three applications out of which one was rejected, one deemed to be withdrawn and the last one in progress.^[24]

India and the US had the maximum number of applications at 75 and 43 respectively. Japan and Korea were third and fourth at 16 and 11 respectively. Most of these applications were in progress, with 12 applications from India being rejected and 17 being abandoned. Only five had been granted to India while three were deemed to be withdrawn; 38 of India’s applications and 12 of those from the US are pending. Taiwan and Jordan’s only applications were granted while Spain’s only application was rejected.^[25]

But do digital databases work as a form of IP protection?

While proponents of the database have been vocal in their vision for its application, it has received criticism on several grounds.

First of all, there is a fair amount of disagreement regarding the best possible means through which TK can be protected.^[26] Indeed, existing literature already features catalogues of international law (both “hard” and “soft”), regional norms and domestic legislation that accord protection to TK within the framework of culture.^[27] While some believe that data aggregation and record creation is the best means to tackle biopiracy, others propose different approaches,^[28] such as negotiating access agreements between indigenous communities and bio-prospectors.^[29]

Secondly, the TKDL has also attracted criticism because of its high level of confidentiality. In response to a right to information application, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) clarified that the TKDL can only be accessed by foreign patent offices.^[30] It is not made available to the Indian Patent Office or to CSIR scientists. As per the same response, the decision to make the TKDL confidential was taken during a cabinet meeting in 2006, but there exists no legal instrument that mandates such confidentiality. TK databases in other countries do not impose access restrictions. The Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal, for example, explicitly states the motivation behind making itself publicly available:

The database is presented on-line through the Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal (KTKP). The reasons for making the database publicly accessible through the KTKP are as follows:

To lay the foundation for international protection of Korean traditional knowledge, thereby preventing unauthorized use of patents inside and outside the country.
To provide an abundance of information on traditional knowledge and related research, thereby expediting the development of related studies and industries.
To provide essential information for patent examinations, thereby enhancing the quality of intellectual property applications for traditional knowledge.^[31]

Similarly, the contents of the China Traditional Medicine Patent Database are also publicly available on the internet.^[32]

Finally, the TKDL has also raised questions of copyright, with claims that it falls foul of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, since it has digitised works (such as translations or compilations of ancient texts) that are still under copyright without the consent of their authors.³⁸ Responding to the same right to information application discussed above, the CSIR claimed that no consent was required since the traditional knowledge in question was authored many years ago. This is a perplexing position to take, as there is significant skill and labour involved in translating and compiling these ancient texts and putting this knowledge together, which merits copyright protection.^[33]

The need for open knowledge systems

There seems to be no reason to keep a valuable resource such as the TKDL away from the public’s reach, especially considering the fact that the entire project was bankrolled by the Indian taxpayer. Restricting access to the TKDL severely limits the benefit that the general public could derive from this knowledge. Even if one were to accept that there exist compelling reasons to keep the data confidential, it is clear that the TKDL, by its very nature, cannot possibly be invulnerable to breach. Problems of access control are endemic to large databases – it has been postulated that large aggregations of secret data are fundamentally impossible because security must be traded off for ease of access in such situations. Thus, “you cannot construct a database with scale, functionality and security because if you design a large system for ease of access it becomes insecure, while if you make it watertight it becomes impossible to use.”^[34] For this reason, governments have been urged to make use of centralised databases only when absolutely necessary.^[35] If we accept the premise that centralised databases cannot possibly be both accessible and secure, then we must examine whether the TKDL represents a balanced trade-off between accessibility and confidentiality.

There are three changes that are necessary in this regard:

The need to push for open knowledge A system like the TKDL constitutes a mechanism for defensive protection of TK – it seeks to keep TK in the public domain rather than to exclusively put it in the hands of the community that evolved it. This is similar to the Peer-to-Patent^[36] initiative, which ensures that more eyes are involved in following the process: a crowd-sourced approach to preventing inappropriate appropriation.

The need to address legal barriers Primarily, the TKDL’s data seems to be far from infallible, with several reports of mistranslations^[37] and exaggerated claims^[38] made by the CSIR. Apart from this, the most important requirement that the TKDL must fulfil is for its data to meet the legal criteria established for prior art in various jurisdictions. This would entail ensuring that the knowledge is made available with clear evidence of the date of its publication, and the presentation of the knowledge in a manner that clearly establishes that a patent claim is anticipated by the data contained in the library.^[39] Further, the fundamental challenge faced by any defensive protection mechanism is its vulnerability to differing definitions of prior art in various jurisdictions:

European Patent Convention (EPC): The most TKDL-friendly jurisdictions are those such as the EU. The EPC defines prior art as “everything made available to the public by means of a written or oral description, by use, or in any other way, before the date of filing of the European patent application”.^[40] Thus, innovations detailed in the works indexed by the TKDL would fall within the definition of prior art, and therefore be unpatentable – assuming, of course, that all the works digitised and translated by the database were publicly available. An overwhelming majority of the TKDL’s self-proclaimed “successes” have been achieved in the EU – around 120 of the 180 “successful outcomes” are against European patent applications.^[41]
United States: On the other end of the spectrum is the US definition of prior art. The United States Patent Act provides that a person “shall be entitled to a patent unless (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent.”⁴⁸ This effectively excludes protection for any non-published knowledge outside the US. Further, given the restrictive access to the TKDL, it appears that the database would not fall within the definition of a “printed publication”, since it has never been “published” – merely circulated among patent examiners on conditions of non-disclosure. Thus, it appears that there is no legal basis for the TKDL to be cited as evidence of prior art in the US, or other jurisdictions that have similar definitions of prior art.^[42]

The need to address structural barriers

In choosing to characterise itself as an archive of prior art, the TKDL has placed the burden of enforcing TK assertions upon patent examiners around the world. In doing so, it has pigeonholed itself into a doctrine (namely prior art) that has a tendency to go largely unheard in patent examinations. With studies showing that more experienced patent examiners, typically occupying higher positions in the patent office, are less likely to cite examples of prior art in their examinations,^[43]^[44] and still other evaluations showing that applicants for patents are extremely unlikely to provide and identify prior art surrounding their claims,^[45] it is evident that there are structural imbalances working against the efficacy of the prior art doctrine in preventing illegitimate patent claims. Thus, efforts must be made to counter this imbalance at two levels: first, access to the TKDL must be made as easy as possible; second, the TKDL has to undertake proactive patent monitoring efforts.

Patent monitoring, while an onerous and expensive task, is nevertheless necessary for the success of a defensive system such as the TKDL, especially in those jurisdictions which do not have the legislative framework to enable provisions of the CBD that mandate disclosure of genetic material sources.

Conclusion

For the reasons stated above, the access policy of the TKDL requires significant modification if the database is to reach its true potential for providing accurate, efficient and time-bound protection to TKbased innovations through the use of a centralised database that is wired into a network of interested parties.

TK systems require all the external support they can get in order to protect their mandate. Civil society must engage effectively with the TKDL initiative, encourage the accuracy of its records through research, and stimulate dialogue regarding the key issues discussed in this report. As pointed out by the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people: “Much more needs to be done to understand fully how … treaties and agreements can undermine or reinforce indigenous peoples’ rights and how they shape the trajectories of national economic development plans.”^[46]

[1] Traditional Knowledge, WIPO. www.wipo.int/tk/en/tk 4 Ibid.

[2] WIPO. (2010). List and Brief Technical Explanation of Various Forms in which Traditional Knowledge May be Found. www.wipo.int/ meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=147152

[3] Shiva, V. (2001). Protect or Plunder? Understanding Intellectual Property Rights. London: Zed Books.

[4] See, e.g., Horsbrugh Porter, A. (2006, 17 April). Neem: India’s tree of life. BBC. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4916044.stm; BBC. (2005, 9 March). India wins landmark patent battle. BBC. news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4333627.stm; Hoggan, K. (2000, 11 May). Neem tree patent revoked. BBC. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/745028.stm

[5] In re POD-NERS, L.L.C., Re-examination No. 90/005,892, US Fed.

Cir. 2009. law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/08-

[6] /08-1492-2011-03-27.html

[7] It is also noteworthy for another reason: it is illustrative of the time and effort required to contest claims after a patent has been granted. Proponents of the TKDL would argue that what took a decade in the Enola bean case could have been achieved in a manner of weeks at the application stage by a patent office equipped with such a database.

[8] Shashikant, S., & Asghedom, A. (2009, 12 August). The ‘Enola Bean’ dispute: patent failure & lessons for developing countries. Third World Network. twn.my/title2/wto.info/2009/ twninfo20090811.htm

[9] Crouch, D. (2009, 10 July). Mexican Yellow Bean Patent Finally Cooked. Patently-O. patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/mexican yellow-bean-patent-finally-cooked.html

[10] Gupta, V. K. (2011). Protecting Indian Traditional Knowledge from Biopiracy. WIPO. www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/meetings/ en/2011/wipo_tkdl_del_11/pdf/tkdl_gupta.pdf 13 www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/Home.asp?GL=Eng 14 Gupta, V. K. (2011). Op. cit.

[11] PTI. (2015, 9 August). Over 1500 yoga asanas shortlisted to thwart patenting by foreign parties. Indian Express. indianexpress.com/ article/india/india-others/over-1500-yoga-asanas-shortlisted-to thwart-patenting-by-foreign-parties

[12] TNN. (2007, 18 May). US patent on yoga? Indian gurus fume. Indian Express. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/US-patent-on yoga-Indian-gurus-fume/articleshow/2058285.cms

[13] Lee, T. B. (2013, 13 December). A yoga patent? Here’s why the USPTO approves so many dubious applications. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/ wp/2013/12/13/a-yoga-patent-heres-why-the-uspto-approves-so many-dubious-applications

[14] Press Information Bureau. (2010, 28 April). India Partners with US and UK to Protect Its Traditional Knowledge and Prevent Bio-Piracy. pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=61122

[15] www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx

[16] genecampaign.org

[17] Sahai, S. (1996). Importance of Indigenous Knowledge in IPR. Economic and Political Weekly, 31(47).

[18] World Health Organization. (2013). WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023. apps.who.int/iris/ bitstream/10665/92455/1/9789241506090_eng.pdf?ua=1

[19] List of Parties, Convention on Biological Diversity. https://www. cbd.int/information/parties.shtml

[20] Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. https://www.

cbd.int/convention/text

[21] nbaindia.org/content/25/19/1/act.html 26 Section 6 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

[22] Section 20 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

[23] Section 21 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

[24] www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Common/ExaminerReport.

asp?homepage=sub

[25] Ibid.

[26] WIPO. (2010). Op. cit., Annex 2.

[27] See, e.g., Coombe, R. J. (2005). Protecting Traditional

Environmental Knowledge and New Social Movements in the

Americas: Intellectual Property, Human Right, or Claims to an Alternative Form of Sustainable Development? Florida Journal of International Law, 17(1), 115-136.

[28] Swiderska, K. (2006). Banishing the Biopirates: A New Approach to Protecting Traditional Knowledge. International Institute for Environment and Development. pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14537IIED.pdf

[29] Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. (2002). Review of Existing Intellectual Property Protection of Traditional Knowledge. WIPO. www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/tk/en/wipo_grtkf_ic_3/ wipo_grtkf_ic_3_17-main1.html

[30] Reddy, P. (2012, 29 March). Is the TKDL a ‘confidential database’ and is it compliant with Indian copyright law? SpicyIP. spicyip. com/2012/03/is-tkdl-confidential-database-and-is-it.html

[31] KTKP Introduction, Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal. www. koreantk.com/en/m_about/about_01.jsp?about=1

[32] Brief introduction of China Traditional Medicine (TCM) Patent Database, China TCM Patent Database. 221.122.40.157/tcm_ patent/englishversion/help/help.html 38 Op. cit.

[33] Reddy, P. (2012, 21 April). The need for an ‘independent’ review of the TKDL project. SpicyIP. spicyip.com/2012/04/need-for anindependent-review-of-tkdl.html

[34] Proposed by Ross J. Anderson, this thumb-rule has come to be known as Anderson’s Rule. See: Porter, H. (2009, 10 August). Nine sacked for breaching core ID card database. The Guardian. www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/aug/10/ id-card-database-breach

[35] See, e.g., Anderson, R. et. al. (2009). Database State. Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. www.jrrt.org.uk/sites/jrrt.org.uk/files/

documents/database-state.pdf

[36] www.peertopatent.org

[37] Rathi, M. (2012, 20 April). Guest Post – TKDL: A success – Really?

SpicyIP. spicyip.com/2012/04/guest-post-tkdl-success-really.html

[38] Reddy, P. (2012, 19 March). Guest Post: The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library and the EPO. SpicyIP. spicyip.com/2012/03/guest post-traditional-knowledge.html

[39] Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. (2003). Practical Mechanisms for the Defensive Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources within the Patent System. WIPO. www.wipo. int/edocs/mdocs/tk/en/wipo_grtkf_ic_5/wipo_grtkf_ic_5_6.pdf

[40] Article 54(2) of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents. https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/epc.html

[41] Outcomes against bio-piracy, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/Outcome.asp 48 35 U.S.C. § 102(a).

[42] Quinn, G. (2009, 30 November). US Patent Office to Reject Based on Traditional Knowledge. IPWatchdog. www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/11/30/us-patent office-to-reject-based-on-traditional-knowledge/ id=7502

[43] Lemley, M. A., & Sampat, B. (2012). Examiner Characteristics and

Patent Office Outcomes. The Review of Economics and Statistics,

[44] (3), 817-827. www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ REST_a_00194?journalCode=rest

[45] Sampat, B. (2010). When do Applicants Search for Prior Art? The Journal of Law and Economics, 53(2), 399-416. www.journals. uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/651959?journalCode=jle

[46] Human Rights Council. (2014). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People. unsr.vtaulicorpuz.org/site/index. php/documents/annual-reports/26-annual-report-hrc-2014

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/giswatch-december-9-2016-sunil-abraham-and-vidushi-marda-digital-protection-of-traditional-knowledge-questions-raised-by-traditional-knowledge-digital-library-in-india

Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign

tito — 2017-06-28T09:59:29Z

You have heard about the Ice bucket challenge (and the rice bucket challenge). You may have heard about the 100happinessdays challenge (and its Wikipedia version 100wikidayschallenge). You may have heard and participated in the November no shaving challenge. Some of these campaigns are organized to increase awareness about different social issues. Now here the Centre for Internet and Society, India brings to you a campaign called Freedom In Feb.

Freedom in Feb (FiF, hashtag #freedominfeb) is a campaign to be conducted in the month of February. The objective of the initiative is to increase awareness of free content and free licenses. The name of this campaign “Freedom in Feb” was coined by Sunil Abraham, the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, India.

Event dates

The first iteration of the event will take place between 0:00 UTC on 1 February 2017 and 23:59 UTC on 28 February 2017.

Rules

The rule to participate in this challenge is simple:

The works you will create or publish in February you have to release those under free licenses such as the Creative Commons licenses or under public domain.
The content includes your blog post, writing, image on Facebook, or Instagram, or your Tweets (no “all rights reserved” please :)).
If releasing all content under free licenses is not possible, please try to release as much as content under the free licenses this February.

So, this Feb, please release your works under the free licenses, and encourage others to do so as well.

Participate

If you are interested to participate in this challenge or want to know more, please fill this form, or you can also send us an email to this address sunil@cis-india.org and/or tito@cis-india.org. Please include "Freedom in Feb" in your email subject line.

FAQ

Question: Which free license should I choose?
Answer: You can choose any free license. We suggest you to choose a license that allows remixing, and using for commercial purpose such as CC BY-SA 4.0. You may also choose a license CC BY-NC 2.0, but that’s not really free.

Question: I am a professional and depend on my works (photography, music, writing) on living. Do I need to release all my creations under the free licenses?
Answer: We understand this situation, but we request you to release as much as or some content under the free licenses or public domain.

More FAQs to be added

Keep in touch

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedominfeb/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freedominfeb
Freenode IRC: freedominfeb
Public forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/freedominfeb (anyone can post here by sending an email to: freedominfeb@googlegroups.com, but you need to join the group to view posts and other
Hashtag: #freedominfeb

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/freedominfeb

Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers

praskrishna — 2016-12-01T14:56:41Z

The blog post was published by AIGA.org on November 29, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was consulted.

Back story: Ever met a teenaged girl yearning to be a typeface designer? Yes? Then perhaps you know Pooja Saxena, who recognized her life’s calling when she was still in high school. Saxena went on to study with type historian and designer Fiona Ross at the University of Reading in the UK.

The idea for Guru Gomke came from a chat she had with Panigrahi, whose work with the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Program at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore underscored the lack of tools and resources available for India’s minority languages online. For example, Ol Chiki is the alphabet needed to write the language Santali, used by over 5 million people in India and its neighboring countries. “At the time of our conversation, we couldn’t find a single Unicode-compliant font in the script—forget a typeface family with a bold or an italic. [Noto Sans Ol Chiki, in regular and bold, has since been released]. Subhashish mentioned all these minority scripts in India that people can’t use because fonts and keyboards for them don’t exist,” Saxena says. “I was enthusiastic to help create a free open-source typeface family and input methods in Ol Chiki, and thanks to Subhashish’s work with A2K, he was able to make it happen.”

Why’s it called Guru Gomke? Guru Gomke is a title of respect for Pandit Raghunath Murmu, creator of the Ol Chiki script in the early 20th century. The name translates to “great teacher.” It was recommended to Panigrahi by one of the language experts consulted by the designers, and they found it a wonderful nod to the history of the script.

What are its distinguishing characteristics? Its very existence, frankly. It’s now one of just two Unicode-compliant fonts with both bold and italic character sets.

What should I use it for? Next time you need to set absolutely anything in Ol Chiki.

What other typefaces do you like to pair it with? Matched to Source Sans Pro visually and proportionally, these two fonts are visually harmonic used anywhere Ol Chiki and Latin texts have to work together. In fact, the Latin glyphs included in Guru Gomke are derived from Source Sans Pro.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eye-on-design-aiga-guru-gomke-is-stylish

Odia Wikipedia: Sambalpur University Workshop

Sailesh Patnaik — 2017-04-17T06:44:47Z

An Odia Wikipedia orientation-cum-workshop program was organised for the students of Sambalpur University on 27 November, 2016.

Over the last couple of years, the Odia Wikipedia community has been successful in organising workshops and outreach programs in different parts of coastal and central Odisha. With over 38 active Wikipedians (as of 2016), the Odia community is growing everyday and expanding across different parts of Odisha. The recent increase in the number of Wikipedians in western Odisha inspired the community members to conduct an introductory Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University.

On 27th November 2016, an orientation-cum-workshop program for Odia Wikipedia was organised for the students of Computer Science and Application Department and the Odia Department in Sambalpur University. 57 participants, comprising 30 male and 27 female participants attended the event. 5 faculty members were also present. Dr. Chitta Ranjan Dash, the Vice Chancellor of the University was the Guest of Honour for the workshop. Three Odia Wikipedians- Mrutyunjay Kar, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Nistha Ranjan Dash facilitated the workshop as mentors.

The workshop began with an introduction to Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource digitisation efforts by Dr. Sarada Baboo, a professor from the Computer Science and Application department. The first session introduced the various Wikimedia projects to the participants. The participants were given an introduction on how to contribute to the different Wiki projects. They were also given an orientation on Wikipedia policies and guidelines. After this, the participants were introduced to Odia Wikipedia and its development over the years. The post lunch session trained participants on creating user accounts, articles, and other basic dos and don’ts on Wikipedia. During the training session, over 20 Wikipedians were able to create accounts.

The Wikipedia workshop in Sambalpur University was an important step to raise awareness about the Wikipedia movement in western Odisha, This was the first workshop in Sambalpur University and the second workshop in western Odisha after three years. Over 196 colleges are affiliated to Sambalpur University, in seven different districts in western Odisha. A regular follow up with the University, the faculty and the students will help in furthering the free knowledge movement in western Odisha.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/odia-wikipedia-sambalpur-university-workshop

Sambalpur University Workshop

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-12-02T02:31:53Z

An Odia Wikipedia Orientation program cum workshop was organized by CIS-A2K team in Sambalpur University on November 27, 2016. Sailesh Patnaik attended the workshop.

The workshop agenda included:

Increasing the reach of Odia Wikipedia in western Odisha
Bringing new editors on board
Orientation of students from Sambalpur University
Exploring possibilities of CIS partnership with Sambalpur University
Getting in place an active community on WikiTungi in Sambalpur

More information on the event

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sambalpur-university-workshop

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

tito — 2017-06-28T10:02:00Z

Indian Government works are not available under free and open licenses. On the other hand a large number countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela etc. have adopted the Creative Commons and other free licenses. The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain. This article promotes the idea that the Government works should be freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable.

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Free knowledge movement is a worldwide movement that creates and tries to get works under free and open licenses. It claims that knowledge is a common human property, and must be easily, freely accessible.

While discussing the topic "Access to knowledge: a basic human right", American scientist and researcher Jack Andraka feels:

Access to knowledge is, you know, a basic human right. Knowledge should not be commoditized; it wants to be free.

The Open Definition defines the term “Open Knowledge” in Open Definition 2.0 as:

"Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness."

All open content must be a) available under free licenses, b) accessible as a whole, and c) should be in open format (see more details)

A big name in the world of free content is (of course) Wikipedia, where you can use, share, remix content from the site under the Creative Commons licenses. There are many organizations, networks and groups working to get more and more content under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons (text, audio, video, image), Free and Open Source Software or FOSS (software), Open design principle (machine, engineering), Open Access (academic works) etc.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that education should be free. Right to information is also a human right and Article 27 of the declaration states:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

These are just not possible unless knowledge /information is easily and preferably freely accessible to everyone without restrictions. If the first barrier is accessibility, i.e, not having enough digital content or information or content behind paywall, then the second barrier is its openness. Just having access to some web pages is not enough, it also requires rights like free using, sharing, remixing, Unrestricted content can be utilized in the best way.

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Government websites are not freely licensed. In section 2(k) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 the meaning of “Government work” is explained:

"Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of—
(i) the Government or any department of the Government;
(ii) any Legislature in India;
. . .

Read Indian Copyright Act, section 2(c) here.

Indian Copyright Act section 17(d) informs about the “First owner of copyright” of a Government work:

in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;

Read section 17(d) here.

Section 28 is about “Term of copyright in Government works”. It states:

In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published.—In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published."

Read section 28 here

Section 52 of the act allows some “fair use” and informs how content can be used for research, education, review, criticism and some other purpose. The lengthy copyright section may be read here. However, it does not make the content free. You are not allowed to remix the work or use for commercial purpose. You can not freely use, modify, distribute it.

Now let’s have a look at a few Government websites and their license details pages.

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

(http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/website-policies)

In this website the copyright policy page informs:

Material featured on this website may be reproduced free of charge. However, the material has to be reproduced accurately and not to be used in a derogatory manner or in a misleading context. Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged. However, the permission to reproduce this material shall not extend to any material which is identified as being copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the department/copyright holder concerned.

A screenshot may be seen below:

Here-

“Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged.” -- this part of the policy is similar to the Creative Commons licenses, where the owner or author of a work must be given attribution.

but,

“has to be reproduced accurately” -- it prohibits remix or modification works,
“not to be used in a derogatory manner” -- it is unclear that what is “derogatory manner”! Can it be used for criticism?

Indian Vice President’s official website
(http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/website-policies)

This is similar to the Prime Minister’s website policy and does not allow remix, commercial use etc. See screenshot:

Indian President’s official website
(http://presidentofindia.gov.in/copyright-policy.htm)

Although the Vice President’s website allows some fair use, the Indian President’s official web portal’s license is different and does not allow to reproduce the work “partially or fully”. The copyright policy states:

This contents of this website may not be reproduced partially or fully, without due permission from The President of India, If referred to as a part of another publication, the source must be appropriately acknowledged. The contents of this website can not be used in any misleading or objectionable context.

We have shown 3 example above, but it is more or less similar in all government web portals.

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

It might be interesting to note that unlike India, a large number of countries publish their Government works under open licenses or public domain. We’ll discuss only a few here:

United States

The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain.
The White House website and third party content such as text or speeches by the first lady are licensed under CC SA 3.0 US license. U.S.
On 18 June, 2013, Barack Obama and other G7 leaders endorsed the Open Data Charter. Open Data Action plan is licensed under CC0.
Several other works such as works created by New York State Senate, works created by the State of Virginia are also under different creative commons licenses. Details may be seen here.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Open Government License (OGL) is used for Crown Copyright works published by the UK government. Since 2001, some works by the UK government were available under the Click-Use license. This license was replaced by OGL in 2010. The first version of OGL was released on 30 September 2010. OGL is compatible with the CC licenses. OGL allows to:

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information,
adapt the Information,
exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

However,

Attribution must be given to with source link, which is similar to the creative commons licenses.
Some documents such as the British passport, military insignia, property rights, including patents, trademarks, and design rights, personal information in data don’t come under OGL.

More about the Open Government License may be seen here.

France

France government’s website http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR license. The English version of the policy page may be seen here.
France government’s cultural department’s website http://www.culture.fr/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
The Culture Communication website http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/ is also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

Russian Federation

Content of the website http://kremlin.ru are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. License policy page may be seen here. Many other Russian government works are under different open licenses, details may be seen here.

Netherlands

The Dutch government official website http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ is licensed under CC 0. All content of this website is under public domain, unless any other license is specified.

Bulgaria

The President of Bulgaria’s official website https://www.president.bg/ is licensed under CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.

Croatia

Croatian Government website http://otvorenikod.nsk.hr/ is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 Croatia.

The Long list

More than 30 countries have adopted and publishing their works under the Creative Commons and other free licenses. Other the above mentioned countries, the list include countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela etc. Other than the counties, several international organizations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) endorsed the free license concept and have adopted the same. See a long list of countries using free licenses here.

Last line

It is unfortunate that the Indian Government works are not under free licenses, however it would be great if the Government rethinks and relicense their general content under the free licenses. This will help not only the movement, but the content itself can be utilized in a much better and broader way.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-knowledge-and-indian-government-work

Improving Telugu Village Articles

Pavan Santhosh — 2016-11-26T02:27:39Z

Telugu wikipedians on 6 October 2016 held a discussion on improving the quality of Telugu articles. The event was organized by IIIT, Hyderabad, CIS-A2K and OpenGeo.

A possible collaboration between Wikipedia and free and open source enthusiasts and environmental groups was explored at the meeting. Subodh Kulkarni and Pavan Santhosh made a presentation about Wikipedia. The participants were from different groups such as SOUL (Save Our Urban Lakes), OpenGeo.org (organization that works for open source mapping) and Sweccha (organization working to expand free software movement in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh).

Prof. Madhav Gadgil moderated a discussion on how these organizations could collaborate for different Wikimedia projects. The discussion primarily revolved around improving ongoing Telugu village articles.

Prof. Gadgil stressed on compiling articles using reliable and verifiable sources. He also urged the participants to upload geo-tagged photos to Commons especially photos of lakes of which the authorities have denied existence. The discussion also focused on the synergy between OpenGeo and Wikipedia.

Post-lunch, Prof. Gadgil delivered a lecture on “Human Knowledge: An Evolutionary Perspective in IIT”. Prof. Gadgil explained that the next big leap in evolution of human knowledge is free knowledge in which everyone can contribute and utilize which was Wikipedia. He urged the scholars and students to contribute to Wikipedia which is the future for knowledge society.

Telugu and English wikipedians including Vinay, Lubna Sarwath, Undavalli Ravikumar, Raju and many more participated in the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/improving-telugu-village-articles

100wikidays: the journey so far

tito — 2017-06-28T10:04:33Z

In this article we'll chat with Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) on the journey of 100wikidays so far, initial difficulties, and participation of Indian Wikipedia communities in the challenge.

100wikidays is a personal Wiki challenge, in which a participant attempts to create at least one new article on Wikipedia, for 100 days in a row. This initiative is a brainchild of Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) and it started on 16 January 2015. As of 22 November 2016, 194 Wikipedians have taken this challenge and 63 of them have successfully completed it. A delighting fact is a large number of Indian Wikipedians have participated in this initiative and successfully completed this challenge. In this blog post we’ll try to focus on the project and its influence on Indian Wikimedians.

Let’s start the conversation with Vassia Atanassova, (User:Spiritia), the editor who started this initiative.

CIS-A2K: First, we congratulate you for the success of 100wikidays. When you started this challenge in January 2015, did you think that one day it would become so big?

Vassia: No, actually I wasn’t completely sure that I myself will be able to complete it. :) The story behind the 100wikidays is that earlier in 2014 I had already tried the so called “100happydays” challenge, in which you prove that 100 days in a row you have found happiness, even in the smallest things, by posting a photo of what made you happy. Needless to say, I failed it, around the 11-th day, which according to statistics happens with 7 out of 10 people. :) So, when in the end of 2014 I got the idea of retrying the challenge, already only knew that happiness was obviously not “my cup of tea” :) so I had to try something I am good in and have more chances for success, like writing in Wikipedia. :) But back then, I didn’t believe that I will be able to finish it myself – it was such a crazy idea – and no, I had never planned it as anything bigger than my own personal challenge. :)

CIS-A2K: Let’s talk about the initial days. What were the difficulties you faced?
Vassia: As I had already failed the happy photography challenge before, I was really nervous in the beginning. The challenge – as the rules of the #100happydays postulate – requires you to make a public commitment and announce your daily progress, and this is very demanding. You commit in front of a community you care for and don’t want to lose your face, or disappoint them. For me, this is half of the difficulty – and half of the magic.

The other half, of course, is to really find the time to create a decent encyclopedic article every day. We are definitely not talking about long featured articles, of course, but decent articles, giving the basic necessary information about a topic, referenced with reliable sources. I am not really eager about the idea of #100stubdays, although, of course, I have also had extremely busy days when I am not able to produce anything longer than a stub.

Thus, one of the first lessons I had to learn from the challenge was how to find the right balance between the inborn perfectionism and the unavoidable time limitations. I think that everyone who commits to the challenge and doesn’t quit it immediately, has such a period of adapting one’s style of contributing, of rearranging life priorities, and stealing from oneself precious time that would otherwise spend with the family, with friends, for other hobbies, or simply for sleeping. Oh, sleeping, how much I started appreciate sleep after the beginning of the challenge! #100wikidays is famous for jokes related with sleep deprivation. :)

CIS-A2K: How did you promote this initiative among the Wikipedia communities around the world?
Vassia: Hmm… I didn’t! It all happened naturally, by word of mouth. It is editors who are promoting it by getting involved in the challenge, I am not doing anything special. 100wikidays is living its own life. :)

In the beginning friends of mine who followed my Facebook wall liked and sometimes commented on the posts with the new articles. It took about one month before the first follower appeared, one of the ex-students in my university course “Wikipedia and Wiki Technologies”, Vladislav Nedelev. About that time I decided to propose the idea of the #100wikidays as a topic for talk at Wikimania. Funny detail is that initially this talk proposal got rejected, and it took weeks before it was reevaluated and approved :)

In the meanwhile, in early March, the next follower, or “victim”, joined, and happily that one was Asaf Bartov, Wikimedia Foundation’s senior officer in emergent Wikimedia communities. He didn’t want to be alone in the trouble :))) so one day he posted on his wall the question “Who will be the first Indian Wikipedian to commit to #100wikidays?” And by the end of the day there were four people (you, Tito, included)!!! And it was amazing, absolutely mindblowing!

Asaf also proposed the idea of the Facebook group and the Meta coordination page, where people report their daily progress. In my opinion, he is the most efficient victims recruiter in the #100wikidays :)

As of today (22 November 2016) we have 194 “victims” from 54 language versions of Wikipedia – and several sister projects like Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary and Commons and about 1/3 of all who have started it, have also completed it successfully. So, yeah, somehow it really became a global thing :) And real life meetings very much helped for that. Nikola Kalchev’s lightning talk at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, my talks at Wikimania in Mexico, at the Central and Eastern European Meetup in Voore, and at WikiLive conference in Belgrade, Alex Stinson’s speech at WikiConference USA 2015, Asaf also. Everyone who has taken the challenge can become its ambassador.

CIS-A2K: Tell us about a few participants who performed really well in this challenge?
Vassia: Oh, there are so many wonderful editors in #100wikidays, so many examples to be followed, people who are trendsetters on their own! Of course, Antanana and Lord Bumbury, who couldn’t stop themselves after the 100-th day, and made more than 220 wikidays in a row, each of them! Armine, who is now doing her 5th run of #100wikidays. Adam Cuerden with his runs of #10commonsdays of restoring old photographs, pixel by pixel! Asaf, Rosiestep, Penny Richards, Patricio, Maor X, and others whose focus is solely on biographies of notable women. Mervat Salman who introduced the #WikiWomenWeeks driving even more attention to this topic. Everyone in the challenge has brought to it something new and unique. And the most beautiful of it all is when ideas spread virally among the #100wikidays community, and people inspire each other with their choice of articles, and the way they communicate them.

CIS-A2K: 100wikidays is a difficult challenge. If someone writes articles for 60 or 70 days in a row, and then for some reason fails to continue, would you call it a failure, or what would be your suggestions?
Vassia: Heh, my favourite question. :) The word “failure” does not exist in my #100wikidays vocabulary. If you quit before the end of the 100 days, or if it takes you more than 100 days to finish, you have still made contributions to Wikipedia and has allowed someone to learn from the free knowledge that you have shared with the world. :) I know, the challenge has rules that really seem to be discouragingly severe. And it is normal that not everybody opts for it. But once you dare to opt, in the FB group you receive enormous support and appreciation – every day, for every new article. Also, among the challenge rules, the last one is “Ignore All Rules”. So, it is only up to you to decide whether a missed day is really a failure or not. My advice to everyone in this situation is: continue as if nothing has happened and no one has noticed :)

CIS-A2K: Several Indian Wikipedia communities participated in 100wikidays. Tell us about the participation of Indian Wikipedians in this challenge.
Vassia: So far, there have been contributors in 9 Indian languages: Punjabi (17), Oriya/Odia (3), Telugu (4), Bengali (3), Tamil (5), Hindi (4), Kannada (1), Malayalam (8). Correct me if I am missing anything. :) The total figure makes Indians the most active participants in the challenge, globally, with Armenia scoring second with 27 editors by now. No less than 13 are the Indian alumni, so far, which is quite of a big percentage of all. And the projects covered are different, not just Wikipedia in all those different languages, but also Wikisource, Wiktionary. This is truly impressive because some of the sister projects, like Wikisource, are really very demanding in terms of human resources and time, and usually not so populated with editors, which makes it even a greater challenge to undertake #100wikidays there. And I can’t but mention the recent notable interest in the challenge, registered in Malayalam Wikipedia. I’d be really very happy to know that the challenge has helped for the substantial growth of their, and generally, to any language version of Wikipedia. :)

Credits

Image source: Wikimedia Commons, license: CC-BY-SA 4.0, author: Kacie Harold

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/100wikidays

CIIPC-NLUD Workshop on Wikipedia Editing and Open Source Knowledge Sources

praskrishna — 2016-11-23T08:04:16Z

Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition (CIIPC), National Law university, Delhi as part of its Open Science Project, had organised WikiEdit2016 a two day workshop regarding orientation on editing Wikipedia and hands-on-training session. The event was organized on November 11 and 12, 2016 at National Law University in New Delhi.

Rohini Lakshané and Tanveer Hasan conducted and facilitated this workshop.

The purpose of this workshop was to introduce students to diverse aspects of open knowledge resources and to motivate them to move beyond passive consumption of knowledge and become active producers of knowledge. The participants were briefed about the editing activity earlier, because of which they had come prepared with references for the topic that they had earlier selected. We hope that this group (20 students with majority women editors) would continue to edit Wikipedia with thematic (law) focus and contribute further.

More details on the workshop can be accessed here.

Photo courtesy: Prof. Arul George Scaria, National Law University, Delhi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/ciipc-nlud-workshop-on-wikipedia-editing-and-open-source-knowledge-sources

33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment

sinha — 2016-11-18T15:28:21Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 33rd Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 14 November, 2016 to 19 November, 2016, made this statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment on behalf of CIS on Day 5, 18 November, 2016.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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 software and digital services, which connect users and developers, such a comprehensive study assumes significant importance.

Such a study/or a parallel study after the scoping exercise must encompass the methods in which such digital corporations are enforcing their own IP rules on creators worldwide, and if there are fair systems in place to address violations, and 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 corporations go, and often actions are taken without appropriate justification/explanation. Back in India, I have met several creators who have suffered as a result of such unilateral actions. In this, regard it will be useful to know how creators in developing countries are impacted by rules enforced by platforms largely situated in developed countries, which can help us build a framework for the benefit of all, equally.

I welcome the proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Access the proposal here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/33rd-sccr-cis-statement-on-the-grulac-proposal-for-analysis-of-copyright-in-the-digital-environment

33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations

sinha — 2016-11-16T13:37:41Z

Anubha Sinha, attending the 33rd Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”) at Geneva from 14 November, 2016 to 19 November, 2016, made this statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations on behalf of CIS on Day 3, 16 November, 2016.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Centre for Internet and Society is a civil society organisation from India. We would like to associate ourselves with the statements made by KEI and Karisma Foundation.

First, Mr. Chair, on SCCR/33/5 Note on the Draft Treaty to Protect Broadcasting Organizations which is a document presented by the delegations of Argentina, Colombia and Mexico – which was flagged off as relevant for SCCR/33/3. Mr. Chair, this document is problematic as it in essence, tries to extend the scope of the treaty to apply to internet-originated content, and thus by extension internet transmissions. This manifested in the push for protection of on-demand material and catch-up services as well in the discussions over the past two days.

Mr. Chair, I’d like to reeiterate that the mandate of the General Assembly was confined to broadcasting and cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense; the definition of broadcasting, protected by the scope of the Treaty, should as such be limited to the type of transmission exploited by traditional broadcasters – as stated by the delegation of Iran.

Further, Mr. Chair where as EU, China, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico continue to speak of technological advancements to justify expansion of rights under the treaty, there has still been no discussion on the inadequacy of existing international legal instruments to address these technological advancements, to justify the broadcasters’ ask of an additional layer.

Finally, reiterating the Asia-pacific group, the canvassing of this treaty should be balanced: it should take into account commercial interests in copyright and right holders, and equally important, it should also take into account other competing interests in copyright, including the public interest in scientific, cultural, social progress and promoting competition.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/33rd-sccr-cis-statement-on-the-proposed-treaty-for-the-protection-of-broadcasting-organizations

Centre for Internet and Society

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