Centre for Internet and Society

July 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-08-21T09:30:32Z

Our newsletter for the month of July 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the seventh issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you a report on the Institute on Internet and Society held in the month of June, comments submitted by us to the Office of the Controller General of Patents Designs and Trademarks on the draft guidelines on computer related inventions, report from the fifth privacy roundtable meeting held in Kolkata, updates from Kannada Wikipedia workshops held in Hubli and Sagara, a report on Digital Humanities for higher education, media coverage, and information on our forthcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS and the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Punjab, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Chandigarh:

The Punjab Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, July 31, 2013).
The Uttarakhand Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, July 31, 2013).
The Chandigarh Chapter (by CLPR, July 31, 2013).
The Maharashtra Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, July 31, 2013).

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation has given a grant to CIS to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge (Previously IP Reforms)

Comments

Comments on the Draft Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions (by Puneeth Nagaraj, July 31, 2013). The comments were submitted to the office of the Controller General of Patents Designs & Trademarks, Mumbai on July 26, 2013.

Event Participated

An International Conference on Interface between Intellectual Property and Competition Law (organized by ASSOCHAM, July 12, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the conference and shares select notes in a blog post.

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)
The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one team member Nitika Tandon who is working from Delhi office.

Event Organised

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K team, July 21, 2013, Hubli). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave training to the participants on Wikipedia. Leading newspapers like the Times of India, Vijaya Karnataka, Deccan Herald, VijayaVani, Prajavani, Samyukta Karnataka and HosaDiganta covered the event. Scanned versions of the published articles can be viewed here.
A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara (organized by CIS-A2K team, Sagara, July 28, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia.

Event Co-organised

Telugu Wiki Academy at Centre for Good Governance (organized by CIS-A2K and Telegu Wikipedia Community, Centre for Good Governance, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, April 9, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan participated in this event.

Note: The event was organized in April but report got published only in July.

Event Participated

Free Software (organized by Free Software Movement of Karnataka in partnership with Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology, Bidadi, July 24, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja made a presentation on Wikipedia.

Ongoing Event

A Workshop on Posting Articles in Kannada on Wikipedia (organised by the Centre for Proficiency Development Placement Service, University of Mysore, CPDPS premises, Manasagangotri, August 6, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is conducting a workshop. The announcement was made in an article by R. Krishna Kumar in the Hindu on August 2, 2013.

Press Coverage

Konkani Wikipedia next? (by Diana Fernandes, OHeralO, July 27, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

Openness

Events Organised

Delhi: Digital Activism in Europe (The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, July 8, 2013). Bernadette Längle gave a talk about the hacker scene and digital activism in Europe, with a focus on the Chaos Computer Club.
Open Hardware Lab: Play & Invent + Bonus Film Screening (CIS, Bangalore, August 4, 2013). There was a film screening of Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey at the event.

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project
Events Organised

Delhi: Learn to Secure Your Online Communication! (IIC, DU Campus, Delhi, July 6, 2013). A cryptoparty was held in Delhi.
Dharamsala: Learn to Secure Your Online Communication! (Dharamsala, July 13, 2013). A cryptoparty was held in Dharamsala. This was also covered in an article published in the Caravan on August 1, 2013.
Privacy Roundtable Meeting (co-organized by CIS, DSCI, and FICCI, Kolkata, July 13, 2013). An event report was written by Maria Xynou.
The Hackers Way of Reshaping Policies (CIS, Bangalore, August 2, 2012). Bernadette Langle gave a talk on privacy.

Events Participated In

Biometrics or bust? India's Identity Crisis (organised by the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University Press, July 2, 2013). Malavika Jayaram participated as a speaker on UID and Privacy.
DSCI Best Practices Meet 2013 (organized by DSCI, Anna Salai, Chennai, July 12, 2013). Kovey Coles attended the meeting.
Achieve Cyber Security Together (organized by the Confederation of Indian Industries, Chennai, July 13, 2013). Kovey Coles attended this event.

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

The Phishing Society: Why 'Facebook' is more dangerous than the Government Spying on You - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, August 7, 2013). Maria Xynou will give a talk on phishing society.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (ACJ - Asian College of Journalism, Second Main Road (Behind M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013).
Privacy Meeting: Brussels – Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore, August 14, 2013). Gertjan Boulet and Dariusz Kloza will give a talk on privacy.
Privacy Round Table, New Delhi (co-organised with FICCI and DSCI, FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, August 24, 2013).

Columns

How Surveillance Works in India (by Pranesh Prakash, New York Times, July 10, 2013).
Can India Trust Its Government on Privacy? (by Pranesh Prakash, New York Times, July 11, 2013).
Parsing the Cyber Security Policy (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hoot, and cross-posted in Free Speech Initiative, July 13, 2013).

Blog Entries

The Difficult Balance of Transparent Surveillance (by Kovey Coles, July 10, 2013).
Moving Towards a Surveillance State (by Srinivas Atreya, July 15, 2013).
More than a Hundred Global Groups Make a Principled Stand against Surveillance (by Elonnai Hickok, July 31, 2013).
The Audacious ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ (by Kovey Coles, July 31, 2013).

Interview

An Interview with Reijo Aarnio: Maria Xynou conducted an interview with Reijo, the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman.

Media Coverage

Google brings tabs to sneak advertisements into your inbox (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, July 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
How the world’s largest democracy is preparing to snoop on its citizens (by Leslie D' Monte and Joji Thomas Philip, July 3, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Geeks have a solution to digital surveillance in India: Cryptography (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, July 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India's centralised snooping system facing big delays (by Phil Muncaster, The Register, July 9, 2013). CIS is mentioned in this article.
India’s Central Monitoring System: Security can’t come at cost of privacy (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, July 10, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Is CMS a Compromise of Your Security? (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India magazine, July 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Snooping technology: Will CMS work in India? (by Pierre Fitter, FirstPost, July 17, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
सावधान आपके प्रोफ़ाइल पर है पुलिस की नज़र! (by Parul Aggarwal, BBC, July 18, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Your life's an open Facebook (by Shikha Kumar, DNA, July 21, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Concerns over central snoop (by Aloke Tikku, Hindustan Times, June 28, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Your telco could help spy on you (by Joji Thomas Philip, Leslie D'Monte and Shauvik Ghosh, LiveMint, July 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

DNA Profiling Bill
A sub-committee has been constituted as per the recommendations of the Expert Committee of DNA Profiling Bill. The sub-committee will have a meeting in Hyderabad on August 6, 2013. Sunil Abraham is one of the members of the sub-committee.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interviews

Part 3: Interview with Eva Galperin (July 10, 2013).
Part 4: Interview with Marietje Schaake (July 11, 2013).
Part 5: Interview with Amelia Andersdotter (July 12, 2013).
Part 6: Interview with Lhadon Tethong (July 15, 2013).
Part 7: Interview with Jochem de Groot (July 18, 2013).
Part 8: Interview with Jeff Moss (July, 23, 2013).

Cyber Security
Blog Entries

India's National Cyber Security Policy in Review (by Jonathan Diamond, July 31, 2013).
Guidelines for the Protection of National Critical Information Infrastructure: How Much Regulation? (by Jonathan Diamond, July 31, 2013).

Free Speech, Expression and Censorship
Column

You Have the Right to Remain Silent (by Nishant Shah, July 22, 2013).

Event Participated In

Connaught Summer Institute on Monitoring Internet Openness and Rights (organized by the Munk School of Global Affairs, Bloor Street West, July 23, 2013). Malavika Jayaram participated in this event and spoke on "India's Civil Liberties Crisis: Digital Free Will in Free Fall".

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at www.internet-institute.in.

Event Organised

Institute on Internet and Society: Event Report (supported by Ford Foundation, Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, June 8 – 14, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Bernadette Längle, Vir Kamal Chopra, AK Bhargava, Ananth Guruswamy, Archana Gulati, Chakshu Roy, Elonnai Hickok, Gaurab Raj Upadhaya, Helani Galpaya, Michael Ginguld, Dr. Nadeem Akhtar, C. Nandini, Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, Dr. Nishant Shah, Parminder Jeet Singh, Ravikiran Annaswamy, Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Satyen Gupta, Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam, Sunil Abraham, Tulika Pandey and T. Vishnu Vardhan were speakers at the event. The presentations and videos can now be accessed in this report.

Telecom

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

Newspaper Column

Building Up vs Tearing Down (by Shyam Ponappa, July 3, 2013, originally published in the Business Standard, and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot).

Digital Humanities

We are building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Event Co-organised

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013).

Event Organised

Digital Humanities Talk (CIS, Bangalore, July 31, 2013). Sara Morais gave a talk on the advantages and problems in doing digital humanities work.

Event Participated In

Political Economy, Activism and Alternative Economic Strategies (organized by the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Hague, July 9 – 13, 2013). Nishant Shah presented his paper on paper on Citizen Action in the Time of Network.

Blog Entries

Designing Change? Gatekeepers in Digital Humanities (by Sara Morais, July 2, 2013).
Towards Critical Tool-building (by Sara Morais, July 12, 2013).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
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Visit us at http://cis-india.org

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

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2013-bulletin

July 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-10-09T11:46:15Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of July 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, an analysis of the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act and CIS statement on Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives made at WIPO.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the following posts:

Research Manager: CIS is seeking an individual, full-time, for a period of 12 months, beginning from October 2012. The Research Manager is expected to contribute to conceptualising, managing and executing research projects in the field of Internet and Society, build knowledge networks of researchers towards collaborative and open knowledge production and dissemination, developing and executing the monitoring and evaluation processes for humanities and social sciences based research, supporting and managing academic, popular and hybrid publishing projects from existing and new research and initiate innovative and creative areas and methodologies of studying the Internet and its practices in India and the larger Global South, to develop key research clusters and networks. Send in your applications by September 5, 2012 to admin@cis-india.org.
Programme Director – Access to Knowledge: CIS is seeking a Programme Director for its New Delhi office. The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages and will manage a team of four staff members.
Programme Officer – Access to Knowledge and Openness: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in policy research and advocacy to be part of its Openness and Access to Knowledge programmes. The candidates must have knowledge of Indian and international law on copyright, demonstrable research skills, public-speaking skills, open to travel and work independently.
Programme Officer – Internet Governance: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in legal research and policy work to be part of its internet governance (IG) programme. The candidates must have good knowledge of Indian and international law on freedom of expression and privacy, demonstrable research skills, have strong communication skills and be media savvy with the ability to convey complex legal issues clearly to a general audience, open to travel and work independently.

To apply for the posts of Programme Director and Programme Officers, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) or Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three references.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Featured Research

Constitutional Analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (by Ujwala Uppaluri): Ujwala Uppaluri provides a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, and examines its compatibility with Articles 14, 19, 21 of the Constitution of India.
Overview and Concerns Regarding the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act (by GeneWatch UK & the Council for Responsible Genetics, US): The 2007 DNA Profiling Bill pending before the Parliament attempts to create an ambitious centralized DNA bank that would store DNA records of virtually anyone who comes within any proximity to the criminal justice system. The Bill contains provisions limiting access to and use of information contained in the database, and provides for the deletion of a person’s DNA profile upon their acquittal.

Columns

Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful Hackers (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, July 13, 2012): If there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated government machinery has been trying to control and contain the burgeoning online spaces, only to be put in their place by the new-age tech-ninjas that have risen as the new heroes in our digital times.
Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet Freedom (Sunil Abraham, Thinking Aloud, July 17, 2012): Sunil Abraham’s open letter to Hillary Clinton was based on a presentation made during a panel discussion at a Google sponsored conference titled Internet at Liberty 2012 in Washington DC on May 24, 2012. The present article published in Thinking Aloud is an updated version of the blog entry published by CIS earlier this year.

Event Report

Privacy Matters — Medical Privacy (Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, Pune, June 30, 2012): Privacy India in partnership with the Indian Network for People living with HIV/AIDS, CIS, IDRC, and Society in Action Group with support from London-based Privacy International, held a public discussion on "Medical Privacy". Elonnai Hickok introduced the draft book Privacy in India: A Policy Guide that Privacy India had been compiling. The participants discussed medical privacy in India, the legal aspects of medical privacy, Supreme Court views on medical negligence, confidentiality and privacy, best practices on medical privacy in various health settings, etc.

Ongoing Event

The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School: The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School is being hosted in Bangalore, India by CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. The IACS Summer School brings together South and East Asian experts from different disciplines as faculty for graduate and advanced research students to engage with key issues of larger social, cultural and political concerns in cultural studies in Asia.

Upcoming Event

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian (Centre for Internet and Society, 194, 2-C Cross, Domlur Stage II, Bangalore (Near Domlur Club and the TERI Complex)): Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse, firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to assist the government — How? — Find out — Christopher Soghoian will give a lecture on the role companies play in assisting government surveillance.

Events Organised

Privacy Matters — Consumer Privacy (India International Centre, New Delhi, July 7, 2012): Privacy India, in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society, International Development Research Centre, Society in Action Group and Privacy International, invite you to a public conference focused on discussing the challenges and concerns to consumer privacy in India.
The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore, July 27 and 28, 2012): The event was organised by HasGeek and supported by CIS. The first day covered the technology track and talks from business and industry were held on the following day.

Events Participated

Speak Easy: Citizenship, Freedom of Expression and Online Governance (American Centre, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi, July 31, 2012): Chinmayi Arun, a Fellow at CIS spoke at this event organised by the YP Foundation, Youth Ki Awaaz, Change.Org and RTI Anonymous.
Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum 2012 (Aoyama Campus, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, July 20, 2012). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session on international public policy and internet governance issues pertaining to the internet. The event was organised by APrIGF.Asia.
Fifth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (New Delhi, July 22, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting held under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.
Fourth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Planning Commission, New Delhi, July 9, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in the fourth meeting on privacy issues under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.

News & Media Coverage

A Net of Hatred (Samar Khurshid, Hindustan Times, July 14, 2012): “The problem is...that internet conversations become extreme. Liberals don’t get embroiled in heated arguments while fundamentalists, dedicated to extreme ideologies, tend to win out." Web censorship...is in vain as the net is too vast to control.”— Pranesh Prakash.
Post-website attack, cops hot on pursuit of Anonymous hackers (The Times of India, July 11, 2012): “Anonymous consists of a large bunch of activists who gained some credibility in India after they organised offline protests. But this operation doesn't serve any purpose and brings down their credibility as details of those who filed complaints have been revealed.” — Pranesh Prakash.
The kids are all on Facebook (Shikha Kumar, Daily News & Analysis, July 8, 2012): “Children’s interaction online should always be under parental supervision. Censorship and control is not the responsibility of the government, but of parents.” — Sunil Abraham.
Freedom debate takes a new course (Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, July 1, 2012): “Under Indian copyright law, ISPs cannot be liable for copyright infringement committed by their users. So while it is good that the court clarified that its order was limited in its scope, it is possible to read even this as going far beyond that which is allowed under the law.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Access to Knowledge

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

WIPO

CIS participated at the 24^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights held in Geneva from July 16 to 25, 2012. The outcomes are listed below:

India's Opening Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at SCCR 24: The opening statement of the Indian delegation was delivered by G.R. Raghavender on July 19, 2012. The statement called upon all countries to conclude textual work on the treaty and call for a Diplomatic Conference to finalize it.
CIS's Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement on July 20, 2012.
CIS's Statement on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement specifically on the Chair's Non Paper on the Protection of Broadcasters which was released on July 23, 2012.
CIS's Statement on Exceptions & Limitations for Libraries and Archives: Pranesh Prakash delivered the statement on the issue of exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives on July 25, 2012.
Transcripts of Discussions at WIPO: The proceedings were live streamed. Copies of the unedited transcripts are hosted for archival purposes.

International Press Coverage

U.S. support sought for treaty to allow blind people access to copyrighted works (Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, July 24, 2012): “The vast majority of visually disabled people live in poor, developing countries where very little money is spent on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere...The treaty would end the book famine that they currently face.” — Pranesh Prakash.
US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books (Paige McClanahan, The Guardian, July 30, 2012): “We in developing countries have found our voice and we are not going to back down. When people are demanding their basic rights, no power in the world is strong enough to stop them getting what they want.”— Rahul Cherian.

National Press Coverage

EU stalls treaty talks to allow copyright waiver for print disabilities (The Hindu, Priscilla Jebaraj, July 25, 2012): “[The treaty] would allow organisations working for the blind to import and export accessible works without seeking the copyright holder's permission, since very little money is spent in developing countries on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Blog Entry

Accessibility of Government Websites in India — Test Results

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Blog Entries

Unpacking Openness: From Seemingly Transparent to Definitely Opaque: Nishant Shah was in Netherlands recently and as part of his trip had given a public lecture to an audience at Kennisland. One of the respondents wrote a small write-up of the talk. This was originally published on the Kennisland website on July 25, 2012.
2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics (by Rebecca Schild): The 2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics convened a panel on Open Access. There was consensus amongst the panelist that the “big question” facing the open access movement no longer remains "if" or "why" open access, but rather "how" open access. The panel proved instructive for shifting the discussion away from ideology towards concrete questions facing the open access agenda and its implementation.
Open Government Data (by Pranesh Prakash): Pranesh Prakash provides an analysis of the chapter that CIS published in this report with Transparency & Accountability Initiative.

Grant Award

Wikimedia Foundation awards grant to Centre for Internet and Society to expand Access to Knowledge in India: Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society to expand their Access to Knowledge program in India. This information was published by Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer on the Wikimedia Foundation website on August 1, 2012.

Digital Natives

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

Book Review

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies: Nishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.

Digital Natives Newsletter

Citizen Activism the Past Decade: The deadline for contribution to the Digital Natives newsletter expires on August 15. Nilofar Ansher gives a list of topics that contributors can explore in this blog entry.

Columns

Across Borders (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, July 5, 2012): “Digital Natives are not only a mobile-wielding generation, but also a mobile generation. They are fluid, not necessarily tied to the geographies of their origin, and often imagine themselves, as travelling across different networks and systems, like the information traffic on the internet. This dislocation of the fixity of where we are from and who we are is one of the most exciting results of the digital turn.”
Revisiting Techno-euphoria (Nishant Shah, DML Central, July 5, 2012): “The gadgets and tools we use are, actually, only material manifestations of the digital — which operates at the level of a paradigm or a context, through which we are slowly reshaping the material, social, and cultural notions of who we are and how we connect to the world around us.”

Event Participated

10th International ISTR Conference (Universita Degli Studi Di Siena, Italy, July 10 – 13, 2012): Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session, "Theoretical Grounding of Civic Driven Change". He gave a public lecture on Beyond Normative Citizenships: Exploring the ‘New’ in Digital Activism.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The following are the latest outputs:

Fixed Line Telephones (by Jürgen Kock): This module discusses the features and the various stages of the development of fixed line telephones, its early history, the basic principle of a fixed line telephone system, plain old telephone service, digital telephones, cordless phones to today's features of fixed line telephones.
Different Forms of Video Communication (by Tina Mani): In this module, Tina Mani takes us through some of the common forms of video communication such as video calling, video conferencing, telepresence and video sharing.
Broadband Policy, 2004 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh tells us that the Policy was laid down by the Government of India in order to realize the potential of broadband services. It aimed at enhancing the quality of life by implementation of tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, entertainment, etc.
Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, 1955 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish examines the purpose of the legislation, the persons affected by it, the administrative bodies which come under the Act, the penalties (including the consequences in case of non-compliance), appeal process and the debates surrounding the legislation.
The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh throws light on the main objective of the Act — that of regulating the possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus.

RTI Application

Use of DPI Technology by ISPs — Response by the Department of Telecommunications : Smiti Mujumdar on behalf of CIS filed requests under the Right to Information with the Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, BSNL and MTNL, asking a number of questions related to the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology by Internet Service Providers (ISP) in India and corresponding regulations. A scanned version of the response from the Department of Telecommunications is hosted online.

Column in Business Standard

Decision Analysis for Interest Rates (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, July 5, 2012): The discipline of systematic evaluation through applying process-flow and decision analysis — in this example, of financial logic — can help make reasoned, practical decisions, whether for interest rates, or for resolving issues in power supply, or in telecommunications, spectrum and broadband.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

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

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

July 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T07:00:26Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs: Re: Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan, Archive and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, Pornography and the Law by Namita Malhotra, The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem – An Inquiry into Technology and Governance by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar were sent for peer review.

Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad

Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation [Deadline for submission – 26 July 2011; Participants to be selected by 30 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

The Digital Natives Newsletter

"Links in the Chain" is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community members. It includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops — Talking Back (Taipei, 15 – 18 August 2010), My Bubble, My Space, My Voice (Johannesburg, 6 – 9 November 2010) and From Face to the Interface (Santiago, 8 – 10 February 2011) as well as the facilitators, interviews with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, www.digitalnatives.in.

The Digital Dinosaurs [Links in the Chain, Volume 7]
Special Mid Year Edition [Links in the Chain, Volume 8]

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Featured Research

Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective (Revised Edition 2011) [A G3ict White Paper researched and edited by the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. Editor: Nirmita Narasimhan, Revised edition: May 2011]

Access to Knowledge (previously IPR Reform)

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

Featured

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO (speech by Pranesh Prakash at a side-event co-organized from 15 to 24 June 2011, by WIPO and the Internet Society on intermediary liability).

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.

Documentary

People are Knowledge – Experimenting with Oral Citations on Wikipedia (co-produced by CIS in association with the Wikimedia Foundation, on Oral Citations in India and South Africa)

Featured

Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector (published by Transparency & Accountability Initiative, CIS contributed the section on Open Government Data).

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Post

RTI and Third Party Information: What Constitutes the Private and Public? [by Noopur Raval]

Events Organised

Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla [at CIS, Bangalore on 8 July 2011]
Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden [at TERI, Bangalore on 27 June 2011]

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured

Privacy & Media Law (by Sonal Makhija). The research examines the existing media norms governed by Press Council of India, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and the Code of Ethics drafted by the News Broadcasting Standard Authority, the constitutional protection guaranteed to an individual’s right to privacy upheld by the courts, and the reasons the State employs to justify the invasion of privacy.

Comments

Right to Privacy Bill 2010 — A Few Comments (by Elonnai Hickok). CIS has given specific recommendations and specific comments on the Right to Privacy Bill, 2010, which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Rajeev Chandrashekhar.

Event Report

Privacy Matters, Guwahati – the event was organised by IDRC, Society in Action Group, IDEA Chirang, an NGO initiative working with grassroots initiatives in Assam, Privacy India and CIS on 23 June 2011.

New Blog Entries

My Experiment with Scam Baiting (by Sahana Sarkar)
When Data Means Privacy, What Traces Are You Leaving Behind? (by Noopur Raval)
Video Surveillance and Its Impact on the Right to Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok)
Consumer Privacy in e-Commerce (by Sahana Sarkar)
An Overview of DNA Labs in India (by Shilpa Narani)
UID: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear? (by Shilpa Narani)

News & Media Coverage

Indian SMEs still fail to harness the power of Net [Sunday Guardian, 19 June 2011]

Sorry Wrong Number [Telegraph, 3 July 2011]

Aadhaar’s moment of truth [Deccan Herald, 5 July 2011]
The Walls Have Ears [Outlook, issue, 11 July 2011]
Transparent Government, via Webcams in India [New York Times, 17 July 2011]; news also published in other languages in wprost (Polish), ictnews (Vietnamese) and @rret sur images(French)
NYT lauds Oommen Chandy’s 24/7 office webcast [Deccan Chronicle, 19 July 2011]
UID: The World’s Largest Biometric Database [International School on Digital Transformation, 21 July 2011]. Sunil Abraham made a presentation.
Facebook, my boyfriend is lousy [Bangalore Mirror, 24 July 2011]

Portal augurs well for transparency [The Hindu, 25 July 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter

Follow CIS on identi.ca

Join the CIS group on Facebook

Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2011-bulletin

July 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T09:41:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage, information on our events and other updates for the month of July 2010.

News Updates

Call for Case Studies on ICT
CIS invites organisations to participate in a study focusing on best practices in the use of ICTs in education for persons with disabilities.
http://bit.ly/d03jS0

Networking? Not working
Concerns about privacy, wastage of time and trivialized communication are some reasons ‘refuseniks’ are going off sites such as Facebook and MySpace, writes Shreya Ray in Livemint.
http://bit.ly/dpdKhX

Digital them about yourself?
If you’re on Facebook or have a blog, you could be a digital native, says Akhila Seetharaman.
http://bit.ly/ahA6Ts

Next CPOV Conference in Leipzig
Two CPOV conferences have been held so far. The first one in Bangalore and the second one in Amsterdam, the third is to be held in Leipzig.
http://bit.ly/cLN8XE

CIS featured in the Report on Research and Funding Landscape within the Arts and Humanities in India
Centre for Internet and Society has been listed as an area of excellence and innovative research in this report.
http://bit.ly/9GJsJ7

UID Act may be released for debate, may be introduced in monsoon session
An article by Karen Leigh & Surabhi Agarwal in livemint on June 30, 2010.
http://bit.ly/9Hq5dg

A New Age in News
Citizen journalism and online piracy were key topics during the opening day of the Mekong Information and Communication Technology conference. The 2010 Mekong ICT conference in Chang Mai, Thailand, has brought together an experienced crowd of experts from all over the globe. They have gathered to discuss the status, trends and the current situation of the ICT world.
http://bit.ly/bdGzbQ

Activists welcome privacy Bill, but point out concerns
Experts have welcomed the government's move to bring in a law for protecting individual privacy, amid concerns about the potential misuse of personal data it is collecting to execute social welfare and security schemes.
http://bit.ly/bnddaJ

Upcoming Events

Locating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex: A Lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin
The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), IT for Change and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are hosting a lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women's Studies, Miami University, Ohio, USA at CIS, Bangalore on 23 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/9zy2Fa

Promoting Education through ICT
ICT workshop in New Delhi from 27th to 29th October, 2010...Registrations to begin soon!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Research

The Attention Economy - A Brief Introduction
This post examines attention economy as a brief prelude to a paper and monograph to be published on it. It examines the current theses on attention economy and a few approaches to reading attention economy in gaming besides foregrounding the attention economy and its functions and influence in MMORPGs.
http://bit.ly/OP7QFl

The Making of an Asian City
Nishant Shah attended the conference on 'Pluralism in Asia: Asserting Transnational Identities, Politics, and Perspectives' organised by the Asia Scholarship Foundation, in Bangkok, where he presented the final paper based on his work in Shanghai. The paper, titled 'The Making of an Asian City', consolidates the different case studies and stories collected in this blog, in order to make a larger analyses about questions of cultural production, political interventions and the invisible processes that are a part of the IT Cities.
http://bit.ly/MXxyXP

Internet, Society and Space in Indian City: First Report
This is the first report on the progress of the research on Internet, Society and Space in Indian City. The post is a collection of some of the initial focus of these studies. I have started simultaneously exploring and testing various arguments and have listed some key observations from the ones that are nearing completion.
http://bit.ly/Ndmday

Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei: Only a Few Seats Left!!!
The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet world and help them learn from each other’s individual experiences.
http://bit.ly/P4mCKv

Accessibility

NMEICT Funds Book Conversion Project for the Print Disabled
IIT, Kharagpur, Daisy Forum of India, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands to undertake a project for the print disabled. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) is funding this project.
http://bit.ly/bWHi00

Right to Read: Campaign Updates
A nationwide campaign on Right to Read was co-organised by CIS along with the Daisy Forum of India and Inclusive planet to highlight the lack of content in accessible formats and accelerate change in the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, which presently does not permit the conversion of books in accessible formats for the benefits the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons. The campaign is affiliated with the global R2R campaign started by the World Blind Union in April 2008.
http://bit.ly/akoaSj

Intellectual Property

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
CIS analyses the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, from a public interest perspective to sift the good from the bad, and importantly to point out what crucial amendments should be considered but have not been so far.
http://bit.ly/KLBQDx

A Guide to Key IPR Provisions of the Proposed India-European Union Free Trade Agreement
The Centre for Internet and Society presents a guide for policymakers and other stakeholders to the latest draft of the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement, which likely will be concluded by the end of the year and may hold serious ramifications for Indian businesses and consumers.
http://bit.ly/Rw7whN

Openness

Open Access to International Agricultural Research
Open access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.
http://bit.ly/cspMYY

Telecom

Catching up on broadband
The govt can invest some of the Rs 1,00,000 crore from the spectrum auctions to help India catch up on broadband, says Shyam Ponappa in his latest article published in the Business Standard on July 1, 2010.
http://bit.ly/ag67TU

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2010-bulletin

Joint Report on Training of the Use of eSpeak in Hindi with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-03-19T01:24:34Z

The training programmes were conducted at the National Association for the Blind, New Delhi on February 5 and 6, 2015 and Blind Relief Association, Delhi on February 13 and 14, 2015. Fifteen participants attended the first training programme at National Association for the Blind. Seventeen participants attended the second training programme held at Blind Relief Association.

The training at National Association for the Blind, Delhi had representations from organizations serving the blind and visually impaired from all across Delhi. Those who took part were either heads of IT Department or computer instructors. The aim of inviting the IT heads and computer instructors was to promote the use of NVDA in their training programmes and also facilitate reading and writing in Hindi.

The training programme at Blind Relief Association was mainly attended by special educators for the blind. The aim of promoting use of NVDA and knowledge of reading and writing in Hindi using eSpeak amongst these special educators was that these special educators would be working closely with the blind community. If the special educators are sensetized, the use of regional languages can be maximized.

List of Participants at National Association for the Blind

1	Bharti Kalra	bhartikalra56@gmail.com	Computer Instructor, National Association for the Blind
2	Jaikaran	dhaiajaikaran@gmail.com	Gail India Pvt. Ltd.
3	Shivani	shivaniharit@redifmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
4	Shabnam	shabnamdumh@gmail.com	Research Assistant, National Association for the Blind
5	Neetu	ng.neetugoyal@gmail.com	Computer Instructor, National Association for the Blind
6	Dr. R.S. Chauhan	chauhan.ddn@gmail.com	Freelancer
7	Varsha singh	varshactet@gmail.com	Volunteer, National Association for the Blind
8	Neelu Suneja	sunejaneelu@gmail.com	Head, IT Department, Blind Relief Association
9	Rajpal	rajpal007@gmail.com	Senior Computer Instructor, Blind Relief Association
10	Ganesh Bhatt	bhattg526@gmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
11	Maneesh sharma	sharma.manish445@gmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
12	Mohammad Sajid	mdsajidsdp11@gmail.com	Student
13	Sanjeev Luthra	sanjeevluthra737@gmail.com	Student
14	Nilesh varma	nileshvarma940@gmail.com	Student
15	Irfan Mir	meererfan@gmail.com	Student

List of Participants at Blind Relief Association

1	Rajpal	E-1/11B, Om Vihar Extn, Uttam Nagar	rajpal007@gmail.com
2	Arun Tiwari	Village Poterganj, Post Pathwali, Dist Gaunda	Mrtiwari1982@gmail.com
3	Rishoo Singh	House No.44, Meethapur, Badarpur	mr.rsingh2908@gmail.com
4	Vijay Tiwari	House No.62, Gokhle Nagar, Konch, Dist Jalaun	tiwarivijay322@gmail.com
5	Shiv Kumar	Village Post Padri, Distt Rewa	shivkumarrawat144@gmail.com
6	Sonia Setia	742/3, Ward No-14, GuruNanak Pura, Rohtak	soniasetia1986@gmail.com
7	Sandeep Kumar	Satyara ganj, Behind Bus stand, Dist. Rewa	sandeepkumarj61@gmail.com
8	Rini Singh	village post Jhanjhara, Pasraha, Dist. Khagriya	rinisingh2792@gmail.com
9	Rajbhan Saket	Gram Atarala Kala, Tehsil Hanmana, Dist. Rewa	rajbhan591@gmail.com
10	Rajbala Bhagel	Dubey Gas Agency, Dayalbagh, Agra	rajbalabhagel@gmail.com
11	Priyanka Devi	Town jhinjhana, Dist. Shamli	kashyappriyanka250@gmail.com
12	Pramod Kumar	Gram Atroley,Post Lakhua, Dist. Ghaziabad	pkpramodpk9@gmail.com
13	Mritunjay Kumar	Hingua, Miyatala, Dist. Chappra	mritunjay1942@gmail.com
14	Mary Mini	AICB, Braille Bhawan, sector-5, Rohini	minimary1994@gmail.com
15	Avnish Kumar	N166/122, J.J. Camp, Badli	avnishk910@gmail.com
16	Hidayat Husen	House No.311, Zakir Hussain Ward, Gohalpur, Jabalpur	Hidayatansari420@gmail.com
17	Biranchi Sahoo	Japharapur, G.P Khairabad, Dist. Jajpur	Biranchi.caviodisha@gmail.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/training-on-use-of-espeak-hindi-nvda

January 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-03-01T01:35:56Z

January 2018 Newsletter

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
The paper titled "Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products" has been published in the latest issue of the NYU Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. It is one of the outputs of the Pervasive Technology project and has been authored by Prof. Jorge L. Contreras, Paxton M. Lewis, and Rohini Lakshané. CIS made a submission to the Department of Industrial Planning and Promotion on mobile patents. CIS offered its assistance on matters aimed at developing a suitable policy framework for SEPs and FRAND in India, and, working towards sustained innovation, manufacture and availability of mobile technologies in India The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare in India is increasing with new startups and large ICT companies offering AI solutions for healthcare challenges in the country. The report by by Yesha Paul, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha and Udbhav Tiwari seeks to map the present state of AI in the healthcare sector in India. About 27% of India's population is still illiterate or barely literate. Most privacy policies and terms of services for web and mobile applications are in English and therefore it is only 10% of us who can actually read them before we provide our consent. The article by Sunil Abraham was published in Deccan Herald on January 20, 2018. CIS made a submission to TRAI Consultation on inputs to the National Telecom Policy. CIS in its submission also recommended what all should be the main objectives of TRAI while drafting the next edition of National Telecom Policy. Under a research grant from the Azim Premji University CIS has initiated a study of the ongoing updation process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and the resultant reform of citizen identification infrastructure in India. The 2G judgment of December 2017 provides a critique of how no proper evidence was presented on existence of an FCFS policy and its improper implementation, wrote Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard which was published on January 3, 2018.

Highlights

The paper titled "Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products" has been published in the latest issue of the NYU Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. It is one of the outputs of the Pervasive Technology project and has been authored by Prof. Jorge L. Contreras, Paxton M. Lewis, and Rohini Lakshané.
CIS made a submission to the Department of Industrial Planning and Promotion on mobile patents. CIS offered its assistance on matters aimed at developing a suitable policy framework for SEPs and FRAND in India, and, working towards sustained innovation, manufacture and availability of mobile technologies in India
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare in India is increasing with new startups and large ICT companies offering AI solutions for healthcare challenges in the country. The report by by Yesha Paul, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha and Udbhav Tiwari seeks to map the present state of AI in the healthcare sector in India.
About 27% of India's population is still illiterate or barely literate. Most privacy policies and terms of services for web and mobile applications are in English and therefore it is only 10% of us who can actually read them before we provide our consent. The article by Sunil Abraham was published in Deccan Herald on January 20, 2018.
CIS made a submission to TRAI Consultation on inputs to the National Telecom Policy. CIS in its submission also recommended what all should be the main objectives of TRAI while drafting the next edition of National Telecom Policy.
Under a research grant from the Azim Premji University CIS has initiated a study of the ongoing updation process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and the resultant reform of citizen identification infrastructure in India.
The 2G judgment of December 2017 provides a critique of how no proper evidence was presented on existence of an FCFS policy and its improper implementation, wrote Shyam Ponappa in his article in the Business Standard which was published on January 3, 2018.

The following articles were written by CIS members:

Digital native: Memory card is full (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 3, 2018).
The 2G Judgment of December 2017: What Was It About? (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 3, 2018).
Fixing Aadhaar: Security developers' task is to trim chances of data breach (Sunil Abraham; Business Standard; January 10, 2018).
Another Step towards Privacy Law (Elonnai Hickok; Governance Now; January 15, 2018).

Data Protection: We can innovate, leapfrog (Sunil Abraham; Deccan Herald; January 20, 2018).

CIS in the News:

From net neutrality to IBC & Aadhaar, how Vidhi is framing key government legislation (Surabhi Agarwal and Samanwaya Rautray; Economic Times; January 4, 2018).
UIDAI denies any breach of Aadhaar database (Komal Gupta; Livemint; January 7, 2018).
Token security or tokenized security? (Manasa Venkataraman and Ajay Patri; Livemint; January 9, 2018).
UIDAI introduces new two-layer security system to improve Aadhaar privacy (Economic Times; January 11, 2018).
Hammered government offers Virtual ID firewall to protect your Aadhaar (New Indian Express; January 11, 2018).
Virtual Aadhaar ID: too little, too late? (Yuthika Bhargava; Hindu; January 11, 2018).
India To Introduce Virtual ID For Aadhaar To Strengthen Privacy (Bloomberg Quint; January 11, 2018).
UIDAI's Virtual ID, limited KYC does little to protect Aadhaar data already collected, say critics (Business Today; January 12, 2018).
Aadhaar Body Talked About Virtual ID 7 Years Ago, Put It Off: UIDAI Chief (Sukriti Dwivedi; NDTV; January 13, 2018).
Bengaluru gives data safety tips to panel (Deccan Herald; January 14, 2018).
Is your personal information under lock and key? (Sravanthi Challapalli; Hindu Businessline; January 16, 2018).
Aadhaar-privacy debate: How the 12-digit number went from personal identifier to all pervasive transaction tool (First Post; January 18, 2018).
Paytm Payments Bank woos corporates with digital incentives (Komal Gupta and Remya Nair; Livemint; January 24, 2018).
Aadhaar's new security measures are good, it is still work in progress (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; January 25, 2018).

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

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Government of Odisha adopting Creative Commons License to Promote Transparency and Access to Knowledge (Sailesh Patnaik; January 17, 2018).
Experience and Learning outcome from Wikipedia Education Program (Lakshmi Karlekar; January 30, 2018).

Events Organized

Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Dept. of Mass Communication, Solapur University (Organized by CIS-A2K and Dept of Mass Communication, Solapur University; Solapur; January 2, 2018).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Dayanand College, Solapur (Organized by CIS-A2K and Dayanand College, Solapur; Solapur; January 3, 2018).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Willingdon College, Sangli (Organized by CIS-A2K and Willingdon College; Sangli; January 5, 2018).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Govt.Science & Arts College, Aurangabad (Organized by CIS-A2K and Govt.Science & Arts College; Aurangabad; January 9, 2018).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada Vidyapeeth (Organized by CIS-A2K and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University; Aurangabad; January 10, 2018).
Marathi Wikipedia Workshop at Shivaji University, Kolhapur (Organized by CIS-A2K and Shivaji University; Kolhapur; January 15, 2018).
Wikidata Workshop (Organized by CIS-A2K and Andhra Loyola College; Vijaywada; January 20 - 21, 2018).
Train the Trainer 2018 (Organized by CIS-A2K; Mysore; January 26 - 28, 2018).

►Pervasive Technologies

Research Paper

Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products (Jorge L. Contreras, Rohini Lakshané and Paxton M. Lewis; JIPEL NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law, Vol. 7 - No.1 on January 16, 2018).

Submission

Submission to DIPP at Meeting with IP Stakeholders (Anubha Sinha; January 1, 2018). The submission was made in December 2017 but it was published on the website in January 2018.

►Openness

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

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

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

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Artificial Intelligence and the Healthcare Industry in India (Yesha Paul, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha and Udbhav Tiwari (Ecosystem mapping by Shweta Mohandas, Sidharth Ray and Elonnai Hickok. Designed by Saumyaa Naidu under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License; January 26, 2018).

Events Organized

Roundtable on A.I. and Manufacturing and Services (TERI, Bengaluru; January 19, 2018).

null Bangalore Meet: Special Session on Digital Identity and Privacy (CIS, Bengaluru; January 19, 2018). Sunil Abraham gave a talk.

►Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Internet Governance Forum Report 2017 (Shweta Mohandas; January 11, 2018).

Mobile net ban during peaceful protest leaves farmers confused (Shruti Jain; January 19, 2018).

‘Hurt sentiments’ cost Udaipur internet access for four days (Shruti Jain; January 19, 2018).

-----------------------------------

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

Article

Submission to TRAI Consultation on "Inputs for Formulation of National Telecom Policy - 2018" (Pranesh Prakash; January 25, 2018).

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

Blog Entry

Life of a Tuple: National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Reform of Citizen Identification Infrastructure in Assam (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; January 22, 2018). All posts related to the study can be found here.

-----------------------------------
About CIS
-----------------------------------

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/Qjanuary-2018-newsletter

January 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-03-01T06:00:37Z

Welcome to the January 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

We are pleased to bring you the Centre for Internet & Society's January newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPD) Act, which was passed in December 2016, seeks to give effect to the rights and obligations enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities, which India signed and ratified nearly a decade ago. Nirmita Narasimhan in a blog entry has summarized the key provisions of the Act relating to digital accessibility. The latest judgment in the matter of Super Cassettes v. MySpace is a landmark and progressive ruling, which strengthens the safe harbor immunity enjoyed by Internet intermediaries in India. CIS was one of the intervenors in the case, and has been duly acknowledged in the judgment. Meena Gayathri became the first South Indian Wikiwoman to complete 100 Wikidays challenge. The challenge required Wikipedians to create one new article per day for one hundred days in a row. Gayathri's contribution and passion towards Telugu language and culture have transcended into a "knowledge revolution". The Committee on Digital Payments constituted by the Ministry of Finance and chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, submitted its report on the "Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem" on December 09, 2016. The report was made public on December 27, and comments were sought from the general public. CIS submitted its comments. The comments were authored by Sumandro Chattopadhyay. ICANN sought community input on the Proposed ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy on 7 November 2016. In response to this CIS submitted its comments. The comments were authored by Padma Venkataraman, Rohini Lakshané, Sampada Nayak and Vidushi Marda. The eleven sessions selected for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) to be held at the IIIT Bangalore campus during March 3-5, 2017 has been announced. The conference is being organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at IIIT Bangalore and CIS.

CIS in the news

India’s Digital ID Rollout Collides With Rickety Reality (Gabriele Parussini; Wall Street Journal; January 13, 2017).
Millions of Indians move from cash to digital payments. But some ask whether it’s safe (Rama Lakshmi; Washington Post; January 14, 2017).
Sunil Abraham on Aadhaar's misuse during demonetisation (Economic Times; January 14, 2017)
The soon-to-be launched Aadhaar Pay will let you make purchases using your fingerprint (Indulekha Aravind; January 15, 2017).
Lost your phone? Here's how you can make your mobile theft-proof (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; January 16, 2017).
The Dangers Of Aadhaar-Based Payments That No One Is Talking About (Mayank Jain; Bloomberg; January 17, 2017).
Supreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp, Centre on data privacy (MJ Antony, Ayan Pramanik and Apurva Venkat; Business Standard; January 17, 2017).
Demonetisation: Cost Vs Benefit (NDTV; December 24, 2016). Sunil Abraham took part in the Big Fight programme aired by NDTV. The video was published on January 17, 2017.
For India’s complaints department, visit Facebook Live (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; January 23, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles:

Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017).
Digital Native: The Dream of the Cyborg (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 8, 2017).
Digital transitions in the newsroom: How are Indian language papers adapting differently? (Zeenab Aneez; London School of Economics and Political Science; January 16, 2017).
Digital native: Back at it Again (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 22, 2017).

Jobs

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

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

Blog Entry

Digital accessibility in the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act 2016 (Nirmita Narasimhan; January 23, 2017).

Participation in Event

Workplace Solutions Champions Consultative Workshop (Organized by Enable India, January 21 - 22, 2017; Ecumenical Christian Centre, Bangalore). Nirmita Narasimhan attended the workshop.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entry

Super Cassettes v. MySpace (Redux) (Anubha Sinha; January 16, 2017).

Event Organized

Seminar on Rethinking Copyright and Licensing for Digital Publishing Today (Organized by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, and CIS; New Delhi; January 23, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.

►Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

WikiSangamotsavam 2016 (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Hyderabad Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Rajahmundry Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Mini Workshop on Tools: Wikipedia Monthly Meetup, Hyderabad (Manasa Rao and Pavan Santhosh; January 18, 2017).
Meet Telugu Wikipedian Surampudi Meena Gayathri – the first South Indian Wikiwoman completing 100 Wikidays Challenge (Ting-Yi Chang; January 23, 2017).

Event Organized

Odia Wikipedia and Orientation Training Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K team; Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal; January 31, 2017).

►Openness

Participation in Event

CBGA - Consultation on Opening Up Access to Budget Data in India (Organized by CBGA; January 27, 2017; New Delhi). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a speaker.

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

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on the Report of the Committee on Digital Payments (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha; January 12, 2017).

Blog Entries

The Design & Technology behind India’s Surveillance Programmes (Udbhav Tiwari; January 20, 2017)
Workshop on ‘Privacy after Big Data’ (Amber Sinha; January 27, 2017).

Events Organized

Discussion on Ranking Digital Rights in India (India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi; January 7, 2017).
Rankathon on Digital Rights (CIS office, New Delhi; January 8, 2017).

Participation in Events

Global Governance Futures 2027 - Session 3 (Organized by Global Public Policy Institute and supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung; New Delhi; January 17, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay joined Ankhi Das (Facebook) and Arun Mohan Sukumar (Observer Research Foundation) to discuss the "data governance" scenarios developed by the GGF 2027 Fellows.
CPDP (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection) 2017 (Organized by Privacy International; Brussels, January 26, 2017). Amber Sinha participated as a panelist.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

New Media, personalisation and the role of algorithms (Amber Sinha; January 2, 2017).

Participation in Events

Training programme for Chairs, Convenor and Experts for International Standardization Work (Organized by National Institute of Training for Standardization, under the Bureau of India Standards; January 19 - 20, 2017; NOIDA). Udbhav Tiwari attended the training programme.
Seminar on Understanding Financial Technology, Cashless India, and Forced Digitalisation (Centre for Financial Accountability; New Delhi; January 24, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay spoke on the emerging architecture of FinTech in India.

►Free Speech & Expression

Submission

Comments on the Proposed ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy (Padma Venkataraman, Rohini Lakshané, Sampada Nayak and Vidushi Marda; January 13, 2017).

Blog Entry

Social Media Monitoring (Amber Sinha; January 13, 2017).

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

Article

Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; January 5, 2017).

Event

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selected Sessions (Organized by Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy and CIS; IIIT, Bangalore; March 3 - 5, 2017). Eleven sessions have received 10 or more nominations.

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

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

January 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-02-26T17:02:23Z

Our newsletter for the month of January can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of the newsletter (January 2015). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

Forbes India in an article titled “Minds that (should) matter” names Sunil Abraham as one of the Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India).

Subhashish Panigrahi won the 2015 Opensource.com Community Awards under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS team as Research Director. Sumandro has replaces Nishant Shah who stepped down from the position.
Rishika on behalf of CIS prepared an analysis of the disability exceptions in Copyright Legislations . The blog post provides in detail the country-wise exceptions in copyright legislations.
NVDA team conducted a training programme on Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA in Thiruvananthapuram on January 24 and 25, 2015. Chakshumathi's main trainer Akhil M. took eSpeak Malayalam classes and Dr. Homiyar took classes on NVDA and accessible equipment.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India invited comments on the First Draft of India's National IPR Policy. CIS made its submission.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Nehaa Chaudhari has produced a research methodology document which maps the existing literature around questions of competition law intersecting with intellectual property law on the specific issue of enabling access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices .
Maggie Huang, an intern at CIS as part of the Pervasive Technologies project has written a blog entry which documents, synthesizes, and analyses learnings from attending various music industry trade conferences.

CIS-A2K team on December 28, 2014 organized a MediaWiki hackathon event for Telugu Wikimedia community members to enhance their skills and understanding of technical matters related to MediaWiki usage. The theme of the workshop was “Mediawiki, its extensions and tools to work around” and it aimed at allowing Wikipedians to use MediaWiki tools more effectively.

Subhashish Panigrahi authored an op-ed that highlights the need for taking Odia language to the international fora instead of keeping it confined in the books. The op-ed was published in the Samaja on January 30, 2015.

A journal article by Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran the steps taken by scientists and librarians in the West to reclaim ease of access to research findings with what is happening in India along with a few suggestions was published by the Indian National Science Academy Journals.
The Supreme Court, in Sabu George v. Union of India and Ors. (WP (C) 341/2008), is looking into the presence of material regarding pre-natal sex determination on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo that has been falling foul of section 22 of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 as amended in 2002. Geeta Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian analyse this in their blog post.
As part of its Making Methods for Digital Humanities project, CIS-RAW organized two consultations on new figures of learning in the digital context. For a proposed journal issue on the theme of 'bodies of knowledge' which draws upon these conversations, participants were invited to write short sketches on these figures of learning. Tejas Pande wrote an abstract which examines the figure of the visual designer, and emerging practices of mapmaking.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

January 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; January 31, 2015).

Event Organized

Training of Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA (Co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Thiruvananthapuram; January 24-25, 2015).

Other

Blog Entries

Disability Exceptions in Copyright Legislations (Rishika; January 12, 2015).
Response to RTI Applications from Different States on Accessibility (Anandhi Viswanathan; January 31, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Maggie Huang conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings from the samples are highlighted in four part series. The third and fourth parts have been published:

Blog Entries

Pervasive Technologies Project Working Document Series: Document 2 Literature Review on Competition Law + IPR + Access to < $100 Mobile Devices (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 1, 2015).
Relationship between App Developers and App Platforms: An Intellectual Property Perspective (Anubha Sinha; January 7, 2015).
Beyond Alcohol and Angel Investors: Building Business Models in an Age of Mobile Music Streaming (Conference Learnings) (Maggie Huang; January 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: The Development of the National IPR Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 22, 2015).
RTI Responses - MHRD IP Chairs: Details of Funding & Expenditure (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: CIS Comments to the First Draft of the National IP Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Global Intellectual Property Convention (Organized by ITAG Solutions; Mumbai; January 15 - 17, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event.
Library and Information Professionals Summit (LIPS) 2015 (Organized by Society for Library Professionals, National Law University Delhi with UN Information Centre for India & Bhutan and Special Library Association (USA), Asian Chapter; January 23 - 24, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari was on a panel discussing Internet Technology and Challenges for Libraries in IPR Regime. She made a presentation on Technology (Internet?), Libraries and the Law (?).

Upcoming Event

Announcing the Institutional Partner for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015 (Organized by the National Law School of India University; New Delhi; December 2015).

Wikipedia

Op-ed

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Samaja, January 31, 2015).

Blog Entries

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015).

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015). The event was conducted on December 28, 2014. However, the blog post was published in January 2015.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Works of Veerasalingam Pantulu on web (Hans India; January 1, 2015).
Centre should partner local communities in 'Digital India': Expert (IANS and mirrored in Zee News; January 9, 2015).
Musician donates Gwalior Gharana songs to free e-library (Times of India; January 20, 2015).

Announcement

2015 Opensource.com Community Awards : Every year, Opensource.com awards people from our community who have excelled in contributing and sharing stories about open source. Subhashish Panigrahi from the CIS-A2K team won the award under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
CIS-A2K team also published the Telugu Wikipedia Stats tables. Most metrics have been collected from a partial dump (aka stub dump), which contains all revisions of every article, meta data, but no page content.

Participation in Event

Citizen Media Summit 2015 (Organized by Global Voices; January 24 - 25, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker.

Openness

Journal Article

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The Intransigenc of STM Publishers (Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran; Indian National Science Academy Journals, Proc Indian Natn SciAcad 80 No. 5 December 2014 pp. 919-929).

Internet Governance

Articles and Blog Entries

Indians Plead for #NetNeutrality as Airtel Raises Data Charges (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; December 30, 2014). The article was published in the month of December but mirrored on CIS website in January.
Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of 'Jihadi' Content (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; January 6, 2015).
Security and Surveillance - Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights (Elonnai Hickok; January 19, 2015).
Search Engine and Prenatal Sex Determination: Walking the Tight Rope of the Law (Geetha Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian; January 29, 2015).

Event Co-organized

Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy (Organized by CIS and Observer Research Foundation; January 8, 2015, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this event.

Participation in Events

Symposium on Human Rights and the Internet in India (Organized by the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg; New Delhi; January 17, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a panelist.
Winter School on Privacy, Surveillance and Data Protection (Organized by the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg and the Hans Bredow; Delhi; January 19 - 23, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a facilitator.
ASSOCHAM National Council on IT / ITes (Organized by ASSOCHAM; New Delhi; January 30, 2015). Geetha Hariharan participated in the event.

Blog Entries

Overview of the Constitutional Challenges to the IT Act (Pranesh Prakash; December 15, 2014).
Reply to RTI filed with BSNL regarding Network Neutrality and Throttling (Tarun Krishnakumar; December 22, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Government blocks 32 websites to check ISIS propaganda (Kim Arora; The Times of India; January 1, 2015).
Internet users fume as govt blocks 32 sites (Jaison Lewis; Mumbai Mirror; January 1, 2015).
India 'jihadi' web blocking causes anger (BBC; January 2, 2015). This was also mirrored in Puffington Post.
Govt cracks down on cyber jehad network, blocks access to 32 websites (India Today, January 1, 2015).
Indian Government still blocks 20+ websites - Indian Censorship on Internet (Times of Assam; January 2, 2015).
350% surge in Cyber crimes in last 3 years (Devanik Saha & Indiaspend.org; Hindustan Times; January 20, 2015).
TOI literary festival kicks off today (The Times of India; January 31, 2015).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Staff Movement

Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS as Research Director. His academic interests span over topics of history and politics of informatics in India, new media and technology studies, and data infrastructures and economies. He is also keenly interested in questions and techniques of digital humanities. Recently, Sumandro has completed a study on policy and practices of open data in India as part of the Open Data Research Network managed by the World Wide Web Foundation. He is an involved member of DataMeet, a leading community of open data and data science enthusiasts from India. Sumandro studied economics in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, and in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has variously worked on topics of urban development, information technology in governance, data visualisation, and early electronic governance in India with MOD Institute, Azim Premji University and the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Blog Entry

Figures of Learning: The Visual Designer (Tejas Pande; January 30, 2015).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2015-bulletin

January 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-04-07T07:09:59Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of its newsletter (January) for the year 2014:

-------------------------------
Highlights
-------------------------------

Amba Salelkar provides an analysis of the three stages of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities 2013 since it was initially commissioned.
We published revised chapters for the states of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as part of our National Resource Kit project.
In the first of a three-part study Ananth Padmanabhan examines the "John Doe" orders that courts have passed against ISPs, which entertainment companies have used to block websites.
The second Institute on Internet and Society is being held in Pune from February 11 to 17.
CIS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences for furthering Odia Wikipedia.
Dr. Nishant Shah co-authored a chapter on video games in a book published by Palestinian Art Court-al Hoash.
Sneha gives an overview of the research enquiry in the field of Digital Humanities in her blog post on Mapping Digital Humanities in India.
In the first of the insightful seven part series, Gautam Bhatia looks at surveillance and the right to privacy in India from a constitutional perspective, tracing its genealogy through Supreme Court case law and compares it with the law in the USA.

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Jobs
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CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Program Officer (Access to Knowledge): http://bit.ly/1fnydB0 and Program Officer (Internet Governance): http://bit.ly/1aA57K6. There are two vacancies each for these posts and these are full-time based in Delhi. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
----------------------------------------------
As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 27 states and 5 union territories.

Based on the feedback and comments received from our readers the following chapters were revised:

► National Resource Kit Chapter

Andhra Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1lzUFcG.
Chhattisgarh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fY4NZ0.

# Blog Entry

The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2013 and the Lack of Access to Accessibility Rights (by Amba Salelkar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1diSg40.

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Access to Knowledge
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The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software.

# Analysis

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 1) (by Ananth Padmanabhan, January 30, 2014). Ananth looks at the theory behind John Doe orders and finds that it would be wrong for Indian courts to grant "John Doe" orders against ISPs: http://bit.ly/1nteYaK.

# Blog Entries

Open Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR (by Samantha Cassar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dGN7OS.
The Game of IPR: Insights from the 6th Global Intellectual Property Convention in Hyderabad (by Samantha Cassar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fY5qS6.

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we organised 4 workshops in the month of January, published an article in DNA, and signed a memorandum of understanding with KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences to further the development of Odia Wikipedia:

►Wikipedia

# Articles / Newspaper Columns

Odia Wikipedia: Three Years of Active Contributions Gives Life to a Ten Year Old Project (by Subhashish Panigrahi, HASTAC, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1jvxD8r.
WikiSangamotsavam 2013 brings Indian Wikimedians together (by Netha Hussain and Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, January 14, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane: http://bit.ly/1jvynKP.

# Announcement

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs (by Subhashish Panigrahi, January 11, 2014): KIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1j1qtFv.

# Blog Entries

Wikipedia Editing as Assessment Tool in the Indian Higher Education Classroom (by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashwin Kumar A.P. and T. Vishnu Vardhan, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1m5QHMD.
Wikipedia at Forefront in Christ University (by Syed Muzamiluddin, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/LTFA8E.

# Events Organised

Odia WikiMeetup (Bhubaneswar, January 11, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBkFJi.
Introductory talk about "Wikipedia in Academics" (KIIT School of Technology, Bhubaneswar, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1yv1f.
Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary @ KISS (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar, January 28, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsqkJC.
Odia Wikipedia 10th anniversary (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dGRBoy.

# Event Participated In

The Dynamics of Education to Employment Journey: Opportunities and Challenges (organized by KIIT School of Management, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, February 21-22, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1ePwqHc.

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Digitising contest to preserve rare books in Malayalam (The Hindu, January 4, 2014): http://bit.ly/NBtVgz.
‘With Internet in every pocket, power to the people’ (by Shubhadeep Chaudhury, The Tribune, January 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ojb1IZ. Shubhadeep interviews T. Vishnu Vardhan on internet and social media.
ଆଦିବାସୀଭାଷାରଉନ୍ନତିକଳ୍ପେଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ(Odishan.com, January 12, 2014):http://bit.ly/1kAWJmG.
KIIT University to lead building free knowledge repository initiative (India Education Diary.com, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1Rzwk.
Odisha: KISS to create tribal languages and heritage repository (Odisha Diary Bureau, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bLBhmB.
FDC recognition for the Centre for the Internet and Society (Wikimedia Foundation, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fYdxOz. Wikimedia Foundation published a resolution declaring CIS eligible for funding through the Annual Plan Grants program.
Tech-savvy students given tips to enter IT field (The Times of India, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j1QvIX.
Odia Wikipedia (Sanchar, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePwAON.

Openness

# Event Organised

What is happening in South America and how Openness is an opportunity to Social, Political and Activist Movements? (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, January 17, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bnZaq0.

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Internet Governance
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CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. Gautam Bhatia gives an analysis of the right to privacy from a constitutional perspective and Elonnai Hickok analyses a public report published by GNI.

# Analyses

Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 1: Foundations (by Gautam Bhatia, January 13, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ntqsen.
Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 2: Gobind and the Compelling State Interest Test (by Gautam Bhatia, January 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dH3meL.

# Newspaper Columns / Book Chapter

Big Brother is Watching You (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, January 3, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cGpg0K.
Making the Powerful Accountable (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1nvzSpC.
Video Games: A Case Study of a Cross-cultural Video Collaboration (by Larissa Hjorth and Nishant Shah, January 31, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eTaXLX. A new book focusing on Palestinian artists’ video, edited by Bashir Makhoul and published by Palestinian Art Court- al Hoash, 2013, includes a chapter co-authored by Larissa and Nishant.

# Blog Entries

Letter requesting public consultation on position of GoI at WGEC (by Snehashish Ghosh, January 7, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g66bL7.
Electoral Databases – Privacy and Security Concerns (by Snehashish Ghosh, January 16, 2014): http://bit.ly/Mb4ktM.
GNI Assessment Finds ICT Companies Protect User Privacy and Freedom of Expression (by Elonnai Hickok, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1mjbpmL.
Interview with Mathew Thomas from the Say No to UID campaign - UID Court Cases (by Maria Xynou, January 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eT9XHv. Maria interviewed Mathew Thomas on UID.
India's Central Monitoring System (CMS): Something to Worry About? (by Maria Xynou, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsM4oQ.

# Events Organized

Biometrics or Bust? Implications of the UID for Participation and Inclusion (CIS, Bangalore, January 10, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1lJZhuK.
Digital Citizens: Why Cyber Security and Online Privacy are Vital to the Success of Democracy and Freedom of Expression (CIS, Bangalore, January 14, 2014): http://bit.ly/KucEU5. Michael Oghia gave a talk.
Nullcon Goa Feb 2014 — International Security Conference (organised by Nullcon, Bogmallo Beach Resort, Goa, February 12 – 15, 2014). CIS is one of the sponsors for this event: http://bit.ly/1lrBu5I.

# Events Co-organised

CPDP 2014 Reforming Data Protection: The Global Perspective (organised by CPDP, Brussels, January 22 – 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/KsgCws. CIS is one of the sponsors for this event. Malavika Jayaram was a speaker.
The Future of the Internet, Who Should Govern It and What is at Stake for You? (organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India, Cellular Operators Association of India, Internet Democracy project, Media for Change, SFLC and CIS, India International Centre, January 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eqkSUu. Chinmayi Arun moderated a session. Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event as a speaker.

# Events Participated In

Seminar on "Hate Speech and Social Media" (organized by NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and British Deputy High Commission, Hyderabad, January 4 – 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dmcEkT. Chinmayi Arun was one of the speakers.
Multistakeholders Consultation on International Public Policy Issues (organized by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, New Delhi, January 21, 2014): http://bit.ly/Mbfkao. Snehashish Ghosh participated in this meeting.
Internet Governance and India: The Way Forward (organized by Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, January 22, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePFueY. Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event.
Data Privacy Day 2014 (organized by Data Security Council of India, Infosys, Bangalore, January 28, 2014). Elonnai Hickok was a panelist: http://bit.ly/1ePFfk8.
TACTIS Symposium 2014 (organized by Tata Consultancy Service, TCS Siruseri, Chennai, January 28 and 29, 2014): http://bit.ly/1bo9y0R. Sunil Abraham gave the keynote address.

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Inventions that will make a difference (by Geeta Padmanabhan, The Hindu, January 1, 2014): http://bit.ly/MKwmfu.
Rise of the bot: all you need to know about the latest threat online (by Danish Raza, Hindustan Times, January 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dHgNex.
Despite apex court order, IOC proceeds with Aadhaar-linked DBT (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, January 6, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g6ffjn.
Worldwide: International Privacy - 2013 Year in Review – Asia (by Gonzalo S. Zeballos, James A. Sherer and Alan M. Pate, Mondaq Yearly Review, January 8, 2014): http://bit.ly/1iOaYRO.
Election panel rejects Google’s proposal for electoral services tie-up (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, January 9, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gpaGjF.
Social Notworking - 'Murder by Twitter'(by Malini Nair, The Times of India, January 19, 2014): http://bit.ly/1j2kT63.
The net is taking over (by Veenu Sandhu and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, January 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1hb4eQL.
The Dangers of Birdsong (by Namrata Joshi, January 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kB8J7L.
Is Bhutan selling its soul to Google? (by Lucky Wangmo from Thimphu and Pema Seldon form Bangalore, Business Bhutan, January 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fYl3sO.
What is net neutrality and why it is important (The Times of India, January 30, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ePFZ8P.

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Digital Humanities
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CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

# Blog Entry

Mapping Digital Humanities in India (by Sneha PP, January 16, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsQEEQ.

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Digital Natives
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CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

►Making Change Project

# Blog Entry

Creative Activism - Voices of Young Change Makers in India (UDAAN) (by Denisse Albornoz, January 20, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cxXAMI.

►Other
# Newspaper Column

10 Ways to Say Nothing New (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, January 19, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gsONjn.

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Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
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CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

►Ongoing Event

Institute on Internet and Society (organised by Ford Foundation and CIS, Yashada, Pune, February 11-17, 2014): http://bit.ly/180mQi9.

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter:https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

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

► Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2014-bulletin

January 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-06-11T11:56:35Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wish you all a great year ahead and welcome you to the first issue of our newsletter for the year 2013. This issue brings you an overview of our research programs, events organised and participated, news and media coverage, and videos of recent events.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org. For our Privacy project, we are seeking applications for the post of Researcher, Technology/Security Expert, Graphic Designer as well as for internships. To apply for these posts, please send in your resume to Elonnai Hickok (elonnai@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

CIS is carrying out two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. The first one is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and the second one is for developing a screen reader and text to speech synthesizer for Indian languages. We are also working with the World Blind Union to develop the Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, and assisting in the negotiations at WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Shruti Ramakrishnan has left the project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapter on Haryana:

The Haryana Chapter (by Anandi Viswanathan, January 31, 2012): The state implements the provisions under the central laws, particularly the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 and the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act 1999.

Submission / Notification

Making Public Libraries Accessible to People with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013): CIS was one of the 20 disability rights groups that wrote to the Ministry of Culture.
Government of Madhya Pradesh initiates ICT Accessibility in Public Communication (by Nirmita Narasimhan, January 31, 2013): CIS with Daisy Forum of India member Arushi in Bhopal submitted a request for a notification mandating that all communication by the Government of Madhya Pradesh should be accessible to persons with disabilities.

Report

Accessible Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, January 11, 2013): The abridged version of ITU’s report "Making Television Accessible" which was initially put up for comments last year has been updated once again.

Blog Entry

Linking Commercial Availability and Exceptions in the Treaty for Visually Impaired/Persons with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

In partnership with the International Development Research Centre we are doing a project on Pervasive Technologies examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program to support and develop free knowledge in India is now being executed by us. We are also supporting the Iraq government in developing an eGovernment Interoperability Framework:

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

New Project Director

T. Vishnu Vardhan is the new Programme Director-Access to Knowledge at CIS. Vishnu has over the last 11 years worked in various capacities as researcher, grant manager, teacher, project consultant, information architect and translator. Vishnu managed the Art, Crafts and Culture portfolio of Sir Ratan Tata Trust and also worked as Research Coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.

New Distinguished Fellow at CIS

Tejaswini Niranjana, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, and Visiting Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is joining our team as an Adviser to the 'Access to Knowledge' project. She will guide the A2K team in expanding the Indian language Wikipedias and in increasing the number of active editors through strategic partnerships with Higher Education institutions across India.

Reports

Access to Knowledge Report — September to December 2012 (by Noopur Raval, January 31, 2013): The report covers an overview of the activities done by the Access to Knowledge team under the grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation from September 2012 to December 2012.
Indic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012 (by Shiju Alex, January 21, 2013): A statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012 providing perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.

Wiki Event Reports
CIS organised a series of Wiki workshops in Goa in the month of December 2012, we bring you the reports from those events.

Note: The workshops were held in the month of December 2012 but the reports were published only in the month of January.

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction (by Nitika Tandon, January 15, 2013).
Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 19, 2013).
Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain (by Nitika Tandon, January 22, 2013).
Promoting GLAM in Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 24, 2013).
Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level (by Nitika Tandon, January 25, 2013).

CIS also organised a Wiki workshop in Ghaziabad:

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad (RKGIT, Ghaziabad, January 17, 2013).

Wiki Event Participated

Celebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 (organized by Wikipedia Club, Pune, January 12 – 13, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Wikipedia News Coverage

First Odia Wikipedia Education Program concludes at IIMC, Dhenkanal (Odisha Diary Bureau, Dhenkanal, January 27, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media (Sambad, January 30, 2013).

Wiki Events Organised

Odia Education Program (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, Orissa, January 26, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia 9th Anniversary Celebration (Academy of Media Learning, Samantha Vihar, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, January 29, 2013).

Pervasive Technologies

The Pervasive Technologies project carries out research on the intellectual property implicated in the hardware, software and content available in low-cost mobile devices.The long-term outcome of this project is to create a legitimate, legal space for these technologies to exist on the Indian market.

Events Participated

Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Market Place — A Presentation by Sunil Abraham (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15, 2012).
Fifth International IPR Conference (GIPC 2013) (organised by ITAG Business Solutions, Hotel Lalit Ashok, Bangalore, January 30, 2013): Snehashish Ghosh made a presentation on the Pervasive Technologies Project.

Other Openness Updates

Blog Posts / Columns

The Violence of Knowledge Cartels (by Nishant Shah, Hybrid Publishing Lab, January 17, 2013).
Remembering Aaron Swartz, Taking Up the Fight (by Nishant Shah, DML Central, January 24, 2013).

Interview

Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement: Prabir Purkayastha interviewed Lawrence Liang on Newsclick, January 19, 2013. The video is published.

Media Coverage

Bangalore hackers write code as tribute to Aaron Swartz (by Deepa Kurup, Hindu, January 21, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.
Event Organized Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight (CIS, Bangalore, January 19 – 20, 2013): Aaron’s collaborators such as Anand Chitipothu and A S L Devi participated in the event.

Internet Governance

With Privacy International, London we signed an agreement to facilitate the implementation of activities related to surveillance and freedom of speech and expression. In this month we have blog posts on data retention, international principles of surveillance and human rights and comparitive analysis of Indian legislation vis-à-vis draft of the International Principles on Surveillance of Communications by Ellonai Hickok, and columns by Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah:

Privacy Research

Data Retention in India (by Elonnai Hickok, January 30, 2013): The post provides an insight into the data retention mandates from the Government of India and data retention practices by service providers.
Draft International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights (by Elonnai Hickok, January 16, 2013): These principles were developed by Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and seek to define an international standard for the surveillance of communications.
A Comparison of Indian Legislation to Draft International Principles on Surveillance of Communications (by Elonnai Hickok, January 31, 2013): The principles, first drafted in October 2012 and developed subsequently seek to establish an international standard for surveillance of communications in the context of human rights. CIS is contributing feedback to the drafting of the principles.

Columns/Op-eds

Web of Sameness (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, January 18, 2013).
TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs (by Sunil Abraham, The Tribune, January 20, 2013).

Statement

Statement of Solidarity on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Internet Users in Bangladesh (by Pranesh Prakash, January 15, 2013): This is a statement on the violent attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin by the participants to the Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression.

Blog Entries

No Civil Society Members in the Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee (by Pranesh Prakash, January 10, 2013).
Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Amended ITRs (by Chinmayi Arun, January 28, 2013): The author discusses the five major questions that have been the subject of debate after the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT).

Upcoming Event

DML Conference 2013 (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013).

Event Organized

An Introduction to Bitfilm and Bitcoin – A Discussion by Aaron Koenig (CIS, Bangalore, January 23, 2013): Aaron Koenig, Managing Director, Bitfilm Networks of Hamburg, Germany gave a talk.

Events Participated

Panel Discussion on E-Commerce at NLSIU (organised by National Law School of India University, Bangalore, January 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Mobile Broadband: Leveraging for Business Transformation (Chancery Pavilion, Bangalore, January 9, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in this event.
Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression (organized by Internet Democracy Project, Voices for Interactive Choice & Empowerment and Global Partners & Associates, Dhaka, January 14 – 15, 2013): Pranesh Prakash moderated the session on "Understanding cyber security and surveillance in South Asia”.
Is Freedom of Expression under Threat in the Digital Age? (organized by Editors Guild of India, Index on Censorship and Sage, India International Centre, New Delhi, January 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist at this event.
7th India Digital Summit 2013 (organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India, Lalit Hotel, New Delhi, January 16 – 17, 2013): Sunil Abraham was the moderator for Plenary Session 3: Discussion on Social Media – Freedom, Moderation or Regulation.

Upcoming Event

9th International Asian Conference (organised by ITechLaw, February 14 – 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham will be participating as a panelist in the session on “Censorship of Online Content”.

Media Coverage

2012 in Review: Biometric ID Systems Grew Internationally...and So Did Concerns about Privacy (by Rebecca Bowe, Right Side News, January 1, 2013)
Cool Jobs | Parmesh Shahani, Head, Godrej India Culture Lab (LiveMint, January 4, 2013).
Clash of the cyberworlds (by Latha Jishnu, Dinsa Sachan and Moyna, Down to Earth, January 15, 2013 issue). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in digital age? (originally published by Indo Asian News Service, January 16, 2013 and also covered in the Business Standard, Vancouver Desi, DNA, and Tech2). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age? (by Mahima Kaul, Index on Censorship, January 18, 2013).
Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate (by Kirsty Hughes, Index on Censorship, January 22, 2013). CIS research on censorship is quoted.
Cyber security, surveillance and the right to privacy: country perspectives (by Richa Kaul Padte, Internet Democracy Project).
Surveillance Camp: Privatized State Surveillance (by Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 28, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
An innovative concept comes to the fore (Deccan Herald, January 29, 2013).

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository
In partnership with Ford Foundation, CIS was tasked to produce and disseminate modules on various aspects of telecommunications including policy, regulations, infrastructure and market. However, as on November 9, 2012 there was a change in the mandate of the project. Currently, we are working on building a knowledge repository on “Internet Access”. This new repository will cover the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access. It will also touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for such policy formulation. For this purpose we will be hosting a new website: www.internet-institute.in.
We are also organizing an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registrations and relevant details will be soon announced on our website.

Telecom

Column by Shyam Ponappa

What's Needed Is User-Centric Design, Not Good Intentions (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, January 3, 2013 and Organizing India Blogpost, January 6, 2013).

Event(s) Participated

21^st Convergence Conference Conference India 2013 (organized by Exhibitions India Group, January 16 – 17, 2013, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi). Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers At Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University:

Habits of Living Workshop

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (organised by CIS and Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah will be speaking at this event.

About CIS
CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.
CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

Support Us

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

Request for Collaboration

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2013-bulletin

January 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T09:36:46Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of events organized by us during the month of January 2012!

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and internet technologies, in emerging information societies. The major outputs have been a four book collective asking questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world, a position paper, a scouting study and three international workshops.

Events Organised

Digital AlterNatives Video Contest: The Everyday Digital Native — To Be, To Think, To Act, To Connect

Digital AlterNatives Tweet-a-Review

'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project invites readers to review essays from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause', a four-book collective published by Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos.

Digital AlterNatives: Book Reviews

Alternative Approaches to Social Change

“Observations about intangible aspects of a movement will keep a research from clinging to activism with a capital A, and start seeing a gradation in the social movement practices. It is constructive and opens the door to analyses of multi-dimensional movements such as the Blank Noise initiative (India). Drawing on methods of identifying new developments to the field of social movement, Maesy examines some aspects of it: the issue, strategy, site of action, and internal mode of organization.”
Nuraini Juliastuti, Co-founder, KUNCI Cultural Studies Center

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. This includes persons with blindness, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, cerebral palsy and persons who do not have full control over their limbs. For these people, the material needs to be converted into alternate formats such as Braille, audio or video or electronic formats (text document, word document or PDF) which they can access using assistive technologies. Our key research has focused on a submission to amend the Indian Copyright to the HRD Ministry, publishing a policy handbook on e-accessibility, research on accessible mobile handsets in India and an analysis of the Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010.

Journal Article

Technology for Accessibility in Higher Education, published in the Journal: Enabling Access for Persons with Disabilities to Higher Education and Workplace. Nirmita Narasimhan wrote an article.

Featured Research

Making Mobile Phones and Services Accessible. CIS researched, edited and published this report in partnership with G3ict and ITU. The report contains a foreword, eleven chapters, a bibliography and glossary with contributions from Deepti Bharthur, Nirmita Narasimhan and Axel Leblois.

Upcoming Event

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility, organized by the International Telecommunication Union, India International Centre, 14-15 March 2012. CIS is hosting the meeting. The Tutorial will be preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) on 13 March 2012. This meeting will take place at the same venue and will also be hosted by CIS, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India.

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. We prepared the India report for the Consumers International IP Watchlist, made submission to the HRD Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty, questioned the demonization of pirates, and advocated against laws (such as PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public funded knowledge.

Event Organised

Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright: To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary, CIS organised a public lecture. Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh of the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture.

Openness

The advent of the Internet has radically defined what it means to be open and collaborative. Even the Internet is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. CIS has been committed and actively campaigned for promotion of open standards, open access and free/libre/open source software.

Workshop Reports

Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, organized by the Western Ghats Portal team to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.
Design!PubliC — Innovation and the Public Interest: On the 14th of October, 2011, the Center for Knowledge Societies organized the second edition of the Design Public Conclave, a conversation on how innovation can serve the Public Interest. The conclave was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore.
Report on the 'Open Access to Academic Knowledge' workshop: On Wednesday the 2nd of November, during Open Access Week, the Indian Institute of Science in conjunction with the Centre for Internet and Society held a workshop on Open Access at the National Centre for Science Information, in Bangalore. We recorded the meeting and published it online.

Event Organised

Geekup on Open Data in Bangalore: Hapee de Groot, Hivos, Netherlands gave a talk on Open Data and its use for citizen engagement.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia turns 11 today: The Bangalore event, open to all Wikipedia users, contributors and enthusiasts, is being held at the Centre for Internet and Society at Domlur.
The Hindu, 15 January 2012

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS partnered with Privacy International and Society in Action Group which has produced outputs in banking, telecommunications, consumer rights, etc., submitted open letters to Parliamentary Committee on UID, feedbacks on NIA Bill, and IT Rules.

Newspaper / Magazine Articles

Keeping it Private
As we disclose more information online, we must ask who might access it and why, writes Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, 15 January 2012.

Click to Change
From organising political protests and flash mobs to uploading their versions of Kolaveri Di, people brought about change with the help of the internet, Nishant Shah, Indian Express, 1 January 2012.

The Quixotic Fight to Clean up the Web
The ongoing attempt to pre-screen online content won’t change anything. It will only drive netizens into the arms of criminals, writes Sunil Abraham, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 04, 28 January 2012.

Sense and Censorship
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, at the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, appear to enforce property rights, but are, in fact, trade bills, Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 20 January 2012.

Interview

Our Internet and the Law
Nishant Shah was interviewed by the BBC Channel 5 (Radio) for its Outriders section. Jamillah Knowles reports this. Listen to the podcast online, BBC Radio, 24 January 2012.

Event Reports

Privacy Matters — Analyzing the Right to "Privacy Bill"
On January 21, 2012 a public conference “Privacy Matters” was held at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was the sixth conference organised in the series of regional consultations held as “Privacy Matters”. The present conference analyzed the Draft Privacy Bill and the participants discussed the challenges and concerns of privacy in India.

Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India
The Higher Education Innovation and Research Application (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS) at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) hosted a two day workshop on 2 and 3 January 2012 on the Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc. Nishant Shah participated in the workshop.

Media Coverage

Twitter’s Censorship Move Aimed at Regaining China?
"The region-specific blocking was already being used on video hosting websites like YouTube and Hulu, where due to the wishes of copyright owners many videos are not available in India. Twitter is extending this technology to its tweets.”
Pranesh Prakash in International Business Times, 28 January 2012.

Google's privacy policy raises hackles (Times of India, January 26, 2012)
“Storing data makes it prone to misuse by authorities as well as corporations... I don't want my bakery shop owner to know what kind of medicines I buy from the nearby medical store.”
Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 26 January 2012.

Google to change privacy policy to use personal info of users
“New changes are not good for a consumer's privacy.”
Sunil Abraham in Punjab Newsline, 27 January 2012.

Tangled Web
“We did a policy sting operation wherein we sent fraudulent notices to big web sites...in one case where we asked for the removal of three comments, they removed all 13. So there is already a private censorship underway.”
Sunil Abraham in the Week, 21 January 2012.

POV: Should user-generated content be monitored?
“We should not fool ourselves into thinking that private sector companies like Google will defend our fundamental rights. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for parliamentarians to ask for the revocation of the rules for intermediaries, cyber-cafes and reasonable security practices.”
Sunil Abraham in afaqs, 19 January 2012.

Indian Internet Lawsuit Puts Spotlight on Freedom of Expression
“These rules have the potential to curtail debate and discussion on the net... They allow for all sorts of subjective tests by private parties and we predicted they would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression online.”
Sunil Abraham in the Voice of America, 19 January 2012.

India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook
“It’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
Sunil Abraham in ars technica, 14 January 2012.
Is India Ignoring its own Internet Protections?
“The I.T. Act provides immunity to (Internet companies) and that should be the default starting position.”
Sunil Abraham in the Wall Street, 16 January 2012.

India internet: clean-up or censorship?
Sunil Abraham was quoted in Financial Time’s beyondbrics, 13 January 2012.

Twists and turns of the SOPA opera
“In terms of infrastructure, the U.S. controls critical web resources. Contrasting this to the Chinese firewall that blocks content for users within its jurisdiction, the U.S. decision to redirect a link can act as a ‘global block’.”
Sunil Abraham in the Hindu, 15 January 2012.

Activists cry foul against Aadhaar
Sunil Abraham participated in the meet on Aadhaar convened by the Indian Social Action Forum.
The Telegraph, 12 January 2012.

NGO questions people's privacy in UID scheme
“The UID project was allowed to march on without any protection being put in place.”
Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 11 January 2012.

Revealed: Bangalore’s Basic Instincts
“If you look at the Google trend or any other website, Bangalore does not figure among the top 10 cities that surfs for porn. But that does not mean that Bangalore does not surf porn. It only means that we have a very sophisticated surfer with a very specific type. They don’t go through Google or other websites. They know how to go about it. But whether it affects their personal lives is lot more complicated.”
Sunil Abraham in the Bangalore Mirror, 8 January 2012.

Facebook, Google face censorship in India
“Traditional intellectual property rights holders like movie studios, music companies and software vendors are trying to protect their obsolete business models by pushing for the adoption of blanket surveillance and filtering technologies.”
Sunil Abraham in SmartPlanet, 5 January 2012.

Trail of the Trolls
“Trolling provokes a non-productive argument and as of now it is not considered a criminal offence anywhere in the world.”
The Telegraph, 4 January 2012.

Constitution of Group of Experts to Deliberate on Privacy Issues
It has been decided to constitute a Small Group of Experts under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court, to identify the privacy issues and prepare a paper to facilitate authoring the Privacy Bill. Pranesh Prakash is one of the members.
Published by the Planning Commission, New Delhi.

2011: The year India began to harness social media
“We saw an increased sharing of digital content whether photos, videos, songs, news or blogs pointing to the Why This Kolaveri Di video, which went viral on YouTube with over 1.3 million views within a week of its release.”
Nishant Shah in the Sunday Guardian, 1 January 2012.

Blog Posts

Section 79 of the Information Technology Act by Pranesh Prakash
How India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books (And How We Can Change That) by Pranesh Prakash. This was reproduced in Medianama.

Upcoming Events

The High Level Privacy Conclave
Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon and Privacy International, UK is organizing the High Level Privacy Conclave at the Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens in New Delhi on Friday, 3 February 2012.

All India Privacy Symposium
Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, Privacy International, UK and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is organizing the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, 4 February 2012.

Events Organised

Workshop on the Standardization of Kannada Computing Terminology, 28-29 January 2012, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.
The Curious Case of Whose Data is it Anyway? The second round of discussions of the Exposing Data Series was co-organized by Tactical Tech and CIS. Siddharth Hande and Hapee de Groot gave lectures.
"ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಜೊತೆ ಜೊತೆಗೆ..." organised in TERI, Bangalore, 22 January 2012.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. In this connection, Shyam Ponappa continues to write his monthly column for the Business Standard.

Article by Shyam Ponappa

Reversing India's Downward Trajectory
The country can regain growth momentum with rate cuts and telecom reforms, writes Shyam Ponappa in this column published in the Business Standard on 5 January 2012.

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Join the CIS group on Facebook\
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

January 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:25:44Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! It gives us immense pleasure to present regular updates on the progress of our research on the mainstream Internet media. In this issue of we bring our latest project updates, news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects have been published on the CIS website for public review:

Digital Natives

CIS has interest in developing Digital Identities as a core research area and looks at practices, policies and scholarships in the field to explore relationships between Internet, technology and identity.

Column on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following article was published in the Indian Express recently:

Is That a Friend on Your Wall? [published in the Indian Express on 9 January 2010]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project will take place in Santiago, Chile, from the 8 to 10 February. Open Call and FAQs for the workshop are online:

Blog Entry by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is a MA candidate on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The latest is:

The Digital Tipping Point

Announcement

Rising Voices Seeks Micro-Grant Proposals for Citizen Media Outreach

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

Accessibility in Telecommunications

Intellectual Property

Copyright, patents and trademarks are the most important components on the Internet. CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Entry

New Release of IPR Chapter of India-EU Free Trade Agreement

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralised authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cybercrime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Within the larger field of Internet governance, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue forum that was instituted by the WSIS processes and that is their only formal outcome, has fast emerged as one of the key institutions. As the definition quoted above indicates, a unique feature of the field of Internet governance is that, unlike many other governance spheres, it does not only involve governments. Historically, not only governments but also the technical community and private players have played a crucial role in the development of the Internet. In the context of the IGF, that role is not only explicitly acknowledged but also institutionalised as the IGF formally brings together governments, private players and civil society actors from all areas of and organisations involved in Internet governance. Moreover, now that the open and egalitarian potential of the Internet is increasingly under attack, this unique nature of the IGF, in addition to its WSIS roots, has made it a prime venue to remind stakeholders in all areas of Internet governance of the commitment they have made earlier to building a “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society” (WSIS Geneva Principles, Para 1). CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has the following shape:

New Blog Entry

Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace

Privacy

CIS has undertaken many new and exciting projects. One of these, "Privacy in Asia", is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and is being completed in collaboration with Society and Action Group. "Privacy in Asia" is a two-year project that commenced on 24 March 2010 and will complete within two years from the commencement date, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties. The project was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around privacy challenges and violations in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote an over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Apart from "Privacy in Asia" CIS is also participating in the " Privacy and Identity" project, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and managed by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society. The project is a research inquiry into the history of Privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhaar. The "Privacy and Identity" project started in August 2010.

New Blog Entries

Staff Update

Prashant Iyengar is a lawyer and legal scholar who has worked extensively on intellectual property issues particularly focusing on copyright reform and open access. He is a past recipient of an Open Society Institute fellowship for research into Open Information Policy, and has been affiliated with the Alternative Law Forum – a collective of lawyers in Bangalore engaged in human rights practice.

Prashant joined the Centre for Internet and Society as a lead researcher in the Privacy India project recently.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this.

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

The policy langurs [published on 6 January 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Civic hackers seek to find their feet in India (Livemint, 24 January 2011) and (IndiaInfoline, January 2011)
A Tweet and a poke from the CEO (Livemint, 24 January 2011)
Clicktivism & a brave new world order (Mail Today, 2 January 2011)
Would it be a unique identity crisis? (Bangalore Mirror, 2 January 2011)
Nel suk dei nativi digitali. Perché gli studenti 2.0 hanno bisogno di una bussola per orientarsi (Il Sore24 ORE, 2 January 2011)
A Refreshing Start! (Verveonline, Volume 19, Issue 1, January, 2011)
Getting Connected (Livemint, January 2011)
Knowledge Warriors (Il Sore24 ORE, January 2011)
Nishant Shah Quoted in Livemint 2011 Tweet-out (Livemint, January 2011)
Digital Natives with a Cause? - Workshop in Chile seeks participants (Bahama islands info, 30 December 2010)
Mothers discuss kids, music, fashions, on Net (The Hindu, 26 December 2010)

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Join the CIS group on Facebook
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Looking forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2011-bulletin

Jammu & Kashmir (Govt) Notifications

praskrishna — 2013-07-23T15:02:03Z

List of notifications published by the government of Jammu and Kashmir can be downloaded below:

The zip folder (PDF and Word) contain the following:

Reservation for Disabled/Handicapped in Government Services
The Jammu & Kashmir Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Rules, 2003
The Jammu & Kashmir Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1998

PDF
Word

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/jammu-kashmir-notifications

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility

praskrishna — 2012-06-18T10:58:29Z

At the invitation of CIS, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India, ITU is organising a two-day Tutorial on Audio Visual Media Accessibility from March 14 to 15, 2012 at the India International Centre, New Delhi, India. The Tutorial will be preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) on March 13, 2012. This meeting will take place at the same venue and will also be hosted by CIS, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India.

Cross-posted from the International Telecommunication Union website. Register online for the event here.

Watch the event Live

Background

Several tools will be used in the two-day tutorial, namely ITU publications relating to the field. To name two amongst the most recent ones, Accessibility to Broadcasting Services for Persons with Disabilities and Making Television Accessible" Report, G3ict-ITU, November 2011.

Objectives

The programme of the ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility will provide an in-depth insight of topics and measures to improve the accessibility of AV media: Captioning (pre-prepared and live), Audio/Video Description and spoken captions, visual signing and sign language, emergency access services. These topics will reference examples from digital broadcast television and mobile telephony media. Participants will gain a better understanding of:

How to Get started - strategies for establishing and expanding new accessibility services (how it can be done, what it costs, what business models exist to ensure the viability of accessibility services);
How standards can help developing countries plan and implement the transition from analogue to digital TV (what issues need to be addressed to optimize the Digital Dividend; making sure that various groups of vulnerable viewers are not disenfranchised by the digital switchover);
Human resource development for improved usability and accessibility (closely tied to work being done by the Audiovisual Media Accessibility Focus Group’s Working Parties).

Audience

Regulators and legislators working on measures to improve digital media’s compliance with international accessibility conventions and directives; Accessibility service advocates from organizations representing persons with disabilities; Media executives from public service and commercial TV channels seeking compliance with media accessibility regulation; Pay-TV operators; Consumer electronics manufacturers; Consumer electronics wholesalers and retailers examining the business implications of demographic changes and media regulation.

Tutors

The tutors are leading experts in the field from industry and either participated in the writing of the handbook or contribute to the work of the ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility.

Draft Programme

FG AVA Tutorial Programme - 14-15 March 2012

Day 1 - Wednesday 14 March 2012
Morning
Master of Ceremony:
Mr Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)

Welcome addresses:
Mr Ravi Shanker
Administrator
Administrator Universal Service Obligation Fund

Dr. Govind
CEO
National Internet Exchange of India

Ms. Swaran Lata
Director and Head of Department
(TDIL Programme)
Department of Information and Technology

Mr. R. N. Jha
Deputy Director General (International Relations)
Department of Telecommunications

Ms. Archana Gulati
Financial Advisor,
National Disaster Management Authority

Tutorial Programme
Wednesday 14 March 2012
Introduction to seminar - Peter Olaf LOOMS
Tutors, objectives, activities, resources.

The rationale of accessible media – who needs them? - Peter Olaf LOOMS

Who needs accessible media?
What is the nature of the media accessibility challenge in India?
Can we quantify and prioritise the challenge?

2. Introduction to media and accessibility – what are the strategies? Peter Olaf LOOMS

What can be done to improve TV accessibility?
How can an understanding of the value chain and the stakeholders help optimise media accessibility?
What can we do to make media other than TV accessible?

Afternoon

3. Making television accessible – what is in scope and out of scope? Peter Olaf LOOMS

What does the term “media” mean?
What can we do to improve TV usability?
How can we improve accessibility by offering access services?

Thursday 15 March 2012

4. Access services – the options (subtitling, audio description, visual signing, audio subtitles and speaking interfaces) Takebumi ITAGAKI and Peter Olaf LOOMS

Workflows - what does producing access services entail?
Bandwidth requirements – what does it take to encode and deliver media and access services to their intended users?
Costs – what resources are needed and what do they cost?

5. Accessibility and business models

What is a business model?
Are there business models for accessible television receivers?
What are the common business models for television access services?
Legislation, regulation and standards – how do we turn vision into reality?

Afternoon

6. Putting it all together – from vision to reality

How can we plan and execute the introduction of access services for a specific media platform
Evaluating our work over the two-day period

Formal closing of the seminar

Learning Resources

"Making Television Accessible" joint ITU and G3ict Report (in English).

Accessibility to Broadcasting Services for Persons with Disabilities ITU-R Report
Podcasts (integrated slides and audio) in English from the Danish Technical University and the IT University of Copenhagen on Agile Project Management and on Accessible Media issues.
Case work (handouts) on USB sticks.

Learning Activities

Lectures

Pair Work

Case work in groups

See the agenda on ITU website

Related Information

Documentation and Registration

General Information

Host: Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi, India in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India

Organized by: ITU

Date: 14-15 March 2012

Venue: India International Centre,
Seminar hall no. 1, 2 and 3 main building
#40, Lodi Road, Max Mueller Marg,
Connaught Place, New Delhi, Delhi 110001.
E-mail : cbo.iic@nic.in;
Website: www.iicdelhi.nic.in
Map from airport to IIC: http://maps.google.co.in/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Practical Information (including hotel accommodation, transportation, visa and health requirements) (coming soon)

Host country contact persons:
Sunil Abraham (Executive Director)
mail: sunil@cis-india.org

Nirmita Narasimhan (Programme Manager)
mail: nirmita@cis-india.org

Ajoy Kumar (Administrator)
mail: ajoy@cis-india.org

Office details:
Centre for Internet and Society
194, 2nd C Cross,
Domlur 2nd stage,
Bengaluru: 560071
Tel: +91 80 25350955, +91 80 40926283
website: www.cis-india.org

Convening Letter, Registration and Programme

Convening Letter

On-line registration

Draft Programme (coming soon)

Organized by:

Hosted by:

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/itu-tutorial-delhi

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility

praskrishna — 2012-07-03T08:53:04Z

The fourth meeting of the ITU-T Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) took place at the India International Centre, New Delhi on March 13, 2012. The meeting was held in furtherance to an invitation of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India. A two-day tutorial on Audio-Visual Media Accessibility followed the meeting on March 14 and 15, 2012 at the same venue. A total of 20 people participated in this event.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, CIS was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1, March 14, 2012. Mr. Ravi Shanker, Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund, Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Ms. Swaran Lata, Director and Head of Department, TDIL Programme, DIT, Mr. R.N. Jha, Deputy Director General (International Relations), Department of Telecommunications and Ms. Archana Gulati, Financial Advisor, National Disaster Management Authority gave the welcome addresses. FG AVA chairman, Mr Peter Olaf Looms (European Broadcasting Union and Denmark) chaired the meeting assisted by the Working Groups coordinators.

The event provided an in-depth insight of topics and measures to improve the accessibility of AV media: Captioning (pre-prepared and live), Audio/Video Description and spoken captions, visual signing and sign language, emergency access services with examples referred from digital broadcast television and mobile telephony media. The participants gained a better understanding of:

How to Get started – that is, the strategies for establishing and expanding new accessibility services (how it can be done, what it costs, what business models exist to ensure the viability of accessibility services);
How standards can help developing countries plan and implement the transition from analogue to digital TV (what issues need to be addressed to optimize the Digital Dividend; making sure that various groups of vulnerable viewers are not disenfranchised by the digital switchover);
Human resource development for improved usability and accessibility (closely tied to work being done by the Audiovisual Media Accessibility Focus Group’s Working Parties).

Regulators and legislators working on measures to improve digital media’s compliance with international accessibility conventions and directives; accessibility service advocates from organizations representing persons with disabilities; media executives from public service and commercial TV channels seeking compliance with media accessibility regulation; consumer electronics manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers examining the business implications of demographic changes and media regulation participated in the meeting.

Peter Olaf Looms, Chairman, ITU-T, FG AVA made a presentation on Introduction to the Tutorials covering topics like what does this tutorial cover, what will I be able to do, focus on action, target groups, the rational of accessible media who needs them, what can be done to improve television accessibility, etc.

Dr. Takebumi Itagaki made a presentation on Producing and delivering access services – the options covering topics like the current situation in EU, chain of power / funding public broadcasting in EU, analogue to digital switchover, activity 9 TV standards and regulation, etc.

Mr. AK Bhatnagar, Engineer-in-Chief, Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) also participated in this event.

Click for the meeting report on ITU website.
Click for the agenda of the meeting on ITU website.
Download the list of participants here

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/itu-tutorial-event-report

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