Centre for Internet and Society

Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T07:09:41Z

The Intellects, a Delhi based organisation of Odia intellectuals, and Shree Jagannath Mandir and Odisha Art and Cultural Center co-organized an event in New Delhi on April 20, 2014.

Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event and gave a talk about "Re-modelling Bhagabata Tungi in the present context of a digital society". About 600 Odias attended the progremme, including Dr Anita Panda, Prof Saudamini Barik, Jayaram Samal, Indubhushan Lenka, Odia Radio founder Sitanshu Mohapatra, journalist Asit Ranjan Mishra, OdishaDiary (www.orissadiary.com) founder Prachee Naik, Rashmi Ranjan Parida, The Intellects members Sangram Dhar, Smrutidhara Rout, Anasuya Sahoo, Aditya Mohanty, Nirmal Dhal, Sanjaya Parida, Pankajamala Sarangi, Premanda Swain, lawyer Sanjeeb Kumar Mohanty and Tarun Samantray.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/relevance-of-bhagabat-tungi-in-evolution-of-odia-language

Rejuvenating India’s Rivers the Wiki Way

subodh — 2019-04-01T13:18:33Z

Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organisation working on rejuvenation of rivers in India, has began documentation of rivers on Wiki, especially to draw attention to and mitigate the crisis of toxic deposits facing more than 40 rivers in India. The work was started by Jal Biradari, TBS’s Maharashtra based group, in Sangli district with the help of the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team of CIS. Here is the report from the first pilot workshop conducted by CIS-A2K during 22-25 December 2018 at Tarun Bharat Sangh Ashram, in Alwar, Rajasthan.

Events details on Wikimedia meta page

The Workshop

As per a Government of India report 42 rivers in India are polluted with toxic heavy metal deposits in them. To mitigate this crisis Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organization working on rejuvenation of rivers in India began documentation of rivers on Wiki. The work was started by TBS’s Maharashtra based group Jal Biradari in Sangli district with the help of the Access to Knowledge team of CIS (CIS-A2K).

Realizing the potential of the project TBS decided to integrate this as training module in their capacity building workshops conducted at Bhikampura in Rajasthan. The first pilot workshop was conducted by CIS-A2K during 22-25 December 2018 at Tarun Bharat Sangh Ashram, Bhikampura, Alwar in Rajasthan for 34 participants from eight states of India. Dr. Rajendra Singh, Maulik Sisodiya and Subodh Kulkarni, CIS-A2K were the facilitators. The objectives behind organizing the workshop was to build an open knowledge resource on water related issues in all Indian languages, document the river basins of India, train volunteers working in the sector to work in Wikimedia projects, open street mapping exercises and photo walks along the river and post free content on Commons and Wikisource projects.

The documentation structure for river basin was decided through participatory process. The participants were divided into 6 groups for working on 6 river basins of Arvari district. The resource material available with TBS in the form of maps, reports, training booklets was used to prepare the schematic maps of each river basin. The water bodies such as ponds, manmade structures like dams were also listed.


Activists during the workshop conducted by TBS in Alwar, Rajasthan in December 2018

After this pre-work, the training on Wikipedia editing started. The participants worked in sandboxes first on their articles. The manual of style, giving offline and online references and categorisation were discussed and practiced on sandboxes. The Commons session started with elaborate discussion on copyrights, licenses and encyclopedic content. The images were uploaded on Commons and used in the articles. The articles in the sandboxes were presented by each working group. Taking into consideration various suggestions, appropriate modifications were done. The finished new articles and the additional content into existing articles were then moved in the main namespace of respective language Wikipedia. TBS has decided to re-license 30 books and training material on river in CC-BY-SA. Participants who attended the workshop have started contributing in various languages.

Participants' Feedback

“Rivers are essential for existence of life in land. Keeping its sanctity and health is very important. The Wikimedia workshop gave an insight on river pollution issues and the importance of reviving them. As Wikipedia is an open platform it can create a larger impact by reaching out to the society.” - Mrityunjay1010

“The wiki-workshop on "Rivers on Wiki" has been my maiden experience in the context of generalizing the knowledge for common good. The workshop gave me a lens to see the usage of Wikipedia in regional languages as a medium for environmental consciousness building as well as conservation. Wikipedia as a means for social audit was also another enriching experience in that workshop.” - Simantabharati

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-rejuvenating-indias-rivers-the-wiki-way

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

subha — 2013-09-12T10:22:44Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students.

Subhashish Panigrahi's blog post was published in Startup Goa Blog on September 9, 2013.

This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is in incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

Before any language, Wikipedia shapes up as a live project where an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution.The Konkani Wikipedia incubator started way back in 2006. But because of many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Because of the political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and also written in multiple scripts; Devanagari and Roman (known as Romi as well) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochin region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world’s first University to have a masters program in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar, it was found that the students were very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. The students were introduced to Konkani Wikipedia and they showed interest in taking part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of thirty eight students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. All of the students including four coordinators came with at least 2 pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning, a big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration. Soon the room was filled with 20 MA students from the Konkani department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop there was an interaction with the students in the presence of the Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate the workshop. With their help, a majority of students signed up and created their user accounts before the first workshop. Some roughwork went on to plan for a whole day workshop.

Introduce Yourself

To start with the first day, there was an “Adjective Name” activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Then there was a discussion about articles students planned to write. Few of them were not sure if the articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into the Wikipedia framework.

Editing time

Article titles were decided and everyone was ready with their homework write ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four to five of them knew typing. Students came forward to try out typing. There was a glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. It worked well. Students managed to type with only a little typos.


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

There was an activity break with a game called “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). According to the game rules, the host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and frog game

“Rat race” is a game where participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants becomes a rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and were taught some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references). Editing session went on until the rest of the day.

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

The agenda for the day was to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (About 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends, they were welcomed into the Konkani Wikipedia community and were shown the facebook group they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

16 new students from the MA course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the funday. The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. The students were then paired with those who knew Inscript and thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. All of the students created their first articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for the new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for the Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid farewell. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/start-up-goa-blog-september-10-2013-subhashish-panigrahi-recap-on-konkani-wikipedia-workshop

Reading Devanagari script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script

pavanaja — 2016-06-18T18:14:43Z

This is a small hack to read websites with Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili and a few more languages) based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada script.

Konkani Wikipedia finally went live in this June after being in Incubator for nine years. Konkani language is written using five different scripts; Devanagari (official script for Konkani in Goa), Kannada, Latin, Malayalam and Persian. The current Konkani Wikipedia is available at https://gom.wikipedia.org where “gom” is for the Goan variation of Konkani.

There is a significant Konkani population in coastal Karnataka and to a small extent in northern Kerala that use Kannada script for writing Konkani. Many of these people might be facing issues with reading the Konkani articles in Devanagari script in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia which brings the need for making the Wikipedia available in Kannada and other scripts that Konkani uses.

There are various ways to go about it. Some of the Wikimedia projects like the Serbian and Chinese Wikipedia already had this issue and had multi-script transliteration as a solution. Transliteration between Devanagari and Kannada scripts could be transliterated in multiple ways and below is one of them.

Noted typographer K. P. Rao who is known for creating fonts for almost all the Indian scripts has recently come up with a solution for Devanagari⟷Kannada transliteration by creating a new font “Devama” that has Devanagari Unicode encodings with Kannada glyphs. The font has the rendering logic as per Kannada rules which means if we set this fonts for any text typed using Devanagari script, it will display it in Kannada script. This will help anyone who can read Kannada script to read something written in Devanagari. Mr. Rao has generously released “Devama” under Open Font License (OFL) ver. 1.1. The source file for the font is currently available at https://github.com/pavanaja/DevamaNew for anyone to use and modify with attribution.

How to use the font:

Download and install the font as a .zip file.
Unzip the file and find the “Devama.otf” file. Install it. (the installation will vary based on your operating system, check a how-to guide to learn).
Now inorder to make the font working you need to change the browser settings. (check here for Firefox and Chrome browser settings). You need to set “Devama” as the display font for Devanagari script.
In Mozilla Firefox:

Select “Options” from Tools menu. It will open a new tab. Select the “Content” tab. Click on the button “Advanced...”. Select Devanagari from the drop-down list from “Fonts for” and set “Devama” as the font for all options. Click on “Ok” and close the dialog box. Now reload the Konkani Wikipedia to check if it is working or not.

Not just Konkani Wikipedia, any other site in Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili, Bihari and a few other Indian languages) could also be read in Kannada. This might be useful for those who could read in Kannada and have problems reading in Devanagari.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/reading-devanagri-konkani-wikipedia-in-kannada-script

Read Bengali, Malayalam classics online as free Wiki libraries grow

praskrishna — 2016-01-29T15:51:09Z

Content Includes Classics In Malayalam, Bengali.

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on January 10, 2016.

It was a hunt that took Shiju Alex to many places. Finally, his quest ended at Dharmaram College library in Bengaluru as Alex got hold of a copy of the firstever printed book in Malayalam. He scanned it promptly and volunteers uploaded the text on to Malayalam Wikisource, one of the free online libraries run by Wikipedia. Nasim Ali returned to Wikipedia editing only because fellow Odias were reaching out on social media to help upload the 13-volume Bhagavata Mahapuranam.Now, the entire work is available for free at Odia Wikisource.

Actions speak louder than words when it comes to preserving books in regional languages. Indian versions of Wikisource have more than 1 lakh pages of classic epics, philosophical tracts, and novels and poems in 10 languages. And the num bers are growing. “These are the books that we grow up with and connect emo tionally. Most of us would like to see them online,“ said Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society .

As Wikipedians come together in Bengaluru on Sunday to celebrate 15 years of editing and curating the encyclopedia in India, more such stories will be told. The growth has been tremendous in Indian language content creation, especially when it comes to setting up Wikisources, said A Ravishankar, programme director at the Wikimedia India chapter. Malayalam has 26,332 pages, including around 200 of the seminal books in the language. While Telugu has 29,039 pages, Bengali has around 11,000. Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati and Assamese libraries are also getting bigger. The content ranges from religious texts such as Ramayan and Bible to first-ever printed literary works.

“Most of these are books in the public domain or the ones relicensed with Creative Commons licences. This allows anyone to edit or make a copy of the work, making it reusable,“ said Panigrahi. Some of the relicensed works include the Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by University of Mysore.

It isn't easy to get works online. Alex finds it difficult to procure the original texts to create their PDF versions. “Every time I go to Kerala, I look for old books,“ said Alex, who uploads the PDFs on a public domain for others to upload them. Editors are also not easy to come by . Panigrahi took to social media to find a new set of editors when he was trying to upload the Bhagavatha volumes. “Wiki's volunteer-editors have their hands full. So we appealed on social media and many people signed up,“ he said.

But the effort is worth it, said Alex. Every time he unearths an old book and posts the link on his Facebook page, the reactions are full of surprise. “Many from the younger generation don't know that Samkshepa Vedartham (the first printed work in Malayalam) was printed in Rome. Also, researchers write to me saying they are happy to see the old books online,“ he said.

Students Pitch In

The Wikimedia Foundation has tied up with various colleges to help with typing and proof-reading. Around 120 students of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar typed stanzas from the Bhagavata while Christ University students from Bengaluru uploaded chunks of the Kannada Vishwakosha as part of their curriculum.

Tech Hurdle

Though the project started in 2006 with Malayalam Wikisource, it spread to other Indian languages around five years ago. The biggest hurdle remains technology as the open source optical character recognition (OCR) software isn't compatible with many Indian languages. “Google's OCR that was launched last year is much better as it works with most Indian languages,“ said Ravishankar. The new software “extracts text from images of any printed text -and sometimes even handwriting, which opens the door to old texts, manuscripts, and more,“ reads Panigrahi's blog post.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-times-of-india-january-10-2016-sandhya-soman-read-bengali-malayalam-classics-online-as-free-wiki-libraries-grow

Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T05:16:52Z

The Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society invites you to a symposium on "Re-sourcing Indian Cinema" and a launch of a book titled "Politics as Performance: A Social History of the Telugu Cinema" by S.V. Srinivas on October 29, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., at the CCS Seminar Hall, Indian Institute of Science. T. Vishnu Vardhan will speak on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”.

Click to read more about the event published on the website of Indian Institute of Science.

Agenda

Welcome: Raghavendra Gadagkar (CCS) & Tejaswini Niranjana (CSCS)
S.V. Srinivas (Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and Visiting Professor, Centre for Contemporary Studies): “Film, History and Politics: Looking beyond Bollywood”
M.V. Rayudu (Professor of Electronics, Atria Institute of Technology; industrialist, publisher and archivist): “Archiving Telugu Cinema”
T. Vishnu Vardhan (Centre for Internet and Society): “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”

About the book

Politics as Performance examines the deep connection between cinema and politics in India. It provides a picture of the Telugu cinema, as both industry and cultural form, over fifty formative years. It argues that films are directly related both to the rise of an elite which dominates Andhra Pradesh and other parts of India, and to the emergence of a new idiom of mass politics.

Download the Invite

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/re-sourcing-indian-cinema

Re-releasing Konkani Vishwakosh & Building Konkani Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T05:48:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the University of Goa invites you to this event on Thursday, September 26, 2013, 10.00 a.m. The one-hour event will be followed by a press conference.

This was originally published in the Wikipedia page here.

Upon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC‐BY‐SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era. This encyclopaedia will also serve as one of the main sources of building and writing articles on Konkani Wikipedia (which is currently under incubation).

We'd like you to be a part of this event and help showcase Konkani community and language on a global digital platform such as Konkani Wikipedia.

Please click to see the invite. We look forward to seeing you at the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/re-releasing-konkani-vishwakosh-and-building-konkani-wikipedia

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0

nitika — 2013-11-04T12:14:03Z

Goa University re-released Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m., at the Goa University Conference Hall.

Introduction

Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume encyclopedia published by Goa University. It encompasses all the world information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography, etc. By releasing Vishwakosh under CC (Creative Commons) license Goa University is making it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

Goa University and CIS-A2K have signed an MoU to work together to digitize “Konkani Vishwakosh” under Creative Common license and build a Digital Knowledge Partnership in order to enhance digital literacy in the Konkani language and facilitate collaborative knowledge production and disseminate the same free of cost through Kokani Wikipedia (currently under incubation). Gos University and CIS-A2K will co-design and jointly implement relevant training programmes to achieve this objective during the months of Oct-Dec 2013. Information from the Vishwakosh will also be used to write articles on Konakni Wikipedia by the volunteers.

CIS-A2K is grateful for the support and encouragement received from the Goa University Vice-Chancellor Dr. Satish Shetye; Prof. Alito Siqueira; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; Dr. Madhavi Sardesai; Dr. Gopakumar; and other faculty of Goa University.

We are also equally grateful to Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Noronha who have engaged with CIS-A2K team and been a constant source of support.

Snippets from the Event

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“Wikipedia is a global phenomenon and a platform to bring people together for making creative activities possible, which in fact, has challenged the monopoly of publishers and created a movement in order to put together knowledge, further making it accessible to public,” said Satish Shetye, Vice-Chancellor of Goa University, speaking at the launch of the project.
"Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided. Information in the Konkani vishwakosh will also be updated as per the current developments," said Vishnu Vardhan from Access to Knowlesge Programme.
"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.
“This platform will bring together Konkani speaking people of the world, besides providing an opportunity to learn about digitisation, and write Konkani of global standard.” GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Press Coverage

Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013).
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 25, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013).
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013).
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India To Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

Invitation

http://bit.ly/1aCQ8hW

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/re-release-konkani-vishwakosh-under-cc-by-sa-3.0

Re-licensing Sessions with Authors and Organisations

subodh — 2019-08-05T16:12:42Z

In collaboration with Marathi community, CIS-A2K is getting connected with various authors and organisations willing to re-license their content under CC-By-SA. A2K is facilitating the OTRS process Commons for re-licensing as well as digitisation of the content. The team of trained Wikimedians at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, District Pune has taken the responsibility of digitising the books and further uploads in Wikimedia projects.

See the information posted on Wikipedia page here

In July, CIS-A2K facilitated the OTRS process of two organisations. Jnana Prabodhini and Saptahik Vivek Hindustan Prakashan Sanstha have released their 6 books and 8 volumes of encyclopedias respectively in CC-By-SA. As the organisations have solely published these books by sponsoring the writers, editors and designers, the authorised signatory of the organisation has to complete the OTRS process. The simple 'How to do' step by step manual was developed to facilitate this process. This process will be replicated by other organisations in near future. These books are valuable & reliable references in Marathi literature.

CIS-A2K conducted three sessions with authors also. In the field of rural development in Maharashtra, thoughts of Late S. G. Majgaonkar are highly regarded. His son Dhananjay Majgaonkar who holds the copyright for his books, completed the OTRS process and released 3 books in CC-By-SA. The books are now on Commons as well as Wikisource project.

Content donation sessions were conducted with Ila Dalwai, daughter of social reformer & writer Late Hamid Dalwai, thinker & writer Hari Narake and grand daughter of Marathi thinker & writer Late Narahar Kurundkar. These persons handed over the books to CIS-A2K for further process. The digitisation of the books has been started at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal.

The links of books uploaded on Commons are given below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-july-31-2019-re-licensing-sessions-with-authors-and-organisations

RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods?

Arul George Scaria and Anubha Sinha — 2017-08-01T15:24:51Z

Negotiators from sixteen countries are currently meeting in Hyderabad for discussing a free trade agreement titled Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The blog post was published by Live Law.in on July 27, 2017.

Looking at the latest available IP chapter (leak dated October 15, 2015), RCEP stands to adversely affect nearly half of the world’s population on areas like access to knowledge and access to medicines. We would like to highlight five issues related to access to knowledge/ cultural goods, based on the leaked IP chapter.

Clear neglect of users’ rights

As different scholars and courts have tried to point out, copyright is not just about the rights of creators, but also those of users. The agreement will hurt this balance embedded in our copyright law. The balance within the copyright system is ensured by a set of limitations and exceptions which permit free uses for purposes like education, research, etc., thereby serving interests of students,researchers, educators, computer programmers, and persons with disabilities. Studies have also pointed out that industries that depend on limitations and exceptions also contribute substantially to economic growth. For example a recent study (by Computer and Communications Industry Association) in the US found that companies that extensively rely on limitations and exceptions, like media device manufacturers, software developers, internet search and web-hosting providers, and educational institutions, represent one-sixth of the US GDP. Thus, it follows that when countries revise their copyright legislations they should make sure that it fairly benefits right holders as well as users, and not just benefit right holders at the expense of the users which is what is transpiring at RCEP. The language of the agreement indicates that while it is mandatory for countries to increase protection for right holders, a commitment to restore balance via limitations and exceptions is only optional or worse, absent.

Broadcasters' Rights

The provisions regarding broadcasters’ rights also pose many concerns. First, RCEP engages in term extension without providing any economic rationale. The minimum term of protection stipulated under the Rome Treaty of 1961 (the major multilateral treaty in this area) is 20 years and India provides a term of 25 years for broadcasters rights.

The attempts to increase the term of protection to 50 years through RCEP, without conducting any impact assessment of the term extension on access to knowledge and cultural goods, is against public interest. Second, WIPO has been attempting to evolve a multilateral treaty on broadcasters’ rights for the last two decades and one of the major stumbling blocks in this regard is the lack of consensus among member states on what should be protected under the ‘broadcasters’ rights’ for purposes such as educational uses and private uses. RCEP provisions on broadcasters’ rights have conveniently ignored such exceptions and this again illustrates that the focus of RCEP is only on protecting the rightholders and not that of users.

Copyright enforcement

Many of the enforcement related provisions are as problematic. This includes proposals for taking into consideration suggested retail price (SRP) or market value of goods for valuation of the infringing goods as well as for making available pre-determined damages for copyright violations on the election of the right holder. In jurisdictions like the US, this has resulted in local courts being forced to grant millions in damages for even minor copyright infringements. It is also important to mention here that some of the enforcement related provisions can also result in serious privacy violations. This includes the suggestion for adding obligations on internet service providers to disclose to the rightholders the identity of users suspected to be engaging in infringing activities.

Ensuring transparency and accountability

The most troubling aspect of RCEP is that all the negotiations are being conducted in utmost secrecy without any public participation. Though the negotiators have already completed eighteen rounds of discussion, the negotiating text hasn’t been released officially and neither been a subject of parliamentary discussion nor public consultation. The public has a right to know what is being negotiated on their behalf and countries like India must take steps to release the negotiation text without any further delay. It is important to note that all these TRIPS-plus measures are being suggested without any consideration for the potential negative consequences on the society and therefore India must resist these TRIPS-plus provisions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/live-law-arul-george-scaria-and-anubha-sinha-live-law-rcep-ip-chapter-serious-threat-access-knowledge-cultural-goods

Rahul Cherian passes away

praskrishna — 2013-02-10T04:27:13Z

Rahul Cherian, an expert and policy activist in disability law, intellectual property (IP) law and technology law passed away on Thursday. He was 39.

This was published in the Hindu on February 8, 2013.

Rahul passed away while on a family holiday in Goa. The 1998 National Law University Bangalore graduate succumbed to an infection after several days in intensive care. Together with fellow Law alumnus Sachin Malhan, had Cherian co-founded Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy in October 2009, as an NGO supporting stakeholders and public bodies about laws and policies affecting persons with disabilities.

As head of policy initiatives at Inclusive Planet, he was involved in drafting the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being agreed upon by the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva.

Rahul Cherian was also a fellow at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a legal expert on the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s panel on disability laws, and an advisor to several government initiatives related to the disability sector.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-february-8-2013-rahul-cherian-passes-away

Querying Wikipedia Data

pavanaja — 2016-10-21T14:51:01Z

Recently I wrote a blog about the stub article length of Wikipedia articles. I mentioned the difference in actual number of characters and the number of bytes used to define stub articles between English and Indian language Wikipedias. One can open any language Wikipedia, type Special:ShortPages in the search box to get the list of articles which have less than 2048 bytes.

Originally published blog can be accessed here.

However, as already mentioned in that blog, the number of bytes for Indian languages to be considered as stub should be actually 2048*3 = 6144 bytes employing the same criteria. How to find the list of articles fulfilling this condition?

This brings us to the topic of querying Wikipedia data. Wikimedia Foundation Labs has put up a website wherein one can run SQL queries on Wikimedia data. The URL of the website is quarry.wmflabs.org. When we open the website, we get a textbox wherein one can type the SQL query which will run on Wikimedia data. In this example I will consider Wikipedia only. But the queries can be run on the data of other Wikimedia projects like Wikisource, Wikidata, Wiktionary, etc.

One has to login with his/her Wikimedia login. After logging the SQL query can be typed in the textbox and the Submit Query button has to be clicked. The result of execution of the query on Wikimedia data will be displayed. In this blog I will throw more light on Kannada Wikipedia. The database for Kannada Wikipedia is called knwiki_p. Complete list of databases can be obtained by running the SQL query “show databases”.

To get the list of tables in Kannada Wikipedia, the following SQL queries have to be executed:

use knwiki_p;
show tables;

To know the scheme of any table, run the query desc <tablename>;. For example, to know the details of the table by name, issue the query desc page;. The fields which are of importance in the current case is page_title and page_len. The following query will list all articles in Kannada Wikipedia which are having less than 6144 bytes.

use knwiki_p;
select page_title, page_len
from page where page_len < ‘6144’ and page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect = 0 order by page_len ;

Some other useful queries are listed below:

Query	What it does
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0;	Number of articles without redirect
Select Count(*) from page where page_namespace = 0 and page_is_redirect =0 and page_len < 6144;	Number of articles which are having bytes less than 6144
select * from user where user_name Like “P%”;	List all users whose username starts with letter “P”
select user_id, user_name, user_editcount from user where user_editcount >3000 order by user_editcount desc;	List all users with editcount more than 3000
SELECT page_namespace, page_title, page_len FROM page WHERE page_len > 175000 AND page_title NOT LIKE “%/%” ORDER BY page_namespace ASC;	List of long articles (articles having bytes more than 175000)
SELECT rc_title as title, rc_comment as comments, count(*) as Edits FROM recentchanges WHERE rc_namespace = 0 GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 3 DESC LIMIT 100;	Most edited 100 pages during past one month
SELECT log_title, COUNT() FROM logging WHERE log_type=”thanks” GROUP BY log_title ORDER BY COUNT() DESC LIMIT 100;	Who have been thanked most

Useful links -

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/querying-wikipedia-data

Putting women human rights activists on the world map

Admin — 2018-05-20T14:09:17Z

Birubala Rabha may be a household name in Assam, but her crusade against the practice of witch-hunting in her State has not got the attention it deserves from the nation or the world. Barring a handful of articles in print and online publications, little has been written about her fight that spans over two decades. There is no mention of her on Wikipedia.

The article by Sarumathi K. was published in the Hindu on May 19, 2018.

Like Ms. Rabha, India has seen many women human rights activists who have taken up cudgels on behalf of the marginalised and oppressed, but their stories have remained mostly muted. “Sadly women are marginalised even in the online space. There is no mention of these brave women in the more than five-and-a-half million English entries on the Wikipedia website. In fact, less than 20% of the biographies on Wikipedia are dedicated to women, with few devoted to the important work of human rights defenders, and even fewer to women human rights defenders,” said Leah Verghese, senior campaigner and researcher, Amnesty International India.

To take stories of such women to the world, Amnesty International, Bengaluru, is working in collaboration with Wikimedia Foundation to put out profiles of women human rights defenders in the country on Wikipedia. The technical support is being extended by Centre for Internet and Society. “A few women have a brief profile; we will be updating them. For those who have none, we will create new ones,” said Ms. Verghese.

The project, called Brave: EDIT, will take shape with the help of volunteers, mostly college students from Bengaluru, who will compile and upload profiles of women human rights defenders such as Tongam Rina, Jagmati Sangwan, Manjula Pradeep, Aruna Sanghapali, Pavitri Manji and Birubala Rabha, among others. This project is being simultaneously executed in 20 other countries.

“We have created a list of 24 such women activists who have worked in the field of human rights in India. Though the list was much longer, there are some Wikipedia criteria, including notability and verifiability of the people being written about, which led us to bring the number down to 24,” said Ms. Verghese.

The volunteers have been working on the project on weekends and the profiles are likely to be available on Wikipedia in a week.

Manuja Pradeep, Dalit human rights activist from Gujarat and executive director of Navsarjan Trust, who is on the list of women being profiled, said, “The visibility on the Internet is very important for activists, especially women activists. Most of us have spent over two decades on the ground, working for the marginalised community and this entry in Wikipedia is a big recognition for our work.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindu-sarumathi-k-may-19-2018-putting-women-human-rights-activists-on-the-world-map

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs

Sanjana Govil — 2012-01-26T17:11:29Z

While entrepreneurs, IP rights-holders and everyone else who has a stake continue to voice their opinions on the appropriate shape that the Indian IP regime ought to take, they tend to narrow their discussions to the language of substantive IP laws. However, there are regulations that cannot be found in the Patent Act, Copyright Act or Trademarks Act which nevertheless have an impact on how much one is paying for intellectual property. Paying attention to these external factors might just provide a simple solution to your IP woes.

One such factor is the regulation of foreign technology agreements. A foreign technology agreement is an agreement under which a transfer of technology occurs from a foreign source to an Indian entity. This transfer may include anything from the creation of an Indian wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign parent company to the transfer of manufacturing or design know-how.

Regulation of these agreements in India is carried out by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as well as the Reserve Bank of India. In 1991, the Ministry’s Department of Industrial Development (DID) released Press Note No.10 which stated the following:

“39 C. Foreign Technology Agreements

i) Automatic permission will be given for foreign technology agreements in high priority industries (Annex III)* upto a lumpsum payment of Rs. 1 crore, 5% royalty for domestic sales and 8% for exports, subject to total payments of 8% of sales over a 10 year period from date of agreement or 7 years from commencement of production. The prescribed royalty rates are net of taxes and will be calculated according to standard procedures."

As a consequence, automatic approval could only be granted to high priority industries whose royalty payments fell within the prescribed limits. In every other case, the approval of the Secretariat of Industrial Approvals (SIA), DID and the RBI had to be sought. It must be noted that in theory this regulation did not place an absolute ban on royalty outflows above the 5% and 8% ceilings since the possibility of securing government approval for the same did exist. However, considering that a mere 8062 approvals were granted between 1991 and 2009[1], the ceiling was in effect almost absolute.

It appears that the stance of the government of the time was one of strict regulation. From the perspective of Indian entrepreneurs, shareholders and consumers, this was a good thing. To illustrate, imagine a foreign company which manufactures a networked camera cell phone. The company will be paying royalties for several of its features such as the camera, USB port, operating system, etc. This company then sets up a subsidiary in India to manufacture the same phones. Though the total royalties being paid by the parent company are likely to far exceed five per cent of its sales, it cannot charge the subsidiary royalties above this ceiling. Therefore, the costs for the Indian subsidiary reduce significantly. This reduction will be reflected in an increased dividend for shareholders and a reduced cost for consumers.

While the benefits of this royalty ceiling are manifold, it is evident that foreign rights-holders are adversely affected. Therefore, the Government has, unfortunately, gradually “liberalized” its approach towards royalty payments over the years. First the 7 or 10 year duration restrictions were done away with and next the lump sum ceiling was increased from Rs.1 crore to USD 2 million. Ultimately, the ceiling was removed altogether through the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Press Note No.8 of 2009 in the name of liberalization. The adverse impacts on Indian manufacturers were almost immediate as foreign rights-holders began to revise their license agreements.[2]]

Why was this ceiling introduced in the first place? Some say it was due to the acute balance of payments deficit that existed in the country in 1991[3]; when India found itself overspending on imported oil. This urged the government at the time to ensure that foreign collaboration in the private sector was well regulated. Since then, the balance of payments situation in India has comparatively stabilized (though a deficit still does exist[4]) and so there appears to be no immediate need to continue to regulate foreign technology collaboration. However, one can’t help but remember Mark Getty’s prediction that intellectual property will be the "oil of the twenty-first century".[5]

Notes

[1] F. Bureaus, “Tech Transfer, Royalty Payment Norms Eased”, Financial Express (November 6, 2009) available at <http://www.financialexpress.com/news/tech-transfer-royalty-payment-norms-eased/537816/

[2]http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html">http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html>.

[3]K. Sen, “News on Royalty Payment Brings Cheer in New Year”, Business Standard (January 4, 2010) available at <

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/newsroyalty-payment-brings-cheer-in-new-year/381521/>

[4]http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165">http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165>.

[5]http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php">http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows

Pushing women scientists

praskrishna — 2014-10-21T15:44:09Z

Wikipedia edit-a-thon attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of Indian women to science.

The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on October 19, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Ask anyone to name an Indian scientist and the answer is likely to be a man, and not a woman scientist. To let more people know about the unsung heroines of science in India, a workshop called the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 was held here recently. At least 15 participants added content about women scientists over two days to Wikipedia as the first step in bringing public awareness about them.

The edit-a-thon (a large number of people adding or modifying content on Wikipedia at once) concluded on October 14, which was Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology and maths. The event was organised by BioScienceIndia Programme, a non-profit science outreach initiative, and Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Participants added information about at least 40 women scientists. Information on 80 more would be added in a year’s time, said Nandini Rajamani, Co-director, BioScienceIndia Programme.

The aim, however, is to go beyond edit-a-thons, to examine issues that have not received the attention they deserve. Women scientists in India are not on par with men for several reasons (see info box) and the “leaky pipeline” theory is used to describe their decreasing visibility. Vishnu Vardhan, Director, Access to Knowledge team, CIS, said the aim is to motivate a new and younger generation of women scientists.

Karthik Ramaswamy, visiting scientist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and a participant in the edit-a-thon, said science in India has a ‘diversity problem’ with Indian women and minorities represented inadequately. “There are very few women scientists among faculty of science institutions because they have no role models. Hopefully, this (presence on Wikipedia) will provide them with role models,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science

Centre for Internet and Society

Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age

Rejuvenating India’s Rivers the Wiki Way

Events details on Wikimedia meta page

The Workshop

Participants' Feedback

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Introduce Yourself

Editing time

More Editing Post Lunch

Rat and frog game

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Reading Devanagari script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script

Read Bengali, Malayalam classics online as free Wiki libraries grow

Students Pitch In

Tech Hurdle

Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production

Agenda

About the book

Re-releasing Konkani Vishwakosh & Building Konkani Wikipedia

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0

Introduction

Snippets from the Event

Press Coverage

Invitation

Re-licensing Sessions with Authors and Organisations

RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods?

Clear neglect of users’ rights

Broadcasters' Rights

Copyright enforcement

Ensuring transparency and accountability

Rahul Cherian passes away

Querying Wikipedia Data

Putting women human rights activists on the world map

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs

Notes

Pushing women scientists