Centre for Internet and Society

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

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 updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. 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

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

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

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

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).

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

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

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

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:

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

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.

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, atsunil@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.

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/september-2014-bulletin

September 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T06:48:33Z

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

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the ninth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. During this month we signed an MoU with the Goa University to enhance digital literacy in Konkani language, submitted a report on Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for persons with disabilities to the National Disaster Management Authority, published an updated version of the Privacy Protection Bill, 2013 based on feedback collected from the Privacy Round Table held on August 24, and published an analysis of the Crucifixion Protests in Paraguay. Further, updates on our upcoming events and media coverage are brought in this newsletter.

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

Accessibility

As part of our project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you a new draft chapter on the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 4 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for this chapter:

National Resource Kit Chapter

The Andaman and Nicobar Chapter (by CLPR, September 30, 2013).

Reports

Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities (by Deepti Samant Raja and Nirmita Narasimhan, September 17, 2013). It was submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority of India (NDMA) on September 17 for their action.
The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework (by leading international organisations such as G3ict, ITU, Microsoft, UNESCO, et.al.) was released on September 24. CIS gave its inputs to this report.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Access to Knowledge team at CIS is working on expanding the Indic language Wikipedia in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation . As part this project, we held seven Wikipedia workshops. Our project on Pervasive Technologies examines the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property and we have produced a column in EuroScientist as part of our efforts of promoting openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software:

Open Access
Column

Open Access: An Opportunity for Scientists around the Globe (by Subbiah Arunachalam, Euro Scientist, September 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

e - DIRAP Google+ Hangout: Open Government (by Christine Apikul, September 18, 2013).
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research Adopts an Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, September 30, 2013).

Wikipedia
Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programmes, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

Announcements

CIS Signs MoU with Goa University: The A2K team at CIS has signed an MoU with the Goa University to digitize the “Konkani Vishwakosh” under the Creative Commons license and build a digital knowledge partnership to enhance digital literacy in Konkani language. See here for more details.

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project: The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invites you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Video

Wikipedians Speak: Piotr Konieczny: This episode brings you a conversation with Piotr Konieczny, a veteran Wikipedian from Poland. He has contributed to over 514 DYK articles on Wikipedia.

Columns and Blog Entries

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).
ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).
Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K (by Nitika Tandon, September 10, 2013).
Wikipedia reaches Classrooms in Hyderabad (by Syed Muzammiluddin, September 20, 2013).

Events Organised

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore (University of Mysore, August 6, 2013): This is a report of the workshop conducted last month. Dr. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Goa, September 28, 2013). Nitika Tandon conducted this workshop. The details will be posted soon.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 3 – 6, 2013).

Events Co-organised

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, September 13, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan participated in this event.
Re-releasing Konkani Vishwakosh & Building Konkani Wikipedia (organised by CIS-A2K and the University of Goa, Conference Hall, Goa University, Taleigao, September 26, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and wikipedians John Noronha and Supriya Kankumbikar, September 27, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop.
Odisha: Wikipedia workshop at IIMC, Dhenkanal (co-organised by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia community, September 30, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi coordinated the entire event along with members of Odia Wikipedia, Dr Subas Chandra Rout, Mrutyunjaya Kar and Sasanka Sekhar Das. This was covered by Odisha Diary (http://bit.ly/1bna9zd), and eOdisha Samachar (http://bit.ly/1aNJvv4).

Events Participated In

Workshop on e-Content Development (organised by Centre for Staff Training and Development, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 4 – 6, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan gave a guest lecture on Open Source to Open Knowledge, Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet, e-Content in Indian languages – History, Challenges and Opportunities, Wikipedia Users to Wikipedia Authors – Exploring Wikipedia as an OER Tool, and e-Content, e-Student, e-Faculty – Reimagining classroom in the digital Age.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, SDM College, Ujire, September 15, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja participated in this workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (organised by St. Aloysius College, AIMIT, St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Beeri, Mangalore, September 13, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Media Coverage

'Help Konkani Wikipedia come out of incubation' (Deccan Herald, September 13, 2013): The article talks about the relative lack of content in Konkani Wikipedia. “To get it out of incubation, many should write Konkani articles for Wikipedia,” Dr. Pavanaja was quoted as having said.
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 26, 2013). A coverage of the re-release of the Konkani encyclopaedia under Creative Commons license.
Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013): Goa University and CIS-A2K re-released the four volume 3632 page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia) in Goa.
Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia (Navhind Times, September 27, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013): Goa University becomes the first varsity in India to allow data produced and copyrighted by an Indian university to be used by internet users. Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided, says Vishnu Vardhan.
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013): Goa University re-launched a four-volume Konkani encyclopaedia and will upload it on Wikipedia. The process will be completed in six months times, says Vishnu Vardhan.
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013): Konkani has 24 lakh speakers as per the Census Department of India 2001 but online documentation is limited. CIS-A2K wants to strengthen the Konkani Wikipedia, says Nitika Tandon.
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (by Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India to Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Copyright and Pervasive Technologies)

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

Event Participated In

The Law and Economics of Copyright Users Rights (organised by the American University Washington College of Law, Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC, September 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham presented the Pervasive Technologies project.

Internet Governance

We are doing a project on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS) with Privacy International and IDRC. So far we have organised six privacy round tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you the latest version of the Privacy (Protection) Bill and an analysis of the six privacy round tables. We are also doing a project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and IDRC. We did an interview with Lawrence Liang on privacy and free speech:

SAFEGUARDS Project
Bill

Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013: Updated Third Draft (by Bhairav Acharya, September 30, 2013): CIS has been researching privacy in India since 2010 with the objective of raising public awareness around privacy, completing in depth research, and driving a privacy legislation in India. As part of this work, we drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013. This is the latest version with changes based on feedback from the Privacy Round Table held on August 24.

Event Reports

A Privacy Meeting with the Federal Trade Commission (co-organised by CIS and the Federal Trade Commission, Imperial Hotel, Janpath, New Delhi, September 20, 2013). Elonnai Hickok participated in this meeting.
The National Privacy Roundtable Meetings (by Bhairav Acharya, September 19, 2013). Bhairav provides an analysis of the six round table meetings held in the cities of New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

Interview

An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian (by Elonnai Hickok, September 6, 2013): Suresh Ramasubramanian from IBM speaks about cyber security and issues in the cloud.

Articles and Blog Entries

India: Privacy in Peril (by Bhairav Acharya, Frontline, July 12, 2013). The article was published in Frontline in July but was mirrored only recently on our website.
Privacy Law Must Fit the Bill (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Chronicle, September 9, 2013).
Transparency Reports — A Glance on What Google and Facebook Tell about Government Data Requests (by Prachi Arya, September 12, 2013).
The National Cyber Security Policy: Not a Real Policy (by Bhairav Acharya, Observer Research Foundation's Cyber Security Monitor Vol. I, Issue.1, August 2013).
The Central Monitoring System: Some Questions to be Raised in Parliament (by Bhairav Acharya, September 19, 2013).
CIS and International Coalition Calls upon Governments to Protect Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok, September 25, 2013).
An Analysis of the Cases Filed under Section 46 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 for Adjudication in the State of Maharashtra (by Bhairav Acharya, September 30, 2013): This is a brief review of some of the cases related to privacy filed under section 46 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 seeking adjudication for alleged contraventions of the Act in the State of Maharashtra.

Media Coverage

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers (by Beatrice Thomas, Arabian Business.com, September 1, 2013): The article says that government would ban Gmail for official communication in light of cyber spying by the US. Sunil Abraham agrees with the ban.
Indien: Regierung will Nutzung von US-Mailprovidern in Verwaltungen verbieten (Netzpolitik, September 3, 2013). Sunil Abraham was quoted in this German newspaper.
A dangerous trend: social media adds fire to Muzaffarnagar clashes (by Zia Haq, The Hindustan Times, September 9, 2013). The article speaks about censorship in wake of publication of malicious content. In such cases the government has a legitimate reason to censor speech, says Sunil Abraham.
Three Years Later, IPaidABribe.com Pays Off (by Jessica McKenzie, TechPresident, September 23, 2013): The article talks about IPaidABribe.com, an online portal focusing on civic engagement and improving governance. But the real problem in India is “high ticket bribes...at the top of the pyramid,” Sunil Abraham was quoted as having said.
Indian biometric ID plan faces court hurdle (by John Ribeiro, Computer World, September 25, 2013): The article talks about Aadhar (India’s biometric system). The Aadhaar number now allows different agencies including private organizations to collect and exchange data between them, says Pranesh Prakash.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, New Delhi (co-organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013).

Event Organised

Public Law and Jurisprudential Issues of Privacy (CIS, Bangalore, September 27, 2013): Abhayraj Naik, a graduate from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and the Yale Law School gave a talk on public law and jurisprudential issues related to privacy.

Events Participated In

Young Scholar Tutorials (organised by Communication Policy Research South, September 3-4, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this event.
Privacy and Surveillance in India (organised by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, September 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham gave a talk.
Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course” (organised by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, and with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada, September 28 – October 5, 2013). Sunil Abraham is supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon.
Congress on Privacy and Surveillance (organised by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, September 30, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event.

Cyber Security Project
Video Interview

Part 10: Interview with Lawrence Liang (September 10, 2013): In the ecology of online communication it is crucial for us to look at right to privacy and right to free speech as inseparable.

Forthcoming Events

11th India Knowledge Summit 2013 (organised by ASSOCHAM India, Hotel Shangri-La, New Delhi, October 14-15, 2013). CIS is one of the organisations supporting this event.
CYFY 2013: India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance (organised by Observer Research Foundation and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi, October 14-15, 2013). Sunil Abraham will participate in this event as a speaker.

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.

Modules

International Telecommunication Union (by Snehashish Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, September 30, 2013).
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (by Snehashish Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, September 30, 2013).

Telecom

Shyam Ponappa, a Distinguished Fellow at CIS is a regular columnist with the Business Standard. The articles published on his blog Organizing India Blogspot is mirrored on our website:

Newspaper Column

Regrouping for Growth - Interest Rates – III (originally published in the Business Standard on September 4, 2013 and mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot on September 6, 2013).

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:
Event Report

Bangalore + Sustainability Summit (organized by Ashoka India, Green Lungi and IDEX, September 21, 2013, CIS, Bangalore): Denisse Albornoz has summarised the happenings in this report.

Media Coverage

Youths brainstorm at social summit (The Times of India, September 21, 2013): A coverage of the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit hosted at CIS.

Blog Entry + Video

Revealing Protesters on the Fringe: Crucifixion Protest in Paraguay (by Denisse Albornoz, September 20, 2013): Denisse provides an analysis of the crucifix protest in Paraguay in the light of Nishant Shah’s piece: Whose Change is it Anyway?.

Digital Humanities

Interview

Thinking Digital Beyond Tools: Interview with Dr. Nishant Shah (by Noopur Raval, HASTAC, September 10, 2013): Nishant speaks about his interest in digital studies, the future of humanities, and his HASTAC experience.

Event Participated In

Reclaim Open Learning Symposium (organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, University of California Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine, September 26-27, 2013): Nishant Shah participated in this event as a panelist.

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.

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

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/september-2013-bulletin

September 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-10-09T06:48:33Z

Welcome to the newsletter of September 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a second analysis by Snehashish Ghosh on the latest list of sites blocked by the Indian government from August 18, 2012 to August 21, 2012, a research on the issues of internet governance by Smarika Kumar, publication of a report on Accessibility of Government websites in India by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, the Access to Knowledge programme plan and updates from the Wikipedia community in India on Indic languages, updates from the Habits of Living workshop organised in Bengaluru, the events connected to the visits of international DNA experts, Helen Wallace and Jeremy Gruber in India, and introduce you to our Access to Knowledge team members.

Announcements

Office in Delhi
CIS now has an office with a five-member team for the Access to Knowledge programme in Delhi at G 15, top floor, behind Hauz Khas G Block Market, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, Ph: + 91 11 26536425.

New Team Members

Nitika Tandon: Nitika Tandon is a Program Officer with CIS. She has an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands and is a recipient of Dean's Fund Scholarship Program, Erasmus University.
Shiju Alex: Shiju Alex is a Consultant. His background is technical writing and he is interested in Indic language computing and community building for Indic language Wiki projects. Presently he works out of CIS office in Bengaluru.
Subhashish Panigrahi: Subhashish Panigrahi is a Programme Officer to CIS's Access to Knowledge programme and works out of CIS's Delhi office. His background is Business Development in Corporate Communications. He works on designing and implementing programs to provide on-wiki and off-wiki support for new editors.
Noopur Raval: Noopur Raval is working as Consultant - Communications for the Access to Knowledge team at CIS. Having previously worked in the media, she is currently pursuing her M.Phil in Cinema Studies from JNU, New Delhi.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the posts of Research Manager, Researcher/Editor, and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply for these posts send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) with three references. Archives of our bulletins can be found here. Click to read the newsletter on our website.

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:
Featured Research

Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report (by Nirmita Narasimhan, Mukesh Sharma and Dinesh Kaushal, September 26, 2012): This is a report on the accessibility of government websites in India. It was published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. The report consists of an executive summary, introduction, methodology, findings and recommendations and interpretation and recommendations. Examples of errors are given as appendices.

Project

Creating a National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities: An Introduction (by Anandhi Viswanathan, September 28, 2012): CIS is engaged in a two-and-a-half year project starting from August 2012 to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. This project is supported by the Hans Foundation. The Resource Kit will be brought out in both English and Hindi and disseminated to policy makers from panchayat to ministry levels throughout India. Anandhi gives an introduction to the project in this blog entry.

Blog Entries

WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year.
Breaking News on Electronic Accessibility (by Rahul Cherian, September 28, 2012): The Parliamentary Standing Committee constituted to study the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill has in its report explicitly recognized the concept of electronic accessibility and reasonable accommodation. This is the first time in the country that these two concepts have been reflected at the level of a Parliamentary Standing Committee in relation to a non-disability specific law.

Access to Knowledge

Submission

Feedback to Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 (by Pranesh Prakash, September 29, 2012): submitted its written comments on the Draft Copyright Rules, 2012 to Mr. G.R. Raghavender, Registrar of Copyrights & Director (BP&CR), Ministry of Human Resource Development. Pranesh does a detailed analysis and provides recommendations on Rules 8,9,10, 29(6), 34(2), 37, 71(3), 72, 74(1), 74(6), 75, and 79 (3) and (4).

Projects

Access To Knowledge/Programme Plan: Pursuant to the announcement made on July 30, 2012 of a 22 months ‘grant’ (beginning from September 1, 2012 to July 31, 2014) of upto INR 26,000,000 and as reflected in the FAQ accompanying the announcement, the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program will become a project of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS. The prime objective is to support 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 and supporting India-focused efforts to improve the quality of India-relevant content on Indic languages and English Wikimedia projects.
Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace (by Jadine Lannon, September 25, 2012): Jadine Lannon gives an introduction to the new A2K research initiative. Pervasive technologies have flooded the Indian market and are changing the ways in which the average Indian accesses knowledge but very little is understood about these technologies, particularly when it comes to their legality. CIS hopes to do a research that aims to understand how pervasive technologies interact with Intellectual Property laws and what can be done to protect these technologies from being labelled “illegal” and eradicated from the Asian market.

Event Participated

Meeting of the Global Network on Flexible Limitations and Exceptions (organised by American University Washington College of Law, Washington D.C., September 12 to 15, 2012).

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

An Introduction to the Issues in Internet Governance (by Smarika Kumar, September 23, 2012): Smarika provides a detailed analysis to the issues that we face in Internet Governance today. She tries to canvass the controversies in the areas of internet governance that broadly focus around the institutional structures to govern the internet, discusses the evolution of these models against the historical background of internet governance and then proceeds to present the criticisms of each of these models with an emphasis on the interests of the regular internet user.
Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism and Rioting Edition) Part II (by Snehashish Ghosh, September 25, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh does a further analysis of the leaked list of the websites blocked by the Indian Government from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 (“leaked list”). This analysis was re-posted by Medianama on September 26, 2012.

Columns

The Five Monkeys & Ice-cold Water (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Chronicle, September 16, 2012): “The Indian government provides leadership, both domestically and internationally, when it comes to access to knowledge.”
SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech (by Chinmayi Arun, Hindu Business Line, September 1, 2012): If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.

Media Coverage

Censorship makes India fall two places on global internet freedom chart (by Dilnaz Boga, Daily News & Analysis, September 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

Pitroda seeks to put govt information in public domain (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 25, 2012): “One government bureaucrat available on Twitter for a fixed period doesn’t make up for the non-existence of the government on social media…they (government) should be available all the time.” — Sunil Abraham.

Govt plans inter-ministerial panel on Internet policy (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 19, 2012): ““The thumb rule with governance, be it international or national, is that coordination policy formulation bodies is a good idea, but we can’t damn or praise them over the process...We have to see what coordination results out of the body.” — Sunil Abraham.

Mind of the millennium teen (by Atul Sethi, The Times of India, September 16, 2012): “We live in accelerated times...The breathlessness of our times is evident in everything — from the kind of movies we make to the ways in which our news and information travel. At the end of the day, our younger generations are also products of our times.”— Nishant Shah.

China outranks India in world’s first ever web index (First Post, September 6, 2012): ““The Internet today doesn’t work according to the idealistic principles of openness, and democracy of information that Berners-Lee envisioned for it, and in India in particular, although the Internet has helped us rethink what the government can do, the attitude is that that Internet can only be used in ways that the government sees fit.” — Nishant Shah.

Need a standard strategy to deal with Web issues: Chandrasekhar (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

Political war on the web (by Kunal Majumder, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “The fact remains none of the blockings were politically motivated.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Government to hold talks with stakeholders on Internet censorship (by Shalini Singh, The Hindu, September 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s analysis on blocked websites is quoted.

The state. And the rage of the cyber demon (by Shougat Dasgupta, Tehelka, Vol 9, Issue 36, September 8, 2012): “While some people may see Twitter as akin to friends talking in the pub, others use the service as a bulletin board.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Watch out for fettered speech (by Rohit Pradhan, Business Standard, September 1, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Events Organised

DNA Profiling Bill
International DNA experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States visited Bengaluru and Delhi and shared their experience in DNA sampling and gave feedback to the DNA Profiling Bill. Meetings were conducted with lawyers and the plaintiff in the Pascal Mazurier's rape case and with VR Sudarshan and Hormis Tharakan. There was a coverage of the event in Kannada media. Public lectures were organised in Bengaluru and Delhi:

UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes (organised by CIS and Alternative Law Forum, September 24, 2012): Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States gave a public lecture.
The DNA Profiling Bill: Developing Best Practices (India International Centre, New Delhi, September 27, 2012): International experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States gave a public lecture. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.

Blog Entry

A Public Meeting on DNA Profiling Bill in Delhi (by Elonnai Hickok, September 29, 2012): Elonnai has blogged about the public lecture delivered by Dr. Helen Wallace, Jeremy Gruber and Dr. Anupuma Raina.

Upcoming IGF Events
At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop:

National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m.

Sunil Abraham will be a panelist in the following workshop:

New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m).

CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops:

Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.).
Governing Identity on the Internet (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.).

Events Participated

Second Freedom Online Conference (organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications, Republic of Kenya in partnership with the government of Netherlands at UN complex in Gigiri, Nairobi, September 6 and 7, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on Access to Internet: Challenges and Opportunities.
Multi-stakeholder Discussion on India’s Position in UN for Internet Governance UN Committee for Internet Related Policies (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, New Delhi, September 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Seventh Meeting of the Group of Experts on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting. This was the final meeting of the series.

Talk

Talk at Yale University (New Haven, September 19, 2012): Pranesh Prakash gave a talk on censorship, intermediary liability, and the way forward.

Video

Internet Governance Plenary (August 28, Tokyo, Japan): Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator.

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:
Featured Research

Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report (January – June 2012) (by Shiju Alex, September 25, 2012): Shiju Alex provides a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. He provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.

Workshop Reports
Although most of the following workshops were conducted prior to the grant period, the report for all of these was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring these.

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012. Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. Long-term Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani also joined this workshop. The event was covered in the Tribune, Hindustan Times, Punjab Infoline, and YesPunjab.com.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 28, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012. Veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani came forward to spread the message of Punjabi Wikipedia among Punjabi speakers.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar (by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi, September 30, 2012): The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012. Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh led the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.
Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh (by Subhashish Panigrahi, September 27, 2012): A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian. The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.
Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University (Tumkur, Karnataka, September 15, 2012): This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur. Prof. Ashwin Kumar from the Department of English, Tumkur University and Kannada wikipedians, Om Shiva Prakash, Hareesh, Tejus and Pavithra played vital roles in organising this workshop. Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. About 30 participants including students and teachers participated in this workshop.

Blog Entries

Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, September 29, 2012): Nitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.
Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad! (by Noopur Raval, September 30, 2012): A series of Wikipedia meetings were organized in Hyderabad on September 29 and 30, 2012. These workshops were a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community. There was coverage about this event in the Hindu on September 28, 2012.

Event Organised

Thinking with Data@CIS (CIS, Bengaluru, September 16 – 18, 2012): The course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies was screened in CIS office.

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. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of September: Cartonama Conference (TERI Complex, Bengaluru, September 22, 2012). The event was organised by HasGeek with support from CIS.

Digital Natives

Newspaper Column

One. Zero. (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, September 16, 2012): “The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak.”

Pathways to Higher Education

The Pathways Project to Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and CIS. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in nine undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India. Training workshops were organised in the month of September at Xaviers in Mumbai on September 6, 2012 and in Newman College, Thodupuzha from September 17 to 20, 2012. Each workshop had 25-30 undergraduate students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They were trained to use digital technologies in order to think through problems of social justice.

Researchers at Work

From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects is a global collaborative project to renew the conceptual power of networks. It concentrates on changing the habits of living. The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University is an important locus.

CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Jadine Lannon and Alok Vaid-Menon live blogged about the event:

Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Introduction (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: PechaKucha (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 1 Live Blog: Globalising Lady GaGa (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Deepak Menon on Water in India (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: On Technology and Affective Indian Feminism(s) (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 2 Live Blog: Radhika Gajjala Lectures on e-Philanthropy (by Jadine Lannon, September 27, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Joshua Neves on Media Archipelagos (by Jadine Lannon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Finding and Funding the Masses (by Alok Vaid-Menon, September 26, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 3 Live Blog: Akansha Rastogi's Performance on Exhibition Space
(by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Wendy Chun on Friends (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).
Habits of Living Thinkathon - Day 4 Live Blog: Namita Malhotra on Amateur Pornography (by Jadine Lannon, September 30, 2012).

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 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Associations Regulating Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): Broadcast regulation in India is currently an intricate web, with multiple agencies involved in formulating and implementing policy, drafting and enforcing legislation.
Optical Fibre (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 11, 2012): This unit tells us what is optical fibre, the types of optical fibres, how does an optical fibre work, fibre-optic relay system, and why are optical fibres uses in telecommunication systems.
Direct to Home (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit tells us about Direct to home television, its history, how it works, the programming, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in this module.
Cable Television (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 18, 2012): This unit brings you the history and evolution of cable television in India, talks about other cable based services, cable television digitization rule and the end consumer in India.
Private FMs (Commercial, Campus and Community Radios) (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 24, 2012): This unit introduces us to AM and FM, tells us the role of private FMs including what is a community radio and what is a campus radio.
Types of Radio Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 28, 2012): This unit tells us what is radio broadcasting, takes us through the history of radio broadcasting in India, explains what is AM and FM in the Indian context.
A History of All India Radio and Its Operations (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, September 29, 2012): This module gives us a picture of the history of All India Radio and its operations.

Newspaper Column

Changing Our Game (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, September 5, 2012): “Adopting 'co-ordination models' like the Stag Hunt could reduce contention and improve outcomes.” This was re-posted in Organizing India blogspot.

Event Participated

Insights India 2012 (organised by MACH, Bangalore, September 26 – 28, 2012): Snehashish Ghosh and Srividya Vaidyanathan participated in 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. 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.

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

September 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T06:34:19Z

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 that happened in the month of September 2011.

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 base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organizations and individuals in order to focus on its two year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs were recently launched at a workshop, Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum held in Ahmedabad from 19 to 22 August 2011.

Re:Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan
The Last Cultural Mile by Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Porn: Law, Video, Technology by Namita A Malhotra
Archives and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar

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. 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.

Featured Publication

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? - This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around ‘digital revolutions’ in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South.

Book Review

Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg - The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011, writes Maarten van den Berg. The review was published in "The Broker" on 19 September 2011.

Event Organised

Digital AlterNatives book launch – CIS and Hivos launched this book at the Museum for Communication, Hague on 16 September 2011.

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.

Event Participated

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF on Facilitating ICT Access to Persons with Disabilities in Rural Areas, on 7 September 2011. Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation.

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. CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential, and such access promotes creativity and innovation, and helps bridge the differences between the developing and developed worlds in a positive manner. Towards this end, CIS is campaigning for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-challenged people, advocating against laws (such as the PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public-funded knowledge, call for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, question the demonization of 'pirates', and support endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

New Blog Entries

Copyright Amendment Bill in Parliament by Nirmita Narasimhan, 30 August 2011.
Photocopying the past by Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 2 September 2011.
Calling Out the BSA on Its BS by Pranesh Prakash, 9 September 2011.

Internet Governance

Internet technologies have fundamentally questioned the notion of governance, not only at the level of administration but also at the level of mechanisms of control, regulation and shaping of the individual. e-Governance initiatives, in combination with other regimes of surveillance, control and censorship, are redefining what it means to be a citizen, a subject, and an individual. We look at questions of governance — at the micro level of the individual and the private (family, relationships, community structures, etc.) as well as the level of governmentality — at the macro level of nation state, citizenship, market economies, and the public (spaces of consumption, work, leisure, political engagement, etc.) under the umbrella of digital governance.

New Blog Entry

Understanding the Right to Information by Elonnai Hickok, 28 September 2011.

Events Organised

Using the Internet as a Tool for Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward, IGF, Nairobi, 27 September 2011.

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.

Articles by Shyam Ponappa

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.

Reviving Growth, published in the Business Standard on 1 September 2011.

Event Organised

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.

Miscellaneous

Film Screening

Screening of Partners in Crime, Vikalp@Smriti Nandan along with CIS screened the film and followed it with a discussion with the director of the film, Paromita Vohra, Smriti Nandan Cultural Centre, 9 September 2011.
Prime Security: The Mathematics of RSA Encryption, a one-day workshop with Rohit Gupta, a leading Mathematician.

News & Media Coverage

India's social media "spring" masks forgotten protests [Alistair Scrutton in Reuters, 25 August 2011].
Social media holds the key to Hazare's campaign success [Alistair Scrutton in NEWS.scotsman.com, 26 August 2011].
Digital divide: Why Irom Sharmila can’t do an Anna [FirstPost.Ideas, 25 August 2011].
When revolutions go viral [Times of India (Crescent Edition), 27 August 2011].
IBSA Seminar on Global Internet Governance, organised by the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations, with support from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the Center for Technology & Society (CTS/FGV) and governmental and non- governmental actors from India, Brazil and South Africa, 1 to 2 September 2011, Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.
Copyrights Amendment Bill to Be Tabled in Indian Parliament – Parallel Import provisions have Been Removed [Mike Palmedo in infojustice.org, 5 September 2011]
The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development [Indigo Trust, 15 September 2011]. Sunil Abraham participated in this event. A video of his speech is now available on YouTube.
Planning Commission, Census 2011 and India Post using social media to understand people's pulse better [Vikas Kumar in the Economic Times, 20 September 2011]
The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise, organised by FOSSFA and ICFOSS, IGF, Nairobi, 28 September 2011.
Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses, organised by Expression Technologies, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.
Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?, organised by GSM Association, 29 September 2011.
The Truman Show, in Kerala [Times of India, posted on CIS website on 23 September 2011].
Making a difference, online and offline [LiveMint, 27 September 2011].

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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/september-2011-bulletin

September 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T07:22:30Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this bulletin we bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage and announcement of events organised in the month of September 2010.

News Updates

Conference: Internet at Liberty 2010: This conference is being held in Budapest from 20 to 22 September 2010. It is co-sponsored by Google and Central European University. Sunil Abraham and Anja Kovacs are attending the conference.
http://bit.ly/afo0WY

INDIA Fears of Privacy Loss Pursue Ambitious ID Project: Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.
http://bit.ly/dnJDRu
Innovate / Activate: The event will be held on 24 and 25 September 2010 at New York Law School. http://bit.ly/cbICFq
Webinar: Closed for Business: A Global Panel Discusses International Copyright Laws and Their Impact on the Open Internet
http://bit.ly/a3ZFBw
The madness of software patents
India’s patent law excludes software per se, yet over a thousand patents have been granted, writes Lata Jishnu in an article published in Down to Earth.
http://bit.ly/cpHd7R
Why piracy is tough to rein in
“Video market is being treated as a poor cousin of the film industry”
http://bit.ly/aDUpiY
Transparency and MDGs: the Role of the Media and Technology
Key quotes from sixth panel
http://bit.ly/b3a0YC
Copyright bill restricts Net access
Law to curb piracy may fetter creativity
http://bit.ly/cFj3rD
科技改變社會數位原生代計畫
The Chinese language press covered the Digital Natives workshop in Taipei.
http://bit.ly/bPhEO4
科技改變社會數位原生代掀波
The Chinese press published an article on Digital Natives.
http://bit.ly/bHaQor
Information is Beautiful hacks in India with David Cameron
The Prime Minister took some of the UK's top hackers and data experts with him to India this week. David McCandless was with them.
http://bit.ly/dr3AJ2

Events

International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT: ICT workshop in New Delhi from 27th to 29th October, 2010...Registrations open!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK
A Talk by Philipp Schmidt: Philip Schmidt of Peer 2 Peer University will be giving a lecture at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore on 6 October, 2010.
http://bit.ly/aVyzMq

Research

On Talking Back: A Report on the Taiwan Workshop: What does it mean to Talk Back? Who do we Talk Back against? Are we alone in our attempts or a part of a larger community? How do we use digital technologies to find other peers and stake-holders? What is the language and vocabulary we use to successfully articulate our problems? How do we negotiate with structures of power to fight for our rights? These were the kind of questions that the Talking Back workshop held in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan from 16 to 18 August 2010 posed.
http://bit.ly/daE4dM
The Binary: City and Nature: A continuation of the last post wherein I am looking at various other representation of the city in both classical and popular medium, today I am writing my views on the analysis of certain Miniature paintings.
http://bit.ly/b5FP5D
Of the State and the Governments - The Abstract, the Concrete and the Responsive: This post examines the concepts of state and government to lay the ground for understanding responsiveness enforced through transparency discourses and the deployment of ICTs, the Internet and e-governance programmes. It also lays the context for understanding why and how ICTs. Internet and e-governance have been deployed in India for improving government-citizen interfaces, eliminating middlemen, delivering services electronically and for introducing a range of similar reforms to institute transparency and a responsive state.
http://bit.ly/cNLKcY
The Responsive State --- Introduction to the Series: This post is an introduction to a series of posts on the concept of the 'responsive state'. In this series, I try to explain the various meanings that the term responsiveness has come to acquire when it is used in relation with the discourses surrounding transparency and the deployment of ICTs and the Internet to enforce transparency and thereby create a responsive state. Understanding the notion of responsiveness requires us to revisit and analyze certain concepts and the relations that have been drawn between concepts such as state, government, politics, administration, transparency, effectiveness, government-citizen interface, ICTs and effectiveness, among others.
http://bit.ly/agBOiq
Attentional Capital in Online Gaming: The Currency of Survival
This blog post by Arun Menon discusses the concepts of production, labour and race in virtual worlds and their influence on the production of attention as a currency. An attempt is made to locate attentional capital, attentional repositories and attention currencies within gaming to examine 'attention currencies and its trade and transactions in virtual worlds. A minimal collection of attention currencies are placed as central and as a pre-requisite for survival in MMOs in much the same way that real currency become a necessity for survival. The approach is to locate attentional capital through different perspectives as well as examine a few concepts around virtual worlds.
http://bit.ly/aaGZj8
What's in a Name? Or Why Clicktivism May Not Be Ruining Left Activism in India, At Least for Now: In a recent piece in the Guardian titled “Clicktivism Is Ruining Leftist Activism”, Micah White expressed severe concern that, in drawing on tactics of advertising and marketing research, digital activism is undermining “the passionate, ideological and total critique of consumer society”. His concerns are certainly shared by some in India: White's piece has been circulating on activist email lists where people noted with concern that e-activism may be replacing “the real thing” even in this country. But is the situation in India really this dire?
http://bit.ly/9a3I0G
Sexuality, Queerness and Internet technologies in Indian context: This blog post lays out the discursive construction of sexuality and queerness as intelligible domains in the Indian context while engaging with ideas of visibility, representation, exclusion, publicness, criminality, difference, tradition, experience, and community that have come into use with the critical responses to queer identities and practices in India.
http://bit.ly/byfPye

Accessibility

Enabling Access to Education through ICT - A Conference in Delhi: The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from 27 to 29 October 2010. The event is sponsored by Hans Foundation. Registration for the conference has begun.
http://bit.ly/bmrkf7

Access to Knowledge

Pre-grant Opposition Filed for a Software Patent Application by Blackberry Manufacturers: A pre-grant opposition was filed against a software patent application filed in the patent office by Certicom, a wholly owned subsidiary of Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturers of Blackberry. The opposition was filed on August 31, 2010 by the Software Freedom Law Centre which has recently expanded its operations to India. This exciting development was announced by Mishi Choudhary from SFLC on the lines of the seminar on “Software Patents and the Commons” organised on 1 September 2010 in Delhi jointly by SFLC, the Centre for Internet and Society, the Society for Knowledge Commons and Red Hat. Filing more such oppositions to software patents in India was in the pipeline and this is just the beginning of a movement to take on monopolisation of knowledge and ideas through patenting software, the organisers said.
http://bit.ly/9wE1Xs
First Post-Bilski Decision - Software Patent Rejected: In the first decision post-Bilski, the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) rejected a software patent claimed by Hewlett-Packard. The ruling in this case has buttressed the fact that the Bilski decision furthered the cause of narrowing the patentability of software even though the Supreme Court of the United States totally avoided mentioning software patents or the applicability of the machine or transformation test for software patents in its decision.
http://bit.ly/cnPw7E
The Bilski Case - Impact on Software Patents: The Supreme Court of the United States gave its decision in Bilski v Kappos on 28 June, 2010. In this case the petitioners’ patent application sought protection for a claimed invention that explains how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The Court in affirming the rejection by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit also held that the machine- or-transformation test is not necessarily the sole test of patentability. The Court’s ruling of abstract ideas as unpatentable and its admission that patents do not necessarily promote innovation and may sometimes limit competition and stifle innovation have provided a ray of hope. In the light of the developments, the Bilski decision as far as patentability of software is concerned may not be totally insignificant, says Krithika Dutta Narayana.
http://bit.ly/bjrPGh

Openness

Free Access to Law—Is it here to Stay? An Environmental Scan Report: The following is a preliminary project report collaboratively collated by the researchers of the "Free Access to Law" research study. This report aims to highlight the trends, as well as the risks and opportunities, for the sustainability of Free Access to Law initiatives in each of the country examined.
http://bit.ly/9VVzkk
Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do?: The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
http://bit.ly/ciohYy

Internet Governance

Moldova Online: An Interview with Victor Diaconu: In this interview for Russian Cyberspace, set up with the help of Sunil Abraham (Executive Director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India), computer software professional Victor Diaconu explains the nature of Internet use, state control and the development of blogging and social media platforms in Moldova. Victor works at Computaris in Chisinau. He is Moldova educated, and has travelled to several western countries (including lengthy stays to US, UK) to learn about and understand what there is to be done in Moldova. Sudha Rajagopalan interviewed Victor Diaconu.
http://bit.ly/cgIvXT
Presentation of the UID project by Ashok Dalwai – A Report: On Tuesday, 7 September 2010, Ashok Dalwai, the Deputy Director General of the Unique Identification of India (UIDAI), gave a lecture at the Indian Institute for Science in Bangalore. Representing the UID Authority, his presentation explained the vision of the project and focused on the challenges involved in demographic and biometric identification, the technology adopted, and the enrolment process. Elonnai Hickok gives a report of his presentation in this blog post.
http://bit.ly/aAy5DG
Beyond Access as Inclusion: On 13 September, the day before the fifth Internet Governance Forum opens, CIS is co-organised in Vilnius a meeting on Internet governance and human rights. One of the main aims of this meeting was to call attention to the crucial, yet in Internet governance often neglected, indivisibility of rights. In this blog post, Anja Kovacs uses this lens to illustrate how it can broaden as well reinvigorate our understanding of what remains one of the most pressing issues in Internet governance in developing countries to this day: that of access to the Internet.
http://bit.ly/cgS9py
Summary of UID Public Meeting, August 25 2010: A summary of the "No UID" public meeting that took place on Aug. 25th at the Constitution Club, New Dehli.
http://bit.ly/9epHTz
No UID Campaign in New Delhi - A Report: The Unique Identification (UID) Bill is not pro-citizen. The scheme is deeply undemocratic, expensive and fraught with unforseen consequences. A public meeting on UID was held at the Constitution Club, Rafi Marg in New Delhi on 25 August, 2010. The said Bill came under scrutiny at the meeting which was organised by civil society groups from Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi campaigning under the banner of "No UID". The speakers brought to light many concerns, unanswered questions and problems of the UID scheme.
http://bit.ly/97HwbS
Wherever you are, whatever you do: Facebook recently launched a location-based service called Places. Privacy advocates are resenting to this new development. Sunil Abraham identifies the three prime reasons for this outcry against Facebook. The article was published in the Indian Express on 23 August, 2010.
http://bit.ly/adXVjB

Telecom

What a highway can do: Despite signs of transformational change, we need more - SOPs and quality http://bit.ly/deUbmU

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

RIP: Rahul Cherian, human rights activist, Inclusive Planet co-founder

praskrishna — 2013-03-09T07:13:41Z

RIPRahul Cherian, an expert and policy activist in disability law, intellectual property (IP) law and technology law passed away today at the age of 39, while on a family holiday in Goa.

The blog post was published in Legally India on February 7, 2013

The 1998 NLSIU Bangalore graduate is understood to have succumbed to an infection after several days in intensive care.

Together with fellow NLSIU alumnus Sachin Malhan, Cherian had co-founded Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy in October 2009, as a non-governmental organisation supporting stakeholders and public bodies about laws and policies affecting persons with disabilities.

As head of policy initiatives at Inclusive Planet, he was involved in drafting the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being agreed upon by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, aiming to make copyrighted, printed materials more easily available to the visually impaired and others with print disabilities.

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

He was also a partner at IndoJuris Law Offices in Chennai, having acted as managing partner of the firm between 2003 and 2008.

Cherian is survived by his wife Anjana, his parents and his brother and sister.

According to Cherian’s colleague Amba Salelkar, a remembrance meeting will be held on Sunday at 11.00 am at Vidya Sagar, No.1, Ranjith Road, Kotturpuram, Chennai.

Reactions:

@mumbaicentral, who worked with Cherian at Inclusive Planet, tweeted: “He was in Goa for the weekend and he was hospitalized with high grade fever, diagnosed as septicemia. Rahul took the foremost steps to recognition of the rights of this disabled in Indian Policy and legislation. Latest achievement being framing the recommendations on access for the disabled to the Justice Verma Committee. Which have been incorporated in the ordinance too. He will also be remembered for his efforts in amending the copyright act to gain the "right to read" for persons with disabilities.

@latelyontime: “Rahul Cherian, colleague, fellow-writer and role model, inspiration. You shall be missed.”

@juditrius: “Rahul Cherian, disability activist, co-founder of Inclusive Planet & exceptional human being just passed away. He will be very much missed.”

@DaHammerstein: “Premature death of Rahul Cherian, Indian dir. Inclusive Planet , fighter for digital, disability rights, loss for human rights community.”

@SivaThambisetty: “A very dear friend died today. Rahul Cherian @inclusive planet, clever incorrigible #Disability rts in #India have lost a campaign leader.”

@sauravdatta29 tweeted: “Rahul Cherian, one of those lawyers with an abiding commitment to social justice.”

@mtonykurian: “this awesome article by rahul cherian of #disability and #sexuality http://t.co/9S5SeSFc" [Indian Express] and “i lost a mentor, disabled of india lost an expert. sad.”

@chaosbogey: “I met Rahul Cherian maybe five times? but I was a little more in love with him each time...”

@sunilchandy: “Rahul Cherian, a music nut, an enabler, an encourager, a great guy :(“

Ring Side View : Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired

Rahul Cherian — 2012-08-13T04:34:22Z

As a legal advisor of the World Blind Union and part of the World Blind Union delegation to the 24th meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that concluded on July 25, 2012 I had a ring side seat to the negotiations that happened between Member States in relation to the Treaty.

On call almost 24 x 7 to answer questions and clarify positions to Member States on aspects relating to the Treaty and the ground reality faced by the print disabled community, those were possibly the most grueling 10 days of my life.

Progress at the last 3 SCCRs was painfully slow. At the start of this SCCR on July 16 2012 the single biggest hurdle to progress on the Treaty was the stand that the African Group had taken at the earlier SCCRs with respect to a comprehensive text covering exceptions and limitations to copyright for education, libraries, archives and disabilities. See my discussion with Jamie Love from Knowledge Ecology International on this issue. It was evident that while a comprehensive text had its merits, it would be impossible to make progress on this comprehensive text because, other that for exceptions for disabilities, the issues relating to education, libraries and archives had not reached the level of maturity required to progress to a Treaty. So it was essential that exceptions for disabilities were de-linked from exceptions for education etc. This is exactly what the African Group did much to the excitement of the WBU team.

Much was left to be done over the next few days including discussion on the text of the working document which prepared by Chair after SCCR 23, available here. Normally, discussions on text happen at the plenary session attended by Member States as well as accredited organizations such as the World Blind Union, my organization Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability Law and Policy and others. This process, while adding to transparency and more participation is sometimes slow and the request of some Member States considering the urgency of the matter, discussions were taken out of plenary into a closed room round table discussion. All Member States could participate and many did. Unfortunately, accredited organizations were not invited to attend. Full credit to Member States in terms of effort put into this effort as they worked well beyond normal working hours on most days in an attempt to reach consensus on the text.

Another critical outcome we had hoped for was that there would be consensus between Member States that the instrument would be in the form of a Treaty. As the negotiations between Member States progressed it became clear that the United States and the European Union were blocking the Treaty while everybody else was pushing hard for the Treaty. The United States and the European Union were pushing for some form of non-binding instrument that would be more in the nature of a recommendation. Further coverage of this is at Huffington Post and in the Guardian. The drawbacks of a soft law as opposed to a Treaty is obvious in that a soft law has no binding force as opposed to a Treaty. Rumor has it that the reason for the United States not supporting the Treaty is that the publishing lobby is apparently a huge contributor to President Obama’s re-election campaign and that he could ill afford to alienate this lobby by pushing for the Treaty. The European Union’s opposition to a binding Treaty was despite a resolution adopted by the European Parliament in February 2012 calling on the European Union to support a binding Treaty.

We had hoped that SCCR 24 would close with agreement on the text, agreement that it would be a Treaty and finally that the SCCR referring the Treaty to the upcoming General Assembly in October 2012 to call for a Diplomatic Conference in 2013 to expressly agree on the Treaty.

However, this was not to be. Although much progress was made on the text, the text remains incomplete, with a lot of brackets in the text on undecided points. There was no consensus that the instrument should be a treaty. And lastly there was no decision on referring the issue to a diplomatic conference.

The next steps as outlined in the conclusions to SCCR 24 are the following:

an inter-sessional meeting of the SCCR be held in Geneva between the 2012 General Assembly and the 25th session of the SCCR to continue work;
the 25th session of the SCCR will attempt to conclude or advance substantially the text of the document; and
that the General Assembly convene an extraordinary session to be held in December 2012 to evaluate the text from SCCR/25 and to make a decision on whether to convene a diplomatic conference in 2013.

SCCR 24 made more progress on this issue that any of the previous SCCRs I have attended. We are very optimistic that the Treaty will become a reality of the next 18 to 24 months with the increased pressure being exerted on the US and the European Union by the blind groups in these jurisdictions respectively. Needless to say, the Treaty will benefit developing countries the most since the majority of persons with print disabilities are in these countries. India and other developing countries are mindful of this and are pushing as hard as possible to make it happen.

My next post will be on the pros and cons of the text that was proposed at the end of SCCR 24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/ring-side-view

Right to Read: Campaign Updates

praskrishna — 2011-08-20T14:06:38Z

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.

The campaign in India began in Chennai and was taken up thereafter, in other cities, namely Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. The campaign has gathered thousands of supporters and has succeeded in bringing the problems of the print disabled to the notice of policy makers and the general public.

In order to bring its supporters regular updates about the progress of the campaign, CIS has started a newsletter. The first newsletter went out to a thousand people on the 23rd of this month:

National Campaigns

National Right to Read Events
Until now four Right to Read events: Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai have been held in India.

Legal Paper on the Right to Read Submitted to the Government
CIS along with Alternative Law Forum and Inclusive Planet submitted a paper on the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 to the HRD Ministry.

The Ministry of HRD has presented the Bill to the Parliament which has been referred to the Standing Committee.

The Bill has attracted newspaper publicity: http://bit.ly/d2S5mc, http://bit.ly/bYkctq, http://bit.ly/buqbLs, http://bit.ly/cHp1bg, http://bit.ly/9LF1Ep, http://bit.ly/cwO4Yv, http://bit.ly/aj7D9p, http://bit.ly/aWv7G9 and http://bit.ly/aFyKrC.

An updated list of signatories is available here.

International Development

A debate on EU supporting a binding treaty for enabling access to published works was held in the European Parliament. Details are available at: (http://bit.ly/94cqVc, http://bit.ly/aVWkyC, http://bit.ly/cDVysw).

We thank you for taking interest in our campaign and look forward to your continued support to make this campaign a success.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-newsletter

Right to Read, Now in Mumbai

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:46:02Z

The third phase of the 'Right to Read' campaign in India held in Mumbai was coordinated by the Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC). The Mumbai Phase of the Right to Read Campaign was launched on 1st January 2010 and ran till the 27th of January 2010.

India has over 70 million persons who are unable to read printed materials and published information due to some forms of physical, cognitive or sensory disabilities. This includes the blind, visually impaired, persons with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and persons who are unable to use their hands or the upper part of their body and hence, cannot hold books. For these persons, information has to be converted into formats such as Braille, large print, audio, electronic and other formats which they can access using assistive technologies.

The ‘Right to Read' campaign was started for such persons. The campaign is part of a global initiative by the World Blind Union (WBU), Sightsavers International (SSI) and other such organizations. In India it is being spearheaded by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Daisy Forum of India (DFI), Inclusive Planet and Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC).

The campaign seeks to accelerate changes in copyright law, raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired and gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The XRCVC as part of its work in the field of creating an accessible and inclusive society and promoting print access has campaigned for this cause mainly in Mumbai and Western India. This report focuses on the genesis and outcome of the Mumbai chapter of the global Right to Read campaign.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/mumbai-phase-of-right-to-read-campaign

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report

praskrishna — 2011-10-20T13:44:57Z

The European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue supported an event sponsored by seven MEPs in the European Parliament to discuss the way forward for EU to support the Treaty for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled which has been proposed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Around 250-300 stakeholders, experts and EU officials came together to discuss the way forward for the EU to support a binding Treaty for the Blind. The half day event consisted of three panels. The first panel was titled 'how the blind read problems and solutions. The speakers were Rodolfo Catani (European Blind Union, Italy), Pete Osborne (Royal National Institute for the Blind, UK) and Nirmita Narasimhan (Centre for Internet and Society, India). The panel was moderated by Manon Ress (Knowledge Ecology International). The panelists focused on the technological developments which enabled reading, the lack of reading materials despite the availability of reading gadgets and the specific problems of developing countries which necessitate a Treaty. The second panel was titled Why a binding treaty for the visually impaired at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)? The speakers were Barbara Martin (Organización Nacional de Ciegos, Spain), James Love (Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, USA), Dan Pescod (Royal National Institute for the Blind, UK) and Tilman Lüder (DG Markt, Head of Unit). The panel was moderated by MEP Ska Keller. The panel spent a lot of time answering queries of member states as to why there was the need for a binding treaty and why a soft instrument would not work at this stage. The final panel was: What is the opinion of the EP and the Commission. The speakers were MEPs: Ska Keller, Thijs Berman, Dieter-Lebrecht Koch, Oriol Junqueras Vies and Eva Lichtenberger followed by a response from Tilman Lüder (DG Markt, Head of Unit). MEP Thijs Bermanwas moderator and gave his closing remarks for the panel. He concluded with a very strong message to the EU member states to support the Treaty.

Read Nirmita's report on the event

Click here for the article in the Parliament

Click here for Knowledge Ecology International

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-europe

Right to read for the print impaired and copyright challenges

radha — 2011-11-08T15:56:43Z

The National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH), Daisy Forum of India (DFI) and Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) together organised an event titled “Right to read for the print impaired and copyright challenges” on behalf of the Visually Impaired (VIP) community of India in New Delhi on 11th November.

The "Right to read for the print impaired and copyright challenges" event was held in honour of the visit of the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to India. The main agenda of the meeting was to draw attention to the pressing problems faced by the print impaired community in developing countries such as India.

The meeting began with a welcome address and background to the meeting given by Nirmita. This was followed by two presentations by Dr.Sam Taraporewala from XRCVC and Ms.Shalini Khanna representing NAB India. The focus of these presentations was to brief the guests from the WIPO as well as the representatives from different stakeholder groups in the audience about the present position in India with regard to the availability of books in accessible formats for the visually impaired and the severe barrier posed by the Indian Copyright Act 1957 which impacted the lives of millions of print impaired persons on an everyday basis. These presentations highlighted the fact that barely half a percent of books were made available in different accessible formats in India and that these were mostly study materials for school children. Most of these were also conversions obtained without the permission of copyright holders and organisations in India were stressed in terms of finances and infrastructural support to cater to the needs of a large number of blind persons in India. As a result of this, blind persons have limited or no access to information and cultural content in accessible formats and even the few materials which are available on the internet are not necessarily to persons using screen readers. Consequently persons with print impairments are excluded from participating in the cultural, social and economic life of the country and from becoming creative and productive members of society.

Print Access - Presentation

This was followed by two presentations from members of the publishers’ community, namely Mr.Vivek Mehra, MD and CEO of Sage India and Mr.Manish Arora, Chairman of the Copyright Committee of the Federation of Publishers and Booksellers Association Of India. Both the speakers expressed their willingness to provide books to persons with print impairments, provided that their concerns of leakage and piracy could be adequately addressed. Earlier in a smaller meeting before the event, Mr.Manas Saikia, MD of Cambridge University Press India Pvt Ltd, had made a similar statement and had also announced that CUP India had finally worked out a format for a contract which would be mutually acceptable to both publishers as well as the community and that CUP would be using this contract globally in all countries. He suggested that this contract could be used as a basis by all publishing houses to enter into agreements with the community to facilitate equitable access to blind persons in India.

After this, Dr.Francis Gurry (DG) briefed the audience about the Treaty for the Blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled which is presently tabled before the WIPO by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay and the establishment of a stake holders platform as a parallel process to provide a speedy and feasible solution to both the blindness and publisher communities, until such a time that a consensus was reached and an internationally binding agreement in the form of a treaty was arrived at. He expressed a desire to know about the problems being faced by the VIP community in India and to offer assistance from WIPO in any manner which may help to tackle the problems in an interim manner. Some of the ways in which help was solicited was in the manner of financial aid to fund capacity building and other projects and a recommendation was made that WIPO should consider India as a possible location for the pilot project of trusted intermediary soon to be undertaken. It was stressed by the community that India was home to nearly 70 million print impaired persons, had the institutional infrastructure to carry such a project through and could act as a resource to other developing countries.

The community also appraised the DG of an attempt to create a stake holders platform at a national level, which complemented the efforts being undertaken at the international level and asked that India should be kept informed of all developments which took place on this issue in WIPO. The DG in his opening remarks observed that India seemed to be a country which was extremely good at making “frugal innovations” and cited the Nano car as one of many examples. He expressed his belief that India could go a long way in creating cost effective and workable technology solutions for publishers and that it would certainly be worth exploring for WIPO to fund such projects in India.

The VIP community in India had prepared a submission document to the WIPO on the concerns and needs of India in this matter, which was handed over to the DG by Mr.Dipendra Manocha.

The meeting concluded with a Q&A session facilitated by Ambassador Swashpawan Singh (Special advisor to the DG on the VIP issue) and a vote of Thanks by Ms.Anuradha Mohit.

Background to the event

The Right to read is a fundamental human right for all persons in the Information age.

The ability to seek, receive and impart information and ideas is vital to ensuring that all persons are able to participate productively in the cultural, scientific and economic life of the society.

However, despite the undisputed recognition of the importance of this right by countries across the globe, persons who are unable to access printed materials, whether due to a visual, physical or cognitive disability, continue to be starved of knowledge and information which is available to the general public.

For persons who cannot read print, information has to be converted into formats such as Braille, large print, audio, electronic and other formats which they can access using assistive technologies. The World Blind Union estimates that barely 5% of books which get published in developed countries get converted into accessible formats. In developing countries such as India this estimate gets reduced even further to a bare 0.5%. This results in reduced educational and employment opportunities for the nearly 70 million print impaired persons in India, since the lack of information and public communication material severely restricts their socio-cultural involvement. To add to this, materials which are available in electronic formats on web sites are also very often inaccessible due to the failure of web designers and developers to adhere to principles of universal access while creating web sites and content on web sites.

The Copyright laws of countries are responsible for determining whether such conversions for the benefit of visually impaired persons are possible without seeking permissions from copyright holders. Under the Indian Copyright Act 1957, there is no provision under the fair dealing clause which expressly permits conversions into accessible formats for persons who cannot read print. Consequently it is illegal for these persons to scan a book into a computer and read it using a screen reader and to share the same with other blind persons. In effect, this is a curtailment of their fundamental right to read, since they cannot read books in their original printed form and have to necessarily convert them into other formats. While there are nearly 124 countries which have restrictive copyright laws like India which do not make provisions for conversion by the blind, there are about 54 countries including both developed and developing countries which have enabled the necessary legal framework for persons with print impairments to convert and read books. Blind persons in these countries, in addition to converting books for their own use within their country, can also share books with each other. Hence libraries for the blind in these countries constantly circulate materials in accessible formats amongst themselves. Blind persons living in countries like India on the other hand, are unable to undertake conversion or take advantage of already available accessible materials in other countries.

Recognising that this problem needs to be addressed urgently once and for all and that such a solution should come at an international level, the World Blind Union in November 2008, proposed a Treaty before the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) titled “the Treaty for the Blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons”, which sought to harmonise exceptions and limitations for the visually impaired in the copyright laws of countries across the world so that there could be a free and unimpeded exchange of knowledge across borders. This Treaty is currently proposed by three Latin American Countries- Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay and is to be discussed at the next meeting of the SCCR in December. At the same time, stakeholders in the treaty (disability organizations and publisher groups) are also trying to address this issue through a stakeholders platform constituted especially for this purpose.

In the light of the ever growing magnitude of this problem in India and the implications that such an international Treaty could have for a country like India, urgent action is required at two levels:

We need to amend the Indian Copyright Act 1957 and incorporate the necessary flexibilities required for print impaired persons to undertake and share accessible books- this will serve to bring the Act in line with the provisions of the Indian Constitution and the UNCRPD (United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities) to which we are a signatory;

India should support the Treaty efforts at the WIPO to harmonise copyright laws at a global level.

The Visually Impaired Community (VIP Community) of India has been fighting this battle for many years and yet blind children are being deprived everyday of vital information which would enable them to pursue education and employment. The community has recently launched a nation wide Right to Read (R2R) Campaign to raise awareness on this issue amongst the public and policy makers.

The Present Event:

The Director General of the WIPO Mr.Francis Gurry, visited India between 11th-13th November , and kindly consented to attend a special event titled, The Right to Read for persons with print impairment and Copyright Challenges” being organized by the VIP community in India in his honour. This meeting intended to serve as a platform for the community to express its views on the Treaty negotiations at the WIPO and to brief the Director General about the efforts being undertaken at the national level to tackle this problem. Attendees were members from different stakeholder communities such as disability organizations, publishers and the government and they all had an opportunity to present their points of view.

Agenda of the seminar on Right to Read and copy right challenges

Date: 11th November
Time: 5:00 P.M.
Duration: One Hour
Venue: Sheraton New Delhi Hotel, District Centre, Saket, New Delhi 110017

Welcome and background of the meeting by Ms.Nirmita Narasimhan (Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society)

Challenges in reading books for persons with blindness or low vision by Mr. K. Ramakrishna (General Secretary, National Association for the Blind)
Brief about the copyright challenges to the print impaired community in India By Dr. Sam Taraporevala – Chairman Copy Right and Publisher Relationship Committee, DAISY Forum of India
Publisher’s perspective by Mr. Vivek Mehra (MD/CEO, Sage India)
Presentation from the Federation of Publishers’ & Booksellers’ Associations in India (Chair Legal Committee, FPBAI)
Address by the Director General- WIPO
Introduction to and presentation of the submission document to the DG by Mr.Dipendra Manocha
Questions and Comments from the Deligates- facilitated byAmbassador Swashpawan Singh
Vote of Thanks by Ms. Anuradha Mohit (Director, National Institute for Visually Handicapped, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Govt. of India)
Informal Interaction over tea/coffee.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/right-to-read-for-the-print-impaired-and-copyright-challenges

Right to Read event in Brussels

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T12:19:06Z

A 'Right to Read' event is being held at the European Parliament, Brussels on 4 May 2010.

Blind and other reading disabled people face a "book famine". In the North less than 5% of books published are available for reading disabled people. In the South the figure is less than 1%.

Most accessible books are made by specialist agencies using charitable money. At present, such agencies, operating in different countries, but with a common language, often both transcribe the same book. They cannot avoid this needless and expensive duplication by sharing one accessible file or copy. This is because, under present copyright law, reading material in Braille, or formatted digitally for reading disabled people, cannot legally cross borders. This waste of scarce resources significantly hinders access to reading for the world's 300 million visually impaired people and millions of other reading disabled people, especially the poorest.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities says that disabled people have a right to read. The best way to guarantee this right is the adoption of a binding treaty that establishes limitations and exceptions to copyright for the non-commercial production and distribution of accessible books.

The World Blind Union representing over 160 million blind and partially sighted persons in 177 member countries, has now drafted a " WIPO Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons" to combat the "book famine". It is now being considered by the World Intellectual Property Organization where it has been sponsored by Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador and Paraguay. We have invited stakeholders, experts and EU officials to discuss a way forward and to ask the EU to support a binding treaty. This conference is supported by the European Blind Union and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue.

For further details, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/right-to-read-brussels

Right to Read Campaign, Chennai

radha — 2013-02-04T06:19:31Z

A report on the first road show of the nationwide Right to Read Campaign which was launched at Loyola college, Chennai, on 26th September, 2009.

Right to Read Campaign - An Overview

Fast Facts

At least three hundred million people around the world with sight problems and dyslexia cannot read standard print. India may be home to at least 70 million of these persons.

Globally, a massive 96 percent of books are never made available in formats that persons with print disability can enjoy and in India almost 99% books are unavailable in accessible formats.

Every day millions of adults and children are denied vital information for education, work, daily life as well as being denied the joy of reading a world of books.

The Indian Copyright Act 1957 does not permit conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats to persons with print disabilities.

Problem at hand

Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. There are technologies available which can help them read print if the material is converted into an alternate format such as large print, audio, Braille or any electronic format. While the Indian constitution guarantees the “right to read” as a fundamental right, the Copyright Act of 1957 does not permit the conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions that India is a party to specifically require it to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and to make available information and material to them on an equal basis as others. Publishers also do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5% of them are available. As a result, persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and it impacts their career choices. In addition to this, there are no national policies or action plan to ensure that publications in accessible formats in all Indian languages are available to persons with print disabilities all over the country.

Current situation in India

The Indian Copyright Act, 1957 does not make any provision for the conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats for print impaired persons. Hence organizations serving them have to get permission from copyright holders for conversion. Because of this, other countries do not lend books in accessible formats to print impaired persons in our country.

In the case of books published in India, there are no accessible copies readily available in the market and while many publishers in principle are not averse to giving permission, the unwanted fear of piracy and lack of awareness prevents them from allowing organizations to undertake conversions. Consequently print impaired persons are denied the freedom to choose and read any book which is freely available to the public.

Solution

The Government of India must immediately modify the Indian Copyright Act 1957 to permit conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats to persons with print disabilities.

India should support the Treaty on Copyright and the Reading Disabled being tabled at WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights by the Governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay based on a text originally drafted by a global expert committee under the auspices of the World Blind Union, which is aimed at harmonization of copyright laws at an international level.

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

To accelerate change in copyright law

To raise public awareness on the issue

To gather Indian support for the Treaty on Copyright and the Reading Disabled being tabled at WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights by the Governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay based on a text originally drafted by a global expert committee under the auspices of the World Blind Union.

Campaign Managers

Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org): The Centre for Internet and Society critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange. In association with the Daisy Forum of India and Bookbole, the CIS is engaged in conducting the Right to Read Campaign supporting the acceleration of amendments in Copyright Law, creating public awareness and by gathering Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

DAISY Forum of India (www.daisyindia.org): DFI is a forum of 75 Not for Profit organizations from India who are involved in production of books and reading materials in accessible formats for persons who cannot read normal print. The DAISY Consortium envisions a world where people with print disabilities have equal access to information and knowledge without delay or additional expense. The DAISY Forum of India endorses this vision and is working towards its realization in India.

Bookbole (www.bookbole.com): Bookbole is a library of books in multiple formats which can be accessed by persons using screen readers. Bookbole allows users to find, share, and manage personal libraries in a very easy fashion. This website has been developed by Inclusive Planet, a social venture involved in creating web based products and services for the differently-abled.

Loyola College (Chennai) (www.loyolacollege.edu/index.html): Loyola College has played an important role in the history of education in India. Founded in 1925 by Rev. Fr. Bertram, S.J., who himself was twice the acting Vice- Chancellor of the Madras University, Loyola College has emerged in the last seventy-five years as a premier educational Institution in the country and it is striving to break new paths in education. One of the major breakthroughs in its history is the autonomous status it received in the year 1978. Situated in the heart of Chennai, and having a large campus of about 98 acres, this institution provides an ideal environment for both teachers and students to enrich themselves intellectually, emotionally and physically by actively participating in the academic and co-curricular activities. Loyola has started several Centres of Excellence such as LIFE, (Loyola Institute of Frontier Energy) Entomology Research Institute, ACE, (Academy for Cumulative Excellence) Culture and Communication, LIVE (Loyola Institute of Vocational Education) and LISOR (Loyola Institute of Industrial and Social Science Research).

Campaign activities

The nationwide Right to Read Campaign seeks to achieve the objective through a series of events like,

Nationwide road-shows
Public rallies
Televised debates
Online petitions
Signature campaigns
Audio-video clips
Stalls where accessibility tools are demonstrated
Submission of a legal paper to the government on international scenario and constitutional compulsions for the amendment of the copyright law.

Social Networks

The Right to read campaign has been active on various social networks like blogs, Twitter and Facebook. The campaign has been well received by the users and is succeeding in raising awareness on the issue.

Media Coverage

Even before its first event, the R2R campaign attracted significant press coverage in both Bangalore and Chennai. For details of the articles on the campaign in various newspapers both before and after the campaign please refer to Annexure A.

Website: www.righttoread.in

This website, dedicated for the Right to Read campaign has details about the issue faced with regard to the copyright law and the objective of the campaign. It has a provision for signing the online petition and declaration forms. It has regular updates on the events being conducted and provides an opportunity to exploit ones creativity by blogging, shooting videos, clicking photos and writing slogans about the campaign. Its major objective is to spread awareness about the campaign.

Launch of Right to Read Campaign

The first roadshow of the R2R campaign was launched at Chennai.

Venue: Loyola College

Date: 26^th September, 2009

Time: 9:30 AM

Topic: Amend copyright law to grant access to reading materials for the print impaired

Agenda

Launch of the campaign

This was the first major event with respect to the Right to Read campaign. A wide range of dignitaries were invited for the launch. The audience included students, social activists and visually challenged people. About 4oo students from 100 colleges around Chennai and 150 NSS volunteers attended from outside and an almost equal number of students participated from within Loyola College to make this a very large gathering of almost 800-1000 persons. The event was organized by the students of Department of Sociology at Loyola College, Chennai in collaboration with the campaign managers.

The Chief Guest of the event was Mr. Shri Kumar Verma, a well known writer, social activist and a professor of creative English and English literature. He spoke about the issue faced by print impaired persons and how apprehensive people are about sharing books in accessible formats as it is a legal infringement. He appreciated the fact that people have recognized the need for attention to this issue. He observed that Loyola College was the most appropriate venue for this event since students are proactively engaged with social issues. He promised to take initiatives and spread awareness about the campaign and expected the same from others.

Other dignitaries who honored the event were Dr. N. Raja Hussain, Program coordinator, NSS, University of Madras; Mr. Dipendra Manocha, Member, Executive Council, World Blind Union and President, Daisy Forum of India; Mr. Chandrasekar, Treasurer, National Association for the Blind; Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS and Mr. Rahul Cherian, Policy Head, Inclusive Planet.

They spoke about the need for the amendment and importance of spreading awareness about this burning issue. In her introduction to the campaign, Nirmita explained that it was not a question of just making the books available in particular formats. If people can read books, it will help literacy, education, employment and promote independent living. A majority of the visually impaired population don't pursue courses because they don't have study materials in accessible formats. This is substantiated by looking at the statistics of Delhi University - they have about 1,500 seats reserved for the handicapped. Despite that, in 2008, only 270 students applied and in 2009, only 350 applied. This just goes to show that in addition to making reservations, it is also necessary to provide an enabling reading framework to persons with disabilities by providing materials in accessible formats and a good support system. This statistics served as an eye opener to the audience.

Signature Campaign

The launch was followed by a signature campaign where a huge banner supporting the campaign was signed by the dignitaries and other participants of the event. In addition to this, volunteers were committed to the task of carrying out a signature campaign on paper. Supporters of the campaign were invited to sign on the declaration and to put down their names to volunteer for the campaign or to help out the print impaired in a sustained fashion by specifying the manner in which they would like to contribute.

Rally

The students had organized a rally supporting the need for amendment of the copyright law and to spread awareness about the campaign. 200 students walked around the 97 acre campus with 100 banners carrying slogans like- “Support the Right to Read”, “Change Copyright Law,- free a world of knowledge”, “One Alphabet- several words; one book- several formats “, “Different states, different languages, different cultures- why not different formats? And so on.

Declaration forms

Interested people signed the declaration forms to endorse the campaign by voluntarily engaging themselves in any of the activities like creating awareness among public, gathering public support for The Treaty for the Blind at WIPO, online petitions and promoting the campaign online.
Declaration

Panel Discussion - ‘We the people’

The panel discussion kicked off at 1130 hrs with the Master of the Ceremony introducing the panelists; Mr. Dipendra Manocha, President, The Daisy Forum of India (DFI); Prof. Sivaraman, Professor of English, Presidency College, Chennai and Mr. Vijaykumar, Advocate. Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Mr. Rahul Cherian, Co-founder and Policy Head, Inclusive Planet, were the moderators of the discussion. A salient point to be noted here was that all the panelists present were totally/partially visually challenged.

The discussion started off with Prof. Sivaraman citing his experiences with access to literature other than printed format since 2004. He shared information on the technology that he had been using to ‘read’ books that were prescribed for the students. These were text books or reference material that had been used over a period of time. However, he also threw light on the shortcomings – that newly published text books or literature were not readily available in accessible formats. It usually takes him a considerable amount of time and effort to get materials in Braille or audio formats and hence it is impossible for him to keep abreast of contemporary literature.

An equally important concern that was raised was that only new books with clear print and paper could be accurately scanned electronically owing to quality of the printed characters as well as deterioration of paper quality over time. Any pictorial representation including figures, charts or graphs and even italicized words present problems during scanning. Thus,

What is most urgently required to solve this problem is a digital library as in the case of USA, where the publishers deposit the electronic files of the books. These can be picked up and converted into any accessible format required for a print impaired person without wasting much time, effort and resources. Taking it a step further, he also put forth his views on the unauthorized access and ill-use that electronic books or e-books are put to. Persons who are not visually challenged can also access such books that are present online without any restrictions. Websites that are designed to be used by the visually challenged specifically state in their Terms of Use that accessing/reading of downloading of e-books are strictly meant for persons with partial/total sight impairment, persons with other forms of disabilities that would prevent them from reading printed material or for persons/aides assisting the above mentioned and that any download made by people other than those mentioned would be treated as infringement of the law. But not many people take these terms seriously and still would download such books that are meant for the visually challenged. Right now, there are no technological/legal measures in place to check this infringement owing to the inability to track the perpetrators identity/location. Since it is almost impossible to restrict the access to e-books to only the visually impaired, this acts as a serious set-back in persuading the government to amend the Copyright Act.

Mr. Vijaykumar continued the discussion, citing Article 14 of the Constitution of India which mandates Equality before law and equal protection for everybody, saying that the fundamental right of Indian citizens – the right to read for everybody has not been upheld in India owing to the restrictions imposed by the Copyright Act of 1957 and that the Copyright Act, by not including any exceptions or provisions, has failed to protect the interests of persons with visual impairment.

Mr. Dipendra Manocha, President, Daisy Forum of India, gave the international and technological perspective to the panel discussion. He explained about the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System format) format which acts as a standard format to make 1 source document. This can then be used to convert into other accessible formats. He enlightened the crowd about the three factors that would help in solving the problems currently faced by persons with print impairment in India: First, technology such as Laptops or DAISY players and other handheld devices/readers that would assist in translating/reading out aloud e-books. Secondly, creation of e-books in accessible formats, the current high cost-of-conversion of which can be brought down by volunteering and thirdly by bringing in a change in the government policy on Copyright law. Mr. Manocha also informed the audience of how the US Government had amended their copyright law to include provisions for the visually challenged. This has brought down the cost of conversion of printed material into accessible formats to Rs. 2,000 from a whooping Rs. 20,000. He also highlighted the fact that in a developing country like India, it is not feasible to spend Rs. 20,000 for conversion of just one copy.

Answering the question as to what steps the Daisy Forum of India is taking with respect to making accessible formats available to the print-impaired, Mr. Manocha responded by saying that the DFI has been negotiating a deal with Adobe Systems Inc. USA, provider of the .pdf format of e-books, to include an option to Save As Daisy format. Also, providing books in accessible formats at the same cost as that of its printed counterpart was one of the visions of DFI.
When asked by a member of audience if we can take the law in our hands and start uploading/using e-books from the internet, Mr. Manocha again pointed out that it is the duty and responsibility of the Indian govt. to provide equal opportunities to everybody. In case the government fails to do that, citizens can take measures that would help alleviate the pains caused. But such measures should be taken keeping in mind all the stakeholders involved. Large-scale usage of electronic forms of literature would affect the business of authors/publishers. Hurting publishers is never the intention of this campaign. Mr. Manocha, Mr. Vijaykumar and Prof. Sivaraman made it clear that a coordinated effort was required on the part of all the stake-holders viz. the government, the copyright owners (authors, publishers etc.), the persons with print impairment and the organizations representing them, as well as the general public. The amendments to the Copyright Act should take into consideration the interests of all stake holders.

When the floor was opened to questions, the participation from audience was overwhelming. Many of the questions were from print impaired persons in the audience who were students in colleges or represented a disability organization like the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and so on. Due to paucity of time, the interactive question and answer session was restricted to half an hour post the panel discussion but the audience were invited to discuss further questions with the panelists after the session.

Musical Extravaganza

After some serious food-for-thought, the silence of the convention hall was broken by a musical performance rendered by a Music Band from NFB Chennai. The performance began by two singers rendering a song in praise of the Gods and then went on to lighter numbers like Jai Ho, from the movie Slumdog Millionaire and songs from some Tamil movies, which left the audience speechless.

Vote of Thanks

The volunteers from Loyola College presented the Vote of thanks to all the dignitaries and panelists on stage and also to the audience present in the function after which the National Anthem was played. Later, the guests and the audience proceeded for lunch.

Acknowledgements

We would to like to take this opportunity to specially thank
Rev. Fr. K. Amal SJ (Rector, Loyola College);
Rev. Fr. Albert Muthumalai SJ (Principal, Loyola College);
Dr. S. Alphonse Raj (Vice- Principal & Faculty of Sociology Department, Loyola College);

Prof S. Iyyappan (Co-coordinator, Extension service Department (NSS), Loyola College)
Prof J. Jerald Inico, Faculty Incharge, Resource Center for Differently abled (RCDA);

Prof. Robert Bellarmine (Head, Department of Sociology);
Department of Sociology; students from RCDA; NSS; Students Union;
the teaching and non-teaching staff of Loyola College, who helped in organizing the campaign and without whom the first road show of the nationwide campaign would not have been a grand success that it has been.
We look forward to their continued support in the campaign.

We would also like to thank all the students and guests who came from different parts of the city and participated in the campaign.

Videos

Annexure A

Media Coverage

Details of the articles on the campaign in various newspapers both before and after the campaign are given below:

DNA – Bangalore, 24^th September, 2009

CIS campaign to alter copyright law to favour visually impaired - An article by N T Balanarayan, DNA Bangalore - 24th September, 2009
http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_cis-campaign-to-alter-copyright-law-to-favour-visually-imapired_1292662

As Indians we enjoy our right to education and to read, but should learning be restricted to books provided in school? What if, some wish to broaden their horizon and learn more, only to realize there are no books available?
That's the situation the visually impaired in India face now. But Bangalore-based Centre for Information and Society (CIS) is out to change it. They're starting a new campaign-- Right to Read--demanding changes in the copyright law so that books can be converted into a medium with which the visually impaired will feel more comfortable.
According to the group, only 0.5% of the books available in India can be accessed in Braille or audio format. Further, the World Blind Union estimates that only five per cent of the total books that get published in developed countries are converted into accessible formats.
According to Nirmita Narasimhan who works with CIS, it's not a question of just making the books available in particular formats. "If people can read books, it will help literacy, education, employment and promote independent living. A majority of the visually impaired population don't pursue courses because they don't have study materials in accessible formats. This is substantiated by looking at the statistics of Delhi University -- they have about 1,500 seats reserved for the handicapped. Despite that, in 2008, only 270 students applied and in 2009, only 350 came forward. This just goes to show that in addition to making reservations, it is also necessary to provide an enabling reading framework to persons with disabilities by providing materials in accessible formats and a good support system," she says.
"Further, it is not necessarily any particular format--with technologies and the prolific use of computers; accessible electronic formats (not being jpeg images which screen readers can't make sense of) are most appreciated. One will find that blind persons are always reaching out to each other for study materials in accessible formats--this varies from materials for board exams to text for competitive exams," she adds.
Through the campaign, a road show scheduled to start on September 26 at Loyola College, Chennai, the group wants changes to be made in the copyright law. The roadshow will be organized in three other metros as well.
The event will comprise presentations, debates and demonstrations along with book reading sessions and stalls where various accessibility tools will be demonstrated.

Times of India, 26^th September, 2009

Tara Textreader, a boon for the visually-challenged – by M Ramya

http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/5058157.cms
CHENNAI: Mahendran loses track of time as he listens to portions from Romeo and Juliet through Tara. The final year B A (Tamil) student of Loyola College is pleased with the Rs 1.35-lakh Tara Textreader that allows him to access printed material without help and convey information without a scribe. "The Sangeetha software has an Indian accent. So I have no problem accessing material in English," says Mahendran, who has visual disabilities.
Earlier, students like him could not access printed material that hadn't been digitized. Their computer systems could not read material that wasn't pre-recorded. Professor Jerald Inico, a lecturer in the computer science department and faculty in charge of the college's Resource Centre for Differently Abled, says the Textreader need not even be connected to a computer.
He says: "We were trying to come up with a formula to evaluate students with visual disabilities because we felt that when scribes write down the answers for the students some of the content would be lost in translation. The equipment can scan the question paper and read it out and will also allow the student to answer verbally and store it as an audio clip. For students who become blind later in life and have not learnt Braille this is a big help."
Tara, purchased from funds provided by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, can only speak English; now through Sangeetha the college is trying to install a Tamil optical character recognition software. While the students use Tara to read books now the equipment will be tested for exam evaluation during the April 2010 semester exams. But Mahendran is a bit wary. "If we can use Tara and still get extra time for the exams it will prove beneficial, but if we are given the same time as the others because we are using the textreader it will take time to comprehend what is being read to us and give the appropriate answers."
The college is also supporting a nationwide Right to Read' campaign for persons with print impairments to be launched in Chennai on Saturday. Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) which is one of the organisers of the campaign, says: "Two years ago when we proposed a change in the Copyright Act a clause was incoporated that said that books can be reproduced in formats exclusively for the use of the blind. This limits the reproduction to one or two options and newer technologies cannot be used. It also leaves out people with other disabilities like the dyslexic who also have print impairments. Technology is enabling, but law is disabling. We want to create awareness of the issue through the campaign."
Registration for the campaign begins at 8 am at the college. The CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Bookbole will take the campaign to other cities in the country.

The Hindu – 29^th September, 2009

‘Right to read’ campaign launched
http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/29/stories/2009092957440200.htm
CHENNAI: About 100 National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers from various colleges in the State kick-started a ‘right to read’ campaign at Loyola College recently. The aim of the campaign is to make books accessible to persons with disabilities.
The speakers, who included the visually challenged, persons with low vision and dyslexia, said the Copyright Act did not allow persons with print impairments to convert reading matter using assistive technologies to accessible formats. Dipendra Manocha, executive committee member of World Blind Union, said: “We need organisations, individuals and volunteers to contribute and create accessible books.”
Nirmitha Narasimhan, programme manager of the Centre for Internet and Society felt access to information would ensure a better contribution by the visually challenged to society. “It is not that weare insensitive. The suggestion for amendments to the Copyright Act has not yet been incorporated,” she said.
Writer Sreekumar Varma, who inaugurated the campaign, recalled his experience as a scribe during his days as a lecturer. C.P. Chandrasekar, treasurer, National Association for the Blind, and Loyola College Principal Albert Muthumalai spoke.

Deccan Herald – 29^th September, 2009

‘Right to Read’ campaign launched - Fighting against copyright regulations – an article by L Subramani.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/27678/right-read-campaign-launched.html

To highlight the issues faced by persons with print disability – those deprived of Indian books due to unfriendly copyright regulations – a group of organisations launched the Right To Read (R2R) campaign on September 26.
The campaign, jointly launched by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Daisy Forum of India (DFI), bookbole.com and Inclusive Planet, kickstarted at Loyola College in Chennai on Saturday.
“This campaign was part of the World Blind Union’s (WBU) global campaign,” said Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS. “We are asking all the organisations to lend their support to our initiative.”
The campaign comes at a time when the Indian government is preparing to consider changes to the copyright law, which it failed to implement two years ago after disability rights campaigners objected to the proposal to make books and other print materials be made in an “exclusive” format.
Nirmita said that this would also be an occasion for activists to urge Government of India to throw its weight behind a WBU treaty tabled at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) asking for a global copyright regulation that takes into account the needs of persons with print disabilities.
“The treaty is coming up for discussion at Geneva (WIPO's head quarters) in December,” Nirmita said and added: “Right now only three Latin American nations are supporting it. Since India has the largest number of persons with print disability, which includes the visually challenged, persons with autism and children with learning difficulties, our support would likely tilt the balance in favour of the treaty.” Now, the campaign will be gradually taken to other parts of the country, said Rahul Cherian from Inclusive Planet. A signature campaign and distribution of a declaration supporting accommodation of persons with print disability in copyright laws will also be held as part of the campaign.

NDTV – Hindu

The first event was covered by NDTV Hindu and an interview with Rahul Cherian and Nirmita Narasimhan was also telecast on 26^th September. A brief excerpt from the interview can be viewed at:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/16/o4sQ-ycaoBw

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvhindu#play/uploads/15/Q5HCm2evUYE

Deccan Chronicle – 27^th September, 2009

Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS, speaks at the launch of ‘Right to Read’ campaign. Loyola College in the city on Saturday launched the campaignto amend the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and give visually challenged and dyslexic people better access to printed books in the form of Braille copy and big prints.

Tamil Murasu

Coverage in the October Issue of: CBR Forum - E- News Bulletin

Report Prepared by

Centre for Internet and Society

www.cis-india.org

29^th September, 2009

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Right to Read Campaign - Kolkata

radha — 2011-11-08T15:39:13Z

A report on the nationwide Right to Read campaign which had its second road show at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata on 7th November, 2009 from 11.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.

The Problem

Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. Technologies are in place which can help them read printed matter if the material gets converted into alternate formats such as large print, audio, Braille or other electronic formats. Whereas the Constitution of India declares “right to read” a fundamental right, the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 does not permit conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions to which India is a signatory to specifically requires it to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and make available information and materials to persons with disabilities on an equal basis as others.

Publishers too do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5 per cent of books are available in accessible formats in India. As a result, persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and this has a big impact on their career choices.

The Campaign

To solve this problem, the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 should be amended to permit the conversion and distribution of materials in all formats for making it accessible for persons with print impairment. Hence, the Daisy Forum of India, The Centre for Internet & Society and Bookbole have taken the initiative to be part of the global “Right to Read” campaign launched by the World Blind Union.

The ‘Right to Read’ campaign seeks to:

Accelerate change in the copyright law;
Raise public awareness on the issue of access to reading for the print-impaired; and
Gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

In West Bengal, this campaign was initiated by Campaigners for Inclusion (a volunteer initiative by CRY and Sruti Disability Rights Centre) and hosted by the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS).

The Programme

A meeting was held at the National University of Juridical Sciences on 7th November from 11.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. The Chief Guest of the meeting was Dr. Suranjan Das, Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. Other dignitaries present at the meeting were Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, The Centre for Internet & Society and Rahul Cherian, Co-Founder, Inclusive Planet and Book Bole.

A lively panel discussion followed. The speakers included Ms. Chandrima Bhattacharya, Senior Assistant Editor, The Telegraph, Mr. S.B. Pattnayak, Principal, Ramakrishna Mission, Narendrapur, Dr. S.S. Roy, Chairman, National Children’s Computer Society and Dr. Rukmini Sen, Assistant Professor, (Social Sciences), WBNUJS.

A skit on this issue was presented by the Campaigners for Inclusion and a musical programme by Sayoni Palit, a visually impaired student of the Bachelor of Music, enthralled the audience.

The meeting was attended by 120 people including members of Blind Persons Association, National Association for Blind, Welfare Society for the Blind, Behala Blind School, Lighthouse for the Blind, Society for Visually Handicapped, National Institute for the Blind, Louis Braille Memorial School, Noble Mission of Calcutta and Mentaid along with several college students and teachers.

A signature campaign on the petition to amend the Copyright Act started in Kolkata on that day. Sruti Disability Rights Centre has taken the initiative to organize more awareness meetings, particularly in different colleges as well as at the Kolkata Book Fair in the coming months.

Media Coverage

Radio channels like Gyan Bharati organized a talk show on this issue besides announcing about the programme on its channel for one week. Red FM was the official radio partner and gave ample coverage to this event. One English newspaper and one Urdu newspaper covered this news.

Times of India - 7th Nov 2009

KOLKATA: For the 12 lakh-odd visually-challenged and dyslexic persons in the state, access to good Indian literature in Braille or audio format is a challenge. Obtaining copyright to convert books into special format is the biggest hindrance, say activists working for disability rights.

"Even the National Library does not have any Braille or audio books. Authorities argue that the number of such special books is too less to create full-fledged sections," said Shampa Sengupta of Sruti. When it comes to audio-version, the scenario is worse, says Lina Bardhan from Noble Mission that works with the mentally challenged.

City Braille publishers say legal formalities prove to be an obstacle."We believe that as a humanitarian gesture, the Copyright Act of 1957 should be relaxed for books meant for the differently-abled," said Amiyo Biswas of Blind Persons' Association, one of the three Braille publishers in the city.

In April 2008, UK-based Sight Savers International urged the UN to sign a treaty so that persons with disabilities can access books and documents easily.

Now, Center for Internet Society (CIS) has carried out campaigns in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. On Saturday, a seminar will be held in Kolkata. "We want to organize a pan-India movement and amend the Copyright Act to establish the right to read," said CIS programme manager Nirmita Narasimhan.

Click here for the original article

Coverage in the November Issue of: CBR Forum - E- News Bulletin

Photos

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Right to Read Campaign - Kolkata

radha — 2013-02-04T06:47:59Z

The nationwide Right to Read campaign which began with its first road show at Loyola College, Chennai is now having its second road show at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. There will be half day events with publicity. Events shall comprise presentations, debates and demonstrations, book reading sessions and stalls where various accessibility tools will be demonstrated.

Problem Statement

Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. There are technologies available which can help them read print if the material is converted into an alternate format such as large print, audio, Braille or any electronic format. While the Indian constitution guarantees the “right to read” as a fundamental right, the copyright regime does not permit the conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions that India is a party to specifically require India to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and to make available information and material to persons with disabilities on an equal basis as others. Publishers also do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5% of books are available in accessible formats in India. As a result persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and it impacts their career choices.
In addition to this, there are no national Policies or action plan to ensure that publications in accessible formats in all Indian languages are available to persons with print disabilities all over the country.

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

To accelerate change in copyright law
To raise public awareness on the issue
To gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Your Support:

No campaign is complete without the endorsement of leaders in the field. We invite you to lend your name and support to this campaign in large numbers and help us make this campaign a success. If you wish to do so, please e-mail Nirmita Narasimhan: nirmita@cis-india.org.

Agenda

Declaration on the Right to Read

Cookie Jar - Glass Jar full of cookies. The jar is locked by chains and a lock. Caption below in large letters saying "Open the cookie jar for 70 million people". Right to Read logo. Wording below: The right to read campaign seeks to accelerate change in copyright law, raise public awareness on issues of access to reading for the print impaired. Support the campaign by turning up for the event at Kolkata. Venue, date and time given. To know more about the campaign and to join us in our endeavor visit our website. www.righttoread.in

Daffodils - Poem Daffodils by Wordsworth. Black strips across many of the lines of the poem as a result only some scattered words of the poem can be seen. Caption below in large letters saying "Not Quite Right? 70 million people agree". Right to Read logo. Wording below: The right to read campaign seeks to accelerate change in copyright law, raise public awareness on issues of access to reading for the print impaired. Support the campaign by turning up for the event at Kolkata. Venue, date and time given. To know more about the campaign and to join us in our endeavor visit our website. www.righttoread.in

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Centre for Internet and Society

September 2014 Bulletin

Highlights

NVDA and eSpeak

Pervasive Technologies

Wikipedia

Privacy

CIS @ IGF

September 2013 Bulletin

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Access to Knowledge and Openness

Access to Knowledge (Copyright and Pervasive Technologies)

Internet Governance

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Digital Natives

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September 2012 Bulletin

Announcements

September 2011 Bulletin

Researchers@Work

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Featured Publication

Book Review

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New Blog Entry

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Articles by Shyam Ponappa

Event Organised

Miscellaneous

Film Screening

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Follow us elsewhere

September 2010 Bulletin

News Updates

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Access to Knowledge

Openness

Internet Governance

Telecom

RIP: Rahul Cherian, human rights activist, Inclusive Planet co-founder

Further reading:

Ring Side View : Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired

Right to Read: Campaign Updates

National Campaigns

International Development

Right to Read, Now in Mumbai

Right to Read in the European Parliament: A Report

Right to read for the print impaired and copyright challenges

Background to the event

The Present Event:

Agenda of the seminar on Right to Read and copy right challenges

Video

Right to Read event in Brussels

Right to Read Campaign, Chennai

Right to Read Campaign - An Overview

Fast Facts

Problem at hand

Current situation in India

Solution

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

Campaign Managers

Campaign activities

Launch of Right to Read Campaign

Signature Campaign

Rally

Declaration forms

Panel Discussion - ‘We the people’

Musical Extravaganza

Vote of Thanks

Acknowledgements

Videos

Right to Read Campaign - Kolkata