Centre for Internet and Society

You will need a license to create a WhatsApp group in Kashmir

praskrishna — 2016-04-21T02:34:46Z

The internet rights activists have criticised the move stating it as unconstitutional.

The article was published by Governance Now on April 19, 2016. Pranesh Prakash tweeted on this.

Moving beyond internet ban, Kashmir’s Kupwara district issued a notice asking all admins of WhatsApp news groups to register their groups with the district authority within ten days.

With this move, the authorities are taking power in their hands to monitor WhatsApp news groups owned by private individuals. However, internet rights activists criticised it saying the move is unconstitutional as it breaches freedom of speech.

The circular is issued under the subject of ‘registering of WhatsApp news group and restrictions for spreading rumours thereof’. The district magistrate said that any spread of information by these WhatsApp news groups, “leading to untoward incidents will be dealt under the law”.

You may need a license in Kashmir to run a WhatsApp group

The valley witnessed five-day internet shutdown following the Handwara firing incident. Internet ban is a common phenomenon in Kashmir.

“For how long will the government decide whether we can communicate with each other or not? Actually, the authorities do not want us to spread the truth about the army’s atrocities far and wide,” said a resident of Handwara as quoted in Kashmir Reader.

Earlier, parts of Haryan and Gujarat also witnessed internet ban during Jat and Patidar agitation, respectively.

Blocking all internet access is clearly an unnecessary and disproportionate measure that cannot be countenanced as a ‘reasonable restriction’ on freedom of expression and the right to seek and receive information, which is an integral part of the freedom of expression,” said Pranesh Prakash.

For instance, he adds, a riot-affected woman seeking to find out the address of the nearest hospital cannot do so on her phone. “Instead of blocking access to the internet, the government should seek to quell rumours by using social networks to spread the truth, and by using social networks to warn potential rioters of the consequences,” he said.

Former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria used WhatsApp to counter rumours spread after circulation of a fake photo in January 2015.

“The way in which the ban is imposed is unreasonable. Problem is in the method that is being used in absence of guidelines, defining circumstances under which they can impose a restriction on internet sites,” says Arun Kumar, head of cyber initiatives at Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

If government formulates these rules or guidelines it will set a threshold for state or central authorities, which will define the urgency of imposing ban on internet services.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-april-19-2016-you-will-need-a-license-to-create-whatsapp-group-in-kashmir

You Have the Right to Remain Silent

nishant — 2013-07-22T06:59:53Z

Reflecting upon the state of freedom of speech and expression in India, in the wake of the shut-down of the political satire website narendramodiplans.com.

Nishant Shah's column was published in Down to Earth on July 17, 2013.

It took less than a day for narendramodiplans.com, a political satire website that had more than 60,000 hits in the 20 hours of its existence, to be taken down. A simple webpage that showed a smiling picture of Narendra Modi, the touted candidate for India’s next Prime Ministerial campaign, flashing his now trademark ‘V’ for ~~Vengeance~~ Victory sign. At the first glimpse it looked like another smart media campaign by the net-savvy minister who has already made use of the social web quite effectively, to connect with his constituencies and influence the younger voting population in the country. Below the image of Mr. Modi was a text that said, "For a detailed explanation of how Mr. Narendra Modi plans to run the nation if elected to the house as a Prime Minister and also for his view/perspective on 2002 riots please click the link below." The button, reminiscent of 'sale' signs on shops that offer permanent discounts, promised to reveal, for once and for all, the puppy plight of Mr. Modi's politics and his plans for the country that he seeks to lead.

However, when one tried to click on the button, hoping, at least for a manifesto that combined the powers of Machiavelli with the sinister beauty of Kafka, it proved to be an impossible task. The button wiggled, and jiggled, and slithered all over the page, running away from the mouse following it. Referencing the layers of evasive answers, the engineered Public Relations campaigns that try to obfuscate the history to some of the most pointed questions that have been posited to the Modi government through judicial and public forums, the button never stayed still enough to actually reveal the promised answers. For people who are familiar with the history of such political satire and protest online would immediately recognise that this wasn’t the most original of ideas. In fact, it was borrowed from another website - http://www.thepmlnvision.com/ that levelled similar accusations of lack of transparency and accountability on the part of Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. Another instance, which is now also shut down, had a similar deployment where the webpage claimed to give a comprehensive view into Rahul Gandhi’s achievements, to question his proclaimed intentions of being the next prime-minister. In short, this is an internet meme, where a simple web page and a java script allowed for a critical commentary on the future of the next elections and the strengthening battle between #feku and #pappu that has already taken epic proportions on Twitter.

The early demise of these two websites (please do note, when you click on the links that the Nawaz Sharif website is still working) warns us of the tightening noose around freedom of speech and expression that politicos are responsible for in India. It has been a dreary last couple of years already, with the passing of the Intermediaries Liabilities Rules as an amendment to the IT Act of India, Dr. Sibal proposing to pre-censor the social web in a quest to save the face of erring political figures, teenagers being arrested for voicing political dissent, and artists being prosecuted for exercising their rights to question the state of governance in our country. Despite battles to keep the web an open space that embodies the democratic potentials and the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and expression in the country, it has been a losing fight to keep up with the ad hoc and dictatorial mandates that seem to govern the web.


Above is a screen shot from narendramodiplans.com website

We have no indication of why this latest piece of satirical expression, which should be granted immunity as a work of art, if not as an individual’s right to free speech, was suddenly taken down. The website now has a message that says, “I quit. In a country with freedom of speech, I assumed that I was allowed to make decent satire on any politician more particularly if it is constructive. Clearly, I was wrong.” The web is already abuzz with conspiracy theories, each sounding scarier than the other because they seem so plausible and possible in a country that has easily sacrificed our right to free speech and expression at the altar of political egos. And whether you subscribe to any of the theories or not, whether your sympathies lie with the BJP or with the UPA, whether or not you approve of the political directions that the country seems to be headed in, there is no doubt that you should be as agitated as I am, about the fact that we are in a fast-car to blanket censorship, and we are going there in style.

What happens online is not just about this one website or the one person or the one political party – it is a reflection on the rising surveillance and bully state that presumes that making voices (and sometimes people) invisible, is enough to resolve the problems that they create. And what happens on the web is soon going to also affect the ways in which we live our everyday lives. So the next time, you call some friends over for dinner, and then sit arguing about the state of politics in the country, make sure your windows are all shut, you are wearing tin-foil hats and if possible, direct all conversations to the task of finally finding Mamta Kulkarni. Because anything else that you say might either be censored or land you in a soup, and the only recourse you might have would be a website that shows the glorious political figures of the country, with a sign that says “To defend your right to free speech and expression, please click here”. And you know that you are never going to be able to click on that sign. Ever.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/down-to-earth-july-17-2013-nishant-shah-you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent

You Have the Right to Remain Silent

anja — 2011-08-02T07:55:22Z

India has a long history of censorship that it justifies in the name of national security. But new laws governing the Internet are unreasonable and — given the multitude of online voices — poorly thought out, argues Anja Kovacs in this article published in the Sunday Guardian on 17 April 2011.

In March 2011, Indian media - both social and traditional - was ablaze with fears that a new set of rules, proposed to complement the IT (Amendment) Act 2008, would thwart the freedom of expression of India's bloggers: contrary to standard international practice, the Intermediary Due Dilligence Rules seemed intent on making bloggers responsible for comments made by readers on their site. Only a few weeks earlier, the threat of online censorship had manifested itself in a different form: although the block was implemented unevenly, mobile applications market space Mobango, bulk SMS provider Clickatell, hacking-related portal Zone-H.com and blogs hosted on Typepad were suddenly no longer accessible for most Indian netizens, without warning or explanation.

Censorship in India is nothing new. At the time of Independence, there was widespread fear among its lawmakers that unrestricted freedom of expression could become a barrier to the social reforms necessary to put the country on Nehru's path to development – particularly as the memory of Partition continued to be vivid. Although freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Constitution, it is therefore subject to a fairly extensive list of so-called "reasonable" restrictions: the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence. But while this long list might have made sense at the time of Partition, in the mature democracy that India has now become, its existence, and the numerous opportunities for censorship and surveillance that it has enabled or justified, seems out of place. Indeed, though all these restrictions in themselves are considered acceptable internationally, there are few other democratic states that include all of them in the basic laws of their land.

An appetite for censorship does not only exist among India's legislature and judiciary, however. Especially since the early nineties, instances of vigilante groups destroying art, preventing film screenings, or even attacking offending artists, writers and editors have become noteworthy for their regularity. But it is worth noting that even more progressive sections of society have not been averse to censorship: for example, section of the Indian feminist movement have voiced strong support for the Indecent Representation of Women Act that seeks to censor images of women which are derogatory, denigrating or likely to corrupt public morality.

What connects all these efforts? A belief that suppressing speech and opinions makes it possible to contain the conflicts that emanate from India's tremendous diversity, while simultaneously ensuring its homogenous moral as much as political development. But if the advent of satellite television already revealed the vulnerabilities of this strategy, the Internet has made clear that in the long term, it is simply untenable. It is not just that the authors of a speech act may not be residents of India; it is that everybody can now become an author, infinitely multiplying the number of expressions that are produced each year and that thus could come within the Law's ambit. In this context, even if it may still have a role, suppression clearly can no longer be the preferred or even dominant technology of choice to manage disagreements. What is urgently needed is the building of a much stronger culture of respectful disagreement and debate within and across the country's many social groups. If more and more people are now getting an opportunity to speak, what we need to make sure is that they end up having a conversation.

Yet the government of India so far has mostly continued on the beaten track, putting into place a range of legislations and policies to meticulously monitor and police the freedom of expression of netizens within its borders. Thus, for example, section 66F(1)(B) of the IT (Amendment) Act 2008 defines "cyberterrorism" so broadly as to include the unauthorised access to information on a computer with a belief that that information may be used to cause injury to...decency or morality. The suggested sentence may extend to imprisonment for life. The proposed Intermediary Due Dilligence Rules 2011 privatise the responsibility for censorship by making intermediaries responsible for all content that they host or store, putting unprecedented power over our acts of speech into the hands of private bodies. The proposed Cyber Cafe Rules 2011 order that children who do not possess a photo identity card need to be accompanied by an adult who does, constraining the Internet access of crores of young people among the less advantaged sections of society in particular. And while the US and other Western countries continue to debate the desireability of an Internet Kill Switch, the Indian government obtained this prerogative through section 69A of the IT (Amendment Act) 2008 years ago.

Such measures are given extra teeth by being paired with unprecedented systems of surveillance. For example, there are proposals on the table that make it obligatory for telecommunication carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment to ensure their equipment and services have built-in surveillance capabilities. While at present, records are only kept if there is a specific requirement by intelligence or security agencies, the Intelligence Bureau has proposed that ISPs keep a record of all online activities of all customers for at least six months. The IB has also suggested putting into place a unique identification system for all Internet users, whereby they would be required to submit some form of online identification every time they go online.

Proponents of such legislation often point to the new threats to safety and security that the Internet poses to defend these measures, and it is indeed a core obligation of any state to ensure the safety of its citizens. But the hallmark of a democracy is that it carefully balances any measures to do so with the continued guarantee of its citizens' fundamental rights. Despite the enormous changes and challenges that the Internet brings for freedom of expression everywhere, such an exercise seems to sadly not yet have been systematically undertaken in India so far.

The recent blocking of websites with which we started this article reflects the urgent need to do so. In response to RTI applications by the Centre for Internet and Society and Medianama, the Department of Information Technology, which is authorised to order such blocks, admitted to blocking Zone-H, but not any of the other websites affected earlier this year. In an interview with The Hindu, the Department of Telecommunication too had denied ordering the blocking of access, despite the fact that some users trying to access Typepad had reported seeing the message "this site has been blocked as per request by Department of Telecom" on their screen. In the mean time, Clickatell and Mobango remain inaccessible for this author at the time of writing. That we continue to be in the dark as to why this is so in the world's largest democracy deserves to urgently become a rallying point.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/your-right-to-remain-silent

You can still get into trouble for online posts: Digital law experts

praskrishna — 2015-04-02T01:44:32Z

The internet in India is freer now, but individuals could still to get into trouble for online posts, say digital media and law experts. Hailing the Supreme Court judgment on Tuesday as a landmark verdict for free speech in India, experts who have closely read the judgment say there is much to be careful about too.

The article by Kim Arora was published in the Times of India on March 30, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The scrapping of the contentious section doesn't mean that one has a free run, cautions Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society. An online comment can still land you in jail, he says.

"The judgement in no way means that speech on online platforms will be unregulated now. You can still be charged for pornography or voyeurism under the IT Act. There are many provisions in the Constitution and Indian Penal Code that the government can use to target people it wants to go after. You can be still charged for hate speech or defamation - which is a criminal offence in India - for an online comment," says Abraham.

While lawyer Apar Gupta found the judgment to be forward-looking, he pointed to Para 98 of the 120 page judgment, which addresses Article 14 of the Constitution regarding "discrimination" and talks of the distinction between online and other media.

"We make it clear that there is an intelligible differentia between speech on the internet and other mediums of communication for which separate offences can certainly be created by legislation," says the judgment. "The court has indicated that special offences can be created for the internet. Constant vigilance is the price of liberty. We need to constantly engage with these issues to keep the internet free," says Gupta.

The judgment has been praised for making a distinction between online posts and messages that pertain to advocacy, discussion and incitement. "This is an excellent decision. The SC is saying that no matter what the medium, we stand for constitutional rights. The judges were ready to listen, and ready to share their experience of using the internet also," says Mishi Choudhary, legal director at Software Freedom Law Center, adding, "It was a lost opportunity for the Modi government. They should have gotten rid of section 66 A themselves."

Section 69A of the Act, which stands as is, allows non-transparent blocking of online content in the interest of "sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above." However, Choudhary says that since it is a narrowly-drawn provision, it ensures more safeguards.

"It will be noticed that Section 69A unlike Section 66A is a narrowly drawn provision with several safeguards. First and foremost, blocking can only be resorted to where the Central Government is satisfied that it is necessary so to do. Secondly, such necessity is relatable only to some of the subjects set out in Article 19(2). Thirdly, reasons have to be recorded in writing in such blocking order so that they may be assailed in a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution," she says.

Going forward, the government plan of action should focus on balancing safety and freedom on the internet, says Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who himself was one of the petitioners. "The final endgame has to be one where we have a new law or even a new IT Act which meets the twin objectives of a safe and free internet. The two need not be mutually exclusive," he says.

(With inputs from Anand J in Bengaluru)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-march-30-2015-kim-arora-you-can-still-get-into-trouble-for-online-posts

Yes, You Can Get Arrested for a Facebook Status Update Now

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T08:16:20Z

A 21-year-old Indian woman thought Mumbai shouldn't have been shutdown for the funeral of an Islamophobic leader. Broadcasting such opinions on Facebook was apparently grounds for arrest.

The article by David Wagner was published in the Atlantic Wire on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

A Muslim graduate student, Shaheen Dhada posted a note (of her iPhone message) on her timeline November 18th, writing, "Every day thousands of people die, but still the world moves on ... Today, Mumbai shuts down out of fear, not out of respect." Her status was written in reference to the death of Bal Thackeray, the late leader of Hindu extremist group Shiv Sena, responsible for repeated waves violence against Muslims in the Maharashtra state, according to the BBC. Another 21-year-old woman, Rinu Shrinivasan, was also arrested by Indian police for stoking "religious enmity." She'd simply clicked "like" on Dhada's post.

A mob of angry Thackeray supporters thronged around the police station Dhada's house. Others vandalized her uncle's clinic two days after her arrest. Mumbai newspaper The Hindu reports today that charges have been dropped against the two arrested women, but those observing the case are worried about the precedent this sets for free speech in India. "I have 3,500 followers on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure I annoy 100 of them on a daily basis," says Centre for Internet and Society director Pranesh Prakash. But should that mean he and others in India should picture themselves in handcuffs every time they type a potentially controversial status update? Retired Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju tells NPR's Julie McCarthy that, at least in this case, the arrest was totally inappropriate:

You can mourn a death in whichever way you want, but you can't bring a whole city to a stoppage. So what this girl wrote was in consonance with the verdict of the Supreme Court—nothing illegal.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-atlantic-wire-november-29-2012-david-wagner-you-can-get-arrested-for-facebook-status-update-now

WSIS+10 High-Level Event: Open Consultation Process

praskrishna — 2014-06-04T10:14:01Z

Jyoti Panday represented the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) at the WSIS+10 High-Level Event:Open Consultation Process held in Geneva from May 28 to 31, 2014.

The Fifth Physical Meeting marked Phase Six of the Open Consultation Process for the WSIS+10 High-Level Event (HLE) to be held in Geneva from June 10 to 13, 2014.

The meeting saw the culmination of the multistakeholder review process on the WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of the WSIS Outcomes and the WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015.

CIS made interventions on text related to increasing women's participation, freedom of expression, media rights, data privacy, network security and human rights.

CIS also endorsed text on action line 'Media' which reaffirmed committment to freedom of expression, data privacy and media rights offline and online including protection of sources, publishers and journalists.

Download the final agreed draft of the WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes that will be deliberated upon and agreed at the HLE, for your reference.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsis-high-level-event-open-consultation-process

WSIS+10 High Level Event: A Bird's Eye Report

geetha — 2014-06-20T15:57:32Z

The WSIS+10 High Level was organised by the ITU and collaborative UN entities on June 9-13, 2014. It aimed to evaluate the progress on implementation of WSIS Outcomes from Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005, and to envision a post-2015 Development Agenda. Geetha Hariharan attended the event on CIS' behalf.

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) +10 High Level Event (HLE) was hosted at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva, from June 9-13, 2014. The HLE aimed to review the implementation and progress made on information and communication technology (ICT) across the globe, in light of WSIS outcomes (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005). Organised in three parallel tracks, the HLE sought to take stock of progress in ICTs in the last decade (High Level track), initiate High Level Dialogues to formulate the post-2015 development agenda, as well as host thematic workshops for participants (Forum track).

The High Level Track:

Opening Ceremony, WSIS+10 High Level Event (Source)

The High Level track opened officially on June 10, 2014, and culminated with the endorsement by acclamation (as is ITU tradition) of two Outcome Documents. These were: (1) WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes, taking stock of ICT developments since the WSIS summits, (2) WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015, aiming to develop a vision for the post-2015 global information society. These documents were the result of the WSIS+10 Multi-stakeholder Preparatory Platform (MPP), which involved WSIS stakeholders (governments, private sector, civil society, international organizations and relevant regional organizations).

The MPP met in six phases, convened as an open, inclusive consultation among WSIS stakeholders. It was not without its misadventures. While ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré consistently lauded the multi-stakeholder process, and Ambassador Janis Karklins urged all parties, especially governments, to “let the UN General Assembly know that the multi-stakeholder model works for Internet governance at all levels”, participants in the process shared stories of discomfort, disagreement and discord amongst stakeholders on various IG issues, not least human rights on the Internet, surveillance and privacy, and multi-stakeholderism. Richard Hill of the Association for Proper Internet Governance (APIG) and the Just Net Coalition writes that like NETmundial, the MPP was rich in a diversity of views and knowledge exchange, but stakeholders failed to reach consensus on crucial issues. Indeed, Prof. Vlamidir Minkin, Chairman of the MPP, expressed his dismay at the lack of consensus over action line C9. A compromise was agreed upon in relation to C9 later.

Some members of civil society expressed their satisfaction with the extensive references to human rights and rights-centred development in the Outcome Documents. While governmental opposition was seen as frustrating, they felt that the MPP had sought and achieved a common understanding, a sentiment echoed by the ITU Secretary General. Indeed, even Iran, a state that had expressed major reservations during the MPP and felt itself unable to agree with the text, agreed that the MPP had worked hard to draft a document beneficial to all.

Concerns around the MPP did not affect the review of ICT developments over the last decade. High Level Panels with Ministers of ICT from states such as Uganda, Bangladesh, Sweden, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and others, heads of the UN Development Programme, UNCTAD, Food and Agriculture Organisation, UN-WOMEN and others spoke at length of rapid advances in ICTs. The focus was largely on ICT access and affordability in developing states. John E. Davies of Intel repeatedly drew attention to innovative uses of ICTs in Africa and Asia, which have helped bridge divides of affordability, gender, education and capacity-building. Public-private partnerships were the best solution, he said, to affordability and access. At a ceremony evaluating implementation of WSIS action-lines, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), India, won an award for its e-health application MOTHER.

The Outcome Documents themselves shall be analysed in a separate post. But in sum, the dialogue around Internet governance at the HLE centred around the success of the MPP. Most participants on panels and in the audience felt this was a crucial achievement within the realm of the UN, where the Tunis Summit had delineated strict roles for stakeholders in paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda. Indeed, there was palpable relief in Conference Room 1 at the CICG, Geneva, when on June 11, Dr. Touré announced that the Outcome Documents would be adopted without a vote, in keeping with ITU tradition, even if consensus was achieved by compromise.

The High Level Dialogues:

Prof. Vladimir Minkin delivers a statement. (Source)

The High Level Dialogues on developing a post-2015 Development Agenda, based on WSIS action lines, were active on June 12. Introducing the Dialogue, Dr. Touré lamented the Millennium Development Goals as a “lost opportunity”, emphasizing the need to alert the UN General Assembly and its committees as to the importance of ICTs for development.

As on previous panels, there was intense focus on access, affordability and reach in developing countries, with Rwanda and Bangladesh expounding upon their successes in implementing ICT innovations domestically. The world is more connected than it was in 2005, and the ITU in 2014 is no longer what it was in 2003, said speakers. But we lack data on ICT deployment across the globe, said Minister Knutssen of Sweden, recalling the gathering to the need to engage all stakeholders in this task. Speakers on multiple panels, including the Rwandan Minister for CIT, Marilyn Cade of ICANN and Petra Lantz of the UNDP, emphasized the need for ‘smart engagement’ and capacity-building for ICT development and deployment.

A crucial session on cybersecurity saw Dr. Touré envision a global peace treaty accommodating multiple stakeholders. On the panel were Minister Omobola Johnson of Nigeria, Prof. Udo Helmbrecht of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), Prof. A.A. Wahab of Cybersecurity Malaysia and Simon Muller of Facebook. The focus was primarily on building laws and regulations for secure communication and business, while child protection was equally considered.

The lack of laws/regulations for cybersecurity (child pornography and jurisdictional issues, for instance), or other legal protections (privacy, data protection, freedom of speech) in rapidly connecting developing states was noted. But the question of cross-border surveillance and wanton violations of privacy went unaddressed except for the customary, unavoidable mention. This was expected. Debates in Internet governance have, in the past year, been silently and invisibly driven by the Snowden revelations. So too, at WSIS+10 Cybersecurity, speakers emphasized open data, information exchange, data ownership and control (the right to be forgotten), but did not openly address surveillance. Indeed, Simon Muller of Facebook called upon governments to publish their own transparency reports: A laudable suggestion, even accounting for Facebook’s own undetailed and truncated reports.

In a nutshell, the post-2015 Development Agenda dialogues repeatedly emphasized the importance of ICTs in global connectivity, and their impact on GDP growth and socio-cultural change and progress. The focus was on taking this message to the UN General Assembly, engaging all stakeholders and creating an achievable set of action lines post-2015.

The Forum Track:

Participants at the UNESCO session on its Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues (Source)

The HLE was organized as an extended version of the WSIS Forum, which hosts thematic workshops and networking opportunities, much like any other conference. Running in parallel sessions over 5 days, the WSIS Forum hosted sessions by the ITU, UNESCO, UNDP, ICANN, ISOC, APIG, etc., on issues as diverse as the WSIS Action Lines, the future of Internet governance, the successes and failures of WCIT-2012, UNESCO’s Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues, spam and a taxonomy of Internet governance.

Detailed explanation of each session I attended is beyond the scope of this report, so I will limit myself to the interesting issues raised.

At ICANN’s session on its own future (June 9), Ms. Marilyn Cade emphasized the importance of national and regional IGFs for both issue-awareness and capacity-building. Mr. Nigel Hickson spoke of engagement at multiple Internet governance fora: “Internet governance is not shaped by individual events”. In light of criticism of ICANN’s apparent monopoly over IANA stewardship transition, this has been ICANN’s continual response (often repeated at the HLE itself). Also widely discussed was the role of stakeholders in Internet governance, given the delineation of roles and responsibilities in the Tunis Agenda, and governments’ preference for policy-monopoly (At WSIS+10, Indian Ambassador Dilip Sinha seemed wistful that multilateralism is a “distant dream”).

This discussion bore greater fruit in a session on Internet governance ‘taxonomy’. The session saw Mr. George Sadowsky, Dr. Jovan Kurbalija, Mr. William Drake and Mr. Eliot Lear (there is surprisingly no official profile-page on Mr. Lear) expound on dense structures of Internet governance, involving multiple methods of classification of Internet infrastructure, CIRs, public policy issues, etc. across a spectrum of ‘baskets’ – socio-cultural, economic, legal, technical. Such studies, though each attempting clarity in Internet governance studies, indicate that the closer you get to IG, the more diverse and interconnected the eco-system gets. David Souter’s diagrams almost capture the flux of dynamic debate in this area (please see pages 9 and 22 of this ISOC study).

There were, for most part, insightful interventions from session participants. Mr. Sadowsky questioned the effectiveness of the Tunis Agenda delineation of stakeholder-roles, while Mr. Lear pleaded that techies be let to do their jobs without interference. Ms. Anja Kovacs raised pertinent concerns about including voiceless minorities in a ‘rough consensus’ model. Across sessions, questions of mass surveillance, privacy and data ownership rose from participants. The protection of human rights on the Internet – especially freedom of expression and privacy – made continual appearance, across issues like spam (Question 22-1/1 of ITU-D Study Group 1) and cybersecurity.

Conclusion:

The HLE was widely attended by participants across WSIS stakeholder-groups. At the event, a great many relevant questions such as the future of ICTs, inclusions in the post-2015 Development Agenda, the value of muti-stakeholder models, and human rights such as free speech and privacy were raised across the board. Not only were these raised, but cognizance was taken of them by Ministers, members of the ITU and other collaborative UN bodies, private sector entities such as ICANN, technical community such as the ISOC and IETF, as well as (obviously) civil society.

Substantively, the HLE did not address mass surveillance and privacy, nor of expanding roles of WSIS stakeholders and beyond. Processually, the MPP failed to reach consensus on several issues comfortably, and a compromise had to be brokered.

But perhaps a big change at the HLE was the positive attitude to multi-stakeholder models from many quarters, not least the ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré. His repeated calls for acceptance of multi-stakeholderism left many members of civil society surprised and tentatively pleased. Going forward, it will be interesting to track the ITU and the rest of UN’s (and of course, member states’) stances on multi-stakeholderism at the ITU Plenipot, the WSIS+10 Review and the UN General Assembly session, at the least.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/wsis-10-high-level-event-a-birds-eye-report

World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development

pranesh — 2016-02-17T17:03:42Z

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had published a book in 2014 that examines free speech, expression and media development. The chapter contains a Foreword by Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO. Pranesh Prakash contributed to Independence: Introduction - Global Media Chapter. The book was edited by Courtney C. Radsch.

Foreword

Tectonic shifts in technology and economic models have vastly expanded the opportunities for press freedom and the safety of journalists, opening new avenues for freedom of expression for women and men across the world. Today, more and more people are able to produce, update and share information widely, within and across national borders. All of this is a blessing for creativity, exchange and dialogue.

At the same time, new threats are arising. In a context of rapid change, these are combining with older forms of restriction to pose challenges to freedom of expression, in the shape of controls not aligned with international standards for protection of freedom of expression and rising threats against journalists.

These developments raise issues that go to the heart of UNESCO’s mandate “to promote the flow of ideas by word and image” between all peoples, across the world. For UNESCO, freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that underpins all other civil liberties, that is vital for the rule of law and good governance, and that is a foundation for inclusive and open societies. Freedom of expression stands at the heart of media freedom and the practice of journalism as a form of expression aspiring to be in the public interest.

At the 36^th session of the General Conference (November 2011), Member States mandated UNESCO to explore the impact of change on press freedom and the safety of journalists. For this purpose, the Report has adopted four angles of analysis, drawing on the 1991 Windhoek Declaration, to review emerging trends through the conditions of media freedom, pluralism and independence, as well as the safety of journalists. At each level, the Report has also examined trends through the lens of gender equality.

The result is the portrait of change -- across the world, at all levels, featuring as much opportunity as challenge. The business of media is undergoing a revolution with the rise of digital networks, online platforms, internet intermediaries and social media. New actors are emerging, including citizen journalists, who are redrawing the boundaries of the media. At the same time, the Report shows that the traditional news institutions continue to be agenda-setters for media and public communications in general – even as they are also engaging with the digital revolution. The Report highlights also the mix of old and new challenges to media freedom, including increasing cases of threats against the safety of journalists.

The pace of change raises questions about how to foster freedom of expression across print, broadcast and internet media and how to ensure the safety of journalists. The Report draws on a rich array of research and is not prescriptive -- but it sends a clear message on the importance of freedom of expression and press freedom on all platforms.

To these ends, UNESCO is working across the board, across the world. This starts with global awareness raising and advocacy, including through World Press Freedom Day. It entails supporting countries in strengthening their legal and regulatory frameworks and in building capacity. It means standing up to call for justice every time a journalist is killed, to eliminate impunity. This is the importance of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, spearheaded by UNESCO and endorsed by the UN Chief Executives Board in April 2012. UNESCO is working with countries to take this plan forward on the ground. We also seek to better understand the challenges that are arising – most recently, through a Global Survey on Violence against Female Journalists, with the International News Safety Institute, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the Austrian Government.

Respecting freedom of expression and media freedom is essential today, as we seek to build inclusive, knowledge societies and a more just and peaceful century ahead. I am confident that this Report will find a wide audience, in Member States, international and regional organizations, civil society and academia, as well as with the media and journalists, and I wish to thank Sweden for its support to this initiative. This is an important contribution to understanding a world in change, at a time when the international community is defining a new global sustainable development agenda, which must be underpinned and driven by human rights, with particular attention to freedom of expression.

Executive Summary

Freedom of expression in general, and media development in particular, are core to UNESCO’s constitutional mandate to advance ‘the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication’ and promoting ‘the free flow of ideas by word and image.’ For UNESCO, press freedom is a corollary of the general right to freedom of expression. Since 1991, the year of the seminal Windhoek Declaration, which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, UNESCO has understood press freedom as designating the conditions of media freedom, pluralism and independence, as well as the safety of journalists. It is within this framework that this report examines progress as regards press freedom, including in regard to gender equality, and makes sense of the evolution of media actors, news media institutions and journalistic roles over time.

This report has been prepared on the basis of a summary report on the global state of press freedom and the safety of journalists, presented to the General Conference of UNESCO Member States in November 2013, on the mandate of the decision by Member States taken at the 36th session of the General Conference of the Organization.[*]

The overarching global trend with respect to media freedom, pluralism, independence and the safety of journalists over the past several years is that of disruption and change brought on by technology, and to a lesser extent, the global financial crisis. These trends have impacted traditional economic and organizational structures in the news media, legal and regulatory frameworks, journalism practices, and media consumption and production habits. Technological convergence has expanded the number of and access to media platforms as well as the potential for expression. It has enabled the emergence of citizen journalism and spaces for independent media, while at the same time fundamentally reconfiguring journalistic practices and the business of news.

The broad global patterns identified in this report are accompanied by extensive unevenness within the whole. The trends summarized above, therefore, go hand in hand with substantial variations between and within regions as well as countries.

Download the PDF

[*]. 37 C/INF.4 16 September 2013 “Information regarding the implementation of decisions of the governing bodies”. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002230/223097e.pdf; http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002230/223097f.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unesco-world-trends-in-freedom-of-expression-and-media-development

World Press Freedom Day 2017

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T02:52:39Z

Udbhav Tiwari represented the Centre for Internet & Society at the World Press Day event organised by UNESCO and the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) at UNESCO House, New Delhi on May 3, 2017.

The event had the release of two reports, one on Violence against Journalists in South Asia and one of Internet Shutdowns in India, with a panel accompanying the last one. The panel was quite interesting, with perspectives from Osama Manzar and a Editor from The Hoot standing out in particular about how social media websites are being used for rapid response governance and how these bans negatively affect those attempts. The agenda for the event is attached to this email.

Click to read about the Internet Shutdown report from the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/world-press-freedom-day-2017

World Narrow Web

pranesh — 2012-03-27T16:00:24Z

Censorship and how govt reacts to it may push us to country-specific networks, writes Pranesh Prakash in an article published in the Indian Express on 4 February 2012.

Twitter, a popular micro-blogging service, recently announced that “[today] we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world”. In a move a few weeks ago, Blogger, Google’s blogging service, in effect announced something similar, by saying that default they would redirect Blogger users trying to get to Blogspot.com addresses (like http://example.blogspot.com) to their respective country sites (like http://example.blogspot.in). Twitter’s announcement was greeted with much disapproval by many Twitter users, as a move towards censorship, with some talking (on Twitter) about a boycott. Blogger’s move was hidden away, deep within a help page, and is being noticed now, and is causing quite a stir as caving in to censorship. Are these concerns justified? Before answering that question, let’s look at what the platforms’ announcements really say.

Twitter has given itself the ability to withhold specific tweets and users in particular countries where that content is legally required to be removed (generally with a court order). Their earlier option, they inform us, was to block the offending tweets and users in all countries. Apart from this, they will publish a notice for each tweet/ user that is blocked in a country. They will also be proactively publishing every removal request they receive at ChillingEffects.org, which allows us to hold them to account and question their decision to remove tweets.

Google, by redirecting you to the country-specific Blogger, is allowing for country-level removal of both blogs and individual blog posts. However, they also note that you can circumvent this by using a special “no redirect” address. Google currently forwards all search-related removals, but does not do so for Blogger-related requests, and all copyright-related complaints to ChillingEffects.org. Google does publish aggregate data relating to censorship of Blogger, on which free-speech advocates have been asking them to provide more granular information.

There are three problems. First, while Twitter was just as open to repressive governments’ requests last week, by making this change, they are advertising this fact to such governments. Thailand has noted it, and has congratulated Twitter.

Second, as Rob Beschizza, managing editor of the website Boing Boing, pointed out, there have been no instances of political content having been removed by Twitter. Even British courts’ super-injunctions (injunctions on speech, that prevent you from mentioning the fact that there is an injunction) were defeated by Twitter users, which only showed that attempts to censor material results in even more attention being drawn to it (which is popularly known as the “Streisand Effect”). So, does this now mean that Twitter will start applying local laws to judge “valid and applicable legal requests”, instead of American laws? What if the law is as bad as that which exists in India, where they are required to remove content within 36 hours based on any affected person’s complaint — without a court order? Will they still act on it? If they don’t, will the government or courts order Twitter.com to be blocked in India, finding it liable for illegal omissions?

Third, this trend points increasingly to the fact that we are witnessing a Balkanisation of the Web as more countries start asserting their sovereignty online. As Chinese dissident journalist Michael Anti pointed out recently, it seems we now need visas (read “circumvention techniques”) to visit the international Web. But even then, there is no longer a singular “international” Web, but an Indian Web and a Guatemalan Web, and an Angolan Web. And the government’s recent proposal of requiring companies to locate their servers in India is a move towards this (apart from being a move towards killing cloud computing).

That having been said, the reality is that the CEOs of Google, Google India, and Microsoft have been summoned to appear in Indian courts for allowing their users to publish material which they don’t know about, which is in a sealed envelope (and most of the accused companies haven’t been shown yet), and which they weren’t even asked once to remove.

The Intermediary Guidelines Rules passed by the Department of Information Technology in April 2011 do not require the user, whose content it is, to be told that there is a complaint, nor to be given a chance to defend themselves. It does not even require public notice that the content has been removed.

The truth is, the transparency around censorship that Google and Twitter are providing is far better than what most other companies are providing. For instance, Big Rock, an Indian DNS provider, suspended the CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com web address on the basis of a seemingly not legal request by the Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Crime Branch, and did so without any public notice and without even informing the cartoonist whose web address it was. At least Google and Twitter are pushing back against non-legal requests, and refusing to remove content that doesn’t violate local laws. Single-mindedly criticising them will only put off other companies from following in their footsteps.

Instead of criticising those who are actually working towards transparency in censorship, we should encourage them and others, push intermediaries not to cave in to unreasonable censorship requests, prevent them from over-censoring on their own, and push hard for the government to incorporate their best practices as part of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules.

The original article was published in the Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/world-narrow-web

World Library and Information Congress 2018

Admin — 2018-08-31T02:23:29Z

Swaraj Paul Barooah was a speaker at two panels during the World Library and Information Congress 2018 (WLIC2018), organised by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in Kuala Lumpur on August 26 and 27, 2018.

Swaraj's first panel, titled "Intellectual Freedom in a Polarised World" was selected as one of 9 sessions to be live-streamed and recorded, out of 249 sessions in total. The recording can be accessed on YouTube.

Session 123 Intellectual Freedom in a Polarised World - Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Advisory Committee (SI)

Chair: Martyn Wade, United Kingdom

In many national contexts, citizens are seen to be either “with the government or against it,” leaving little opportunity to freely and safely express more nuanced views of current social, political or economic issues. While notable authoritarian regimes quite transparently monitor and limit societal discussion, others, ostensibly democratic, may work in practice to blunt potentially unfavourable social commentary on the pretence of defending political stability or public morality. IFLA’s Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Advisory Committee explores this phenomenon--and the potential role of civil society and information professionals in advancing freedom of expression--through the experience and insights of an NGO leader, an academic public intellectual, and an officer of UNESCO.

Presentations

Internet and the freedom of expression in Indonesia: opportunity and challenges - Indriaswati Dyah Saptaningrum, University of New South Wales; former Executive Director of the ELSAM human rights organization (Indonesia), Australia
Freedom of Expression in Malaysia - Azmi Bin Sharom, Faculty of Law, University of Malaysia, Malaysia
What's up with WhatsApp - polarisation and lynchings in India - Swaraj Paul Barooah, The Centre for Internet and Society, India
How to align national laws with international standards on freedom of expression? - Ming-Kuok Lim, Programme Specialist for Communication and Information, UNESCO, Indonesia

Session 140 To Have and not to Hold: The End of Ownership - CLM and FAIFE

The shift from buying physical library media to licensing digital content has profound impacts on the way libraries acquire and give access to content. From e-books that can disappear at the whim (or the mistake) of the owners of a server far away, to the limits on sharing and archiving imposed by some contracts. From the potential monitoring of reader behaviour, to the criminalisation of those who simply want to improve user experience. The dominance of digital media in information provision has both broadened the field of information to which we have access, but potentially made it shallower in terms of the use that libraries, and their users, can make of it. The joint CLM-FAIFE session will look at the question of the end of ownership from a legal and an ethical point of view, drawing on the experience and knowledge of the two communities.

Tomas A. Lipinski, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA – The Limits of Licensing.
Ann Okerson, Centre for Research Libraries, Chicago, USA – The Possibilities of Licensing.
Swaraj Paul Barooah, Centre for Internet and Society – The Balance among Licenses and Exceptions and Limitations to Copyright.
Brent Roe - Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada – Privacy Concerns and Other Side Effects of Licensing.
Jonathan Hernandez-Perez, Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibilotecologicas, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico (Invited) – Special Issues in the Developing World; Open Access as a Recapturing of Ownership.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/world-library-and-information-congress-2018

Workshop on Media Law & Policy Curriculum Development

praskrishna — 2014-02-17T10:25:54Z

Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi and University of Oxford in support with the International Higher Education-Knowledge Economy Partnerships Programme of the British Council is organizing this workshop on February 16 at National Law University in Delhi.

Chinmayi Arun is a speaker and Bhairav Acharya will be speaking at this event.

Timing	Programme
10.00 10.10	Welcome Address Prof. (Dr.) Srikrishna Deva Rao, Registrar & Professor of Law, National Law University, Delhi
10.10 10.15	Introduction to the Project Chinmayi Arun, Research Director, Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi
10.15 10.45	Session 1: Introductory Material The Media Landscape, Media & Democracy Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Kanamma Raman, Sukumar Muralidharan and Vibodh Parthasarathi Freedom of Expression & Freedom of Press Lead discussants: Arudra Burra, Bhairav Acharya, Manav Kapur and Sukumar Muralidharan
10.45 11.30	Session 2: Media Law The State and the Media (Sedition, Contempt of Court, Parliamentary Privilege and Reporting Court Proceedings) Geeta Seshu, Jawahar Raja, Manav Kapur, Praveen and Sukumar Muralidharan Citizen, Society and the Media (Defamation, Obscenity, Public Order & Communal Harmony and Privacy) Arudra Burra, Bhairav Acharya, Jawahar Raja, Praveen and Saurav Datta
11.30 11.45	Tea
11.45 12.15	Session 3: Media Content & Regulatory Mechanism and Public Service Broadcasting Media Carriage, Pluralism, Ownership & Cross Ownership Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Geeta Seshu, Saurav Datta and Vibodh Parthasarathi
12.15 12.45	Session 4: Converged Media, Globalised Media and the Internet Lead discussants: Aloke Thakore, Abhinav Srivastava, Geeta Seshu Kanamma Raman and Sukumar Muralidharan
12.45 13.30	General Feedback about accessibility, structure and other miscellaneous factors

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/workshop-media-law-and-policy-curriculum-development

Women Arrested in Mumbai for Complaining on Facebook

praskrishna — 2012-11-21T11:32:04Z

For over 30 hours following the death of the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray on Saturday, stores throughout Mumbai closed their shutters and taxis and autorickshaws stayed off the streets.

This article by Neha Thirani and Hari Kumar was published in New York Times on November 19, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

While analysts throughout Mumbai debated whether the citywide shutdown following the death of Mr. Thackeray was inspired by fear or respect, one 21-year-old woman and her friend were arrested for raising a similar question.

On Sunday, the police in Palghar, in Thane district, on the outskirts of Mumbai, arrested Shaheen Dhadha after she posted a status update on Facebook that questioned the shutdown, also known as a bandh. A local daily, the Mumbai Mirror, reported that Ms. Dhadha, 21, had written, "People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that." The police also arrested her friend who "liked" the post, whom NDTV identified by her first name, Renu.

The women were arrested under Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code for “statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes.” Srikant Pingle, station house in charge of the Palghar police, told India Ink that the local Shiv Sena chief, whom he identified as “Mr. Bhushan,” filed the complaint against Ms. Dhadha because her comment on Facebook hurt Shiv Sena’s sentiments. Mr. Pingle declined to comment further on the details of the arrests.

Sudhir Gupta, the defense counsel for the two women, told NDTV, “Their posts don’t incite violence. It can’t be said they have made any derogatory remarks. They don’t belong to any political ideology.”

In a phone conversation with India Ink, a police officer of the Palghar station, who identified himself only as Gavali, said that the arrest took place on Sunday night and that the pair had been taken to court on Monday.

The two women, who were sentenced to 14 days in jail by the court, received bail after a bond of 15,000 rupees ($270) was paid, reported NDTV.

The Times of India reported that a mob of 2,000 Shiv Sena workers vandalized her uncle’s orthopedic clinic in Palghar. Repeated calls made to the Dhada orthopedic hospital in Thane went unanswered, while Harshal Pradhan, a Shiv Sena spokesman, said that he was unaware of the incident.

A police officer at the Palghar Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that no one has been arrested in the attack on the clinic.

Pranesh Prakash, program manager with the Center for Internet and Society, said the arrests of the two women were a violation of free speech and the misapplication of the law. “There were thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and in person who were saying the exact same kinds of things that this girl is alleged to have said,” said Mr. Prakash. “And the fact that only she and one other person who liked that comment have been arrested shows a clear arbitrariness in the application of the law.”

In an open letter addressed to the chief minister of Maharashtra, the former Supreme Court Judge Markandey Katju defended the two women, saying, “To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments.” He further said that the arrest appears to be a criminal act as it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime.

On social networking sites, people came out in support of Ms. Dhadha and her friend. The Facebook group “Ban Shiv Sena” had about 36,400 "likes" as of Monday afternoon, while the party’s official Facebook page had just under 2,700. On Twitter, several commenters expressed solidarity with the two women, including Milind Deora, the government minister of state, communications and information technology, who said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize ~ Voltaire."

In Maharashtra, Shiv Sena has a history of banning books, movies and other popular culture that are critical of the political party. In 2010, Rohinton Mistry’s book, "Such a Long Journey," was withdrawn from the syllabus of Mumbai University after Shiv Sena officials complained that the book insulted Bal Thackeray. Ironically, in a January 2007 interview with Shekhar Gupta, the editor in chief of The Indian Express, Mr. Thackeray said that what differentiated him from the mafia is that journalists and others were free to disagree with him and criticize him.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-blogs-nytimes-nov-19-2012-neha-thirani-hari-kumar-women-arrested-in-mumbai-for-complaining-on-facebook

Women arrested for Facebook post: Did cops act under Sena pressure?

praskrishna — 2012-11-21T11:17:37Z

After Bal Thackeray's death, during the Mumbai Bandh, a 21-year-old criticised the shutdown on her Facebook page — her friend approved of it — next thing they know, they are facing a case, and this morning they were arrested.

YP Singh, Alyque Padamsee, Rohan Joshi, Karuna Nundy and Pranesh Prakash took part in a discussion about the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment. The discussion was aired in NDTV on November 19, 2012.

The anchor asked Pranesh Prakash:

Who are these people scrolling through people's Facebook posts and Twitter accounts, finding these comments and taking action?

Pranesh Prakash said that it could be anyone. The reality is doesn't really matter because the laws are written in such a way that if it is public and stuff that is on Facebook for different purposes can either be public or private, if it is public these laws can very often apply and that is a problem. We haven't quite figured out to what extent these laws apply. The IT Act section 66A for instance, is unconstitutional, section 295 A which has been applied, and section 505 which also seems to have been applied in this case make it a clear case of misappropriation of those provisions. These kind of arrests will happen. It doesn't quite matter if we have right laws at one level and it clearly doesn't help if we have bad laws. What we need to do at least in part to remedy the situation is to amend the IT Act to make it consonant and consistent with civil and political rights and to do so in multi-stakeholder fashion involving civil society, industry and government. Right now it doesn't protect privacy and freedom of speech as much as it should.

Watch the full video aired on NDTV

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-video-ndtv-special-ndtv-24x7

Will India win net neutrality battle?

praskrishna — 2016-01-11T02:28:44Z

There is more than what meets the eye in Facebook’s ‘noble mission’ of providing internet for all.

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh and Taru Bhatia was published by Governance Now on January 5, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

India is gearing up for an era of startups and entrepreneurship and the man pushing it as one of his biggest development and self reliance agenda is none other than prime minister Narendra Modi, who launched the ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign this year. Few technology giants, led by the likes of Facebook and some telecom service providers, however, have thrown a technology spanner. It is important to note that a significant number of the startups in India are internet-based – next only to the US and China in having maximum number of tech startups, according to industry body NASSCOM.

For these to flourish and for India to have next Facebook or Google it is important to have an open and neutral internet, believe digital rights experts. A network which doesn’t discriminate between the data packets (smallest unit of information sent in binary format over a network) and provides level playing field for all. “It is critical for the Startup India campaign. If we let the principles of net neutrality be compromised, then it makes it very difficult for entrepreneurs and startups to compete against established players, who can close off the market for upstarts by schemes like differentiated pricing and zero rating (toll free access to websites or apps),” said Vishal Misra, associate professor, department of computer science, Columbia University.

A prerequisite for startups

A few months from now, country’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), is going to decide whether internet would remain neutral and whether it will continue to foster innovation. A major threat to net neutrality, according to civil society and digital rights experts, comes from zero rating – toll free access to a few selected websites or apps, a strategy adopted by internet service providers or internet platforms to hook users to those select few sites. For telecom and internet service providers zero rating is a new stream of revenue, a way to secure optimal return on investment from their existing subscriber base – without requiring additional investment. The ISPs are arguing that they should be given more flexibility in managing their network – in a way they should be allowed to assume the role of gatekeeper of the internet.

For ISPs, net neutrality is an obsolete and utopian idea. Facebook, which has grown into a mammoth internet platform since its inception in 2004, has recently joined this bandwagon. Under its Free Basics initiative (erstwhile internet.org), the internet giant provides toll free access to a set of websites (including Facebook obviously!) handpicked by itself to the users. In India so far it has partnered with Reliance Communications.

Facebook by far is the most audacious and aggressive proponent of ‘zero rating’ scheme. From lobbying the prime minister to giving back-to-back ads in television channels and two-page ads in national dailies to circulating a vaguely written letter in support of Free Basics on its social media site, Facebook is pitching for ‘digital equality’ by giving access to 'basic internet’ or say a slice of the internet.

Cautioning against zero rating, Prabir Purkayastha, chairperson, Society for Knowledge Commons, said the way zero-rating is being discussed, it seems Indians are only the consumers of internet, which is not true. “Indians are also the innovators on internet,” said Purkayastha. “Internet has given the innovators the right to connect to the users without having a huge amount of money. This is the character that will be destroyed if zero-rating will be implemented,” he says.

That’s true. Be it US-based Facebook or Google or Indian Flipkart or PayTm or SnapDeal, had it not been for open and neutral internet they wouldn’t have become what are today.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, global public policy director, Access Now, a New York-based firm working for digital rights, said the idea is to prevent a telco or an internet platform from assuming a role of a gatekeeper and control access. Misra, too, has written extensively on the counter-productiveness of zero rating: stifling of innovation and service providers loosing incentive to improve service and keep prices low. Both Misra and Chima testified their views on net neutrality to the standing committee on IT in August after the department of telecommunications submitted an expert committee report on the neutrality issue.

Whither public consultation

To formulate a regulation on how internet will shape up, the TRAI has come out with two consultation papers concerning net neutrality in the last nine months. The first consultation paper on ‘regulatory framework for over the top players (OTTs)’, which came in March, was written in favour of telecom and internet service providers. “It was embarrassing,” said Purkayastha. Over 1.2 million people wrote to the regulator. This was result of the savetheinternet.in campaign ran by free internet activists and lawyers, who were later joined by All India Bakchod (AIB) whose video on net neutrality went viral on YouTube (the video has received three million views in last eight months). This was unprecedented in the history of TRAI consultations. However, the fate of those responses is still unclear.

In December the regulator brought another paper. This time it was titled ‘regulation on differential pricing’. Contrary to the initial paper, this paper is far more objective and reasonable, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder, MediaNama portal and a key volunteer behind savetheinternet.in campaign. The regulator has sought comments on its second paper by December 30 and counter-comments by January 7. Till the time a final call is taken, the telecom regulator has instructed Reliance Communications, Facebook’s India telecom partner, to put Free Basics on hold.

The savetheinternet.in campaign has formulated the responses to the new consultation paper and has made it available for everyone favouring net neutrality to send it to the TRAI. The AIB team has released another video titled ‘Save the Internet - 2 – Judgement Day’, which has been viewed close to one million times in just four months.

The neutrality debate started in India in December 2014 when Airtel, country’s largest telco, announced – although it later backtracked – that the company would charge consumers more for using VOIP services, on top of the data charges. Later, it went on to launch Airtel Zero, wherein it struck deal with online services providers for user access at zero rate. Facebook had already introduced internet.org by then. While it was initially led by civil society, the debate was later joined by politicians – Naveen Patnaik, M Chandrashekhar, Jay Panda, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal – who strongly came out in support of net neutrality.

Facebook has termed its zero rating platform as a philanthropic activity intended to connect billions of unconnected population so that they can access education, health and employment related information. It has urged users to sign a petition, cautioning them against "a small, vocal group of critics" lobbying to prevent 1 billion people from accessing 'affordable internet'. Under Free Basics, Facebook claims, it doesn't charge app developers and includes them if they comply to its 'objective tech specs'.

Free Basics: A camouflage?

Critics, however, call it a walled garden. In providing free access to close to a hundred websites it continues to play the role of a gatekeeper. It is not the poor who decide what to access but Facebook! While it says that it is not making money out of Free Basics as it doesn't display ads in the Free Basics version of Facebook, it keeps the option of monetisation open in the future.

“It [Free Basics] has been camouflaged as charity," said a senior TRAI official, in an off the record conversation. While speaking to the Guardian on Facebook’s zero rating in December, Tim Berners Lee, founder of world wide web (www), said, “In the particular case of somebody who's offering... something which is branded internet, it's not internet, then you just say no. No it isn't free, no it isn't in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something... [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”

Speaking in favour of zero rating, Payal Malik, associate professor, economics, Delhi University, said that it is wrong to assume that all consumers will get hooked to zero rated sites. “In a way you are saying that all humans have same preferences and likes and dislikes, which is very unlikely,” said Malik.

Experts representing telecom industry argue that the net neutrality regulation should be geography specific and the telecom players should be given more flexibility in dealing with the network. Mahesh Uppal, a senior telecom consultant and director, ComFirst India, while speaking at a round table discussion in Delhi, said that a majority of population in the West including countries opting for strict net neutrality – including Netherlands, Slovenia and the US – are already connected. "The data connectivity is primarily through fixed lines - copper, co-ax cable or optical fibre wired — wherein it is easier to add capacity to meet traffic growth. However this is difficult to do so for wireless networks," said Uppal. In developing countries, including India, mobile telephony and internet majorly runs on wireless. Hence, he argued, telecom and internet service providers should be given flexibility to zero rate. For Uppal, if zero rating or sponsored content is implemented properly “it can be one of the ways to scale up internet access” to the unconnected regions.

Neutrality proponents, however, differ. “It is basic economic theory, and zero rated sites get a price advantage. There are studies that show customers stay within the world of zero rated sites and never venture outside or are aware of the full internet,” professor Misra said.

Zero or equal rating?

So is there a middle ground? Are there ways to increase access without tampering with open and neutral character of the internet? Experts believe there are. Some of the solutions are not completely black and white, but in between. While there is a fierce opposition to zero rating, it might work, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director, centre for internet and society (CIS), if provided with an amount of equal rating (giving free data pack to users so that they can access any site or app they want).

Mozilla Foundation advocates equal rating. The foundation has sought to create such an alternative in Bangladesh and countries in Africa within the Firefox OS ecosystem. The foundation has tied up with telecom operator Grameenphone in Bangladesh to provide 20 Mb data per day for free to users, in exchange for viewing an advertisement. The model could be easily replicated in India, said Pahwa of MediaNama.

For African countries, the foundation has partnered with Orange. Both allow Africans to purchase $40 Firefox OS smartphones that come packaged with free three to six months of voice calling, text, and up to 500 Mb of monthly data. Purkayastha of Knowledge Commons said that zero-rating plan by telecom operators only makes sense when government services are provided for free through it. “That is the form of zero-rating I would support.”

There are a few platforms which are reimbursing data in megabytes to users accessing partnering apps. The user can then use the free data pack to access any other site or app. Some of them include: mCent, Gigato and DataMi. mCent, owned by Boston-based firm Jana, is a pioneer in this area. It is being used by 30 million users cross 98 countries. In India, according to Jana, one out of every 10 internet users has subscribed to mCent.

Yes, it does violate neutrality as it puts those app providers not having enough money at a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis to those having deep pocket to reimburse data to users. “I think it’s a grey area,” said professor Misra. On the surface it seems to be just like Free Basics, however, Gigato (or mCent) is making no pretense that what they are doing is philanthropy of increasing access, said professor Misra, adding that it is still acceptable as user will have the data to venture out of the walled garden. The senior TRAI official too finds it acceptable. “In my opinion, Facebook should become like Gigato,” he said.

If the regulator is going to protect consumers’ right and also not stifle startups and entrepreneurism, it will have to ensure some broad, core principles of the internet. It will have to prevent both the ISPs and the internet platforms from becoming gatekeepers. It must not allow any throttling, blocking, fast and slow lanes, discrimination based on price or quality of service and distortion of level playing field. How and whether TRAI is going to do these would be clear in a few months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle