Centre for Internet and Society

Linking Facebook use to free top-up data

praskrishna — 2016-02-14T12:33:17Z

Just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

The article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on February 14, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Some people argue that Trai should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only nine per cent market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes: “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market?

At the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for Trai? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies — the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, Trai has over-regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as Trai argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data

LinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs

praskrishna — 2017-02-24T01:51:20Z

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.

The article by John Ribeiro of IDG News Service was mirrored on CIO blog on February 21, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.

The professional network that was acquired by Microsoft in December has been generally associated with educated urban professionals but the company is now planning to extend its reach to semi-skilled people in India.

Having connected white-collared professionals around the world with the right job opportunities and training through LinkedIn Learning, the platform is now developing a new set of products that extends this service to low- and semi-skilled workers, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event on digital transformation in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Project Sangam, which is in private preview, is “the first project that is now the coming together of LinkedIn and Microsoft, where we are building this cloud service with deep integration with LinkedIn, so that we can start tackling that enormous challenge in front of us of how to provide every person in India the opportunity to skill themselves for the jobs that are going to be available.”

LinkedIn also plans a placement product for college graduates that will help students finds jobs regardless of whether they studied at top universities or not, Nadella added.

Microsoft announced earlier in the day its Skype Lite, a version of Skype that consumes less data. The company is also offering a ‘lite’ version of LinkedIn, reflecting the need for vendors to factor in low Internet bandwidth, usually running on low-cost and inadequately featured smartphones, when designing products for markets in countries like India.

LinkedIn Lite works on 2G links and is four times faster than the original LinkedIn client, Nadella said.

A large number of low-skilled and semi-skilled workers that Microsoft is targeting with its Sangam project still use feature phones, which will likely be a challenge as Microsoft tries to popularize the service.

Nadella has also backed a controversial Indian government sponsored project to use biometric data collected from over 1 billion people as an authentication mechanism for a variety of services offered by both the government and the private sector.

The project, called India Stack, aims to use a biometric system, called Aadhaar, to facilitate the digital exchange of information. Microsoft said on Tuesday that Skype Lite would support Aadhaar authentication, pointing out to potential uses of the technology such as for verifying the identity of a candidate for a video job interview. Project Sangam too offers authentication using Aadhaar.

Skype Lite is another example of how India Stack is driving the company’s innovation agenda, Nadella said in Mumbai. He announced in Bangalore on Monday that the company's end user products including Windows would be "great participants in the India Stack."

The Aadhaar project has been criticized by privacy activists for collecting biometric information such as the fingerprints and iris scans of people in a central database, which could be misused by both governments and hackers who might get access to the data.The government has been trying to extend the use of Aadhaar, initially designed for the distribution of government benefits and subsidies, to a variety of financial and other services.

"It is indeed shameful that Microsoft is supporting the centralized surveillance project of the Indian government which has dramatically increased the fragility of the Indian information society,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society.

"As Indian citizens we must realize that Microsoft will have our biometrics or our authentication factors that can be used to frame us in crimes or clean out our bank accounts," he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-cio-february-21-2017-john-ribeiro-linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs

Kashmir: Telecom firms struggle to block 22 banned social media sites

praskrishna — 2017-05-04T02:29:04Z

A BSNL official says engineers are still working on shutting down the 22 social media sites but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the Internet across Kashmir.

The article by Aijaz Hussain was published in Livemint on May 4, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

The government has banned 22 social media sites in an effort to calm tensions in parts of the disputed region of Kashmir, after several viral videos depicting the alleged abuse of Kashmiris by Indian law enforcement fuelled protests. But the sites remained online Thursday morning as the local telecom company struggled to block them.

The government said on Wednesday that the restrictions, to be in effect for one month, were necessary for public safety. “It’s being felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interests of peace and tranquillity in the state,” the public order reads.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director for the Indian advocacy group the Centre for Internet and Society, called the ban a “blow to freedom of speech” and “legally unprecedented in India.”

An official with Kashmir’s state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), said engineers were still working on shutting down the 22 sites, including Facebook and Twitter, but so far had been unable to do so without freezing the internet across the Himalayan region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to give technical details of the effort to the media.

Meanwhile, 3G and 4G cellphone service has been suspended for more than a week, but the slower 2G service was still running.

Residents in Srinagar, the region’s main city, were busily downloading documents, software and applications onto their smartphones, which would likely be able to circumvent the social media block once it goes into effect. Many expressed relief to still have internet access Thursday morning.

“It was a welcome surprise,” said Tariq Ahmed, a 24-year-old university student. “It appears they’ve hit a technical glitch to block social media en mass.”

While the government has halted internet service in Kashmir in previous attempts to prevent anti-India demonstrations, this is the first time they have done so in response to the circulation of videos and photos showing alleged military abuse.

Others mocked the government. One Facebook post by Kashmiri writer Arif Ayaz Parrey said that the ban showed “the Indian government has decided to take on the collective subversive wisdom of cyberspace humanity.”

Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuse for some years, but several recently posted clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election 9 April, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests.

One video shows a stone-throwing teenage boy being shot by a soldier from a few metres (yards) away. Another shows soldiers making a group of young men, held inside an armoured vehicle, shout profanities against Pakistan while a soldier kicks and slaps them with a stick. The video pans to a young boy’s bleeding face as he cries. Yet another clip shows three soldiers holding a teenage boy down with their boots and beating him on his back.

The video that drew the most outrage was of young shawl weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar tied to the hood of an army jeep as it patrolled villages on voting day. A soldier can be heard saying in Hindi over a loudspeaker, “Stone throwers will meet a similar fate,” as residents look on aghast.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-4-2017-aijaz-hussain-kashmir-telecom-firms-struggle-to-block-22-banned-social-media-sites

J&K social media ban: Use of 132-year-old Act can’t stand judicial scrutiny, say experts

praskrishna — 2017-05-04T02:12:23Z

Jammu and Kashmir's social media ban: Legal experts are not convinced this is a viable order

The article by Shruti Dhapola was published in the Indian Express on April 28, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

For residents of Jammu and Kashmir, there’s a blanket ban on social media for the next one month. This means no access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other social networks.

As The Indian Express reported, this ‘social media ban’ was ordered by the state government after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti chaired a meeting of the Unified Command Headquarters in Srinagar. The total list includes 22 social media websites, and the order, a copy of which is available with The Indian Express, says this is being done “in the interest of maintenance of public order.”

The order to block the sites was issued by RK Goyal, Principal Secretary in the Home department, and cites Section 5 of Indian Telegraph Act, which “confers powers upon the Central government or the state government to take possession of license telegraphs and order stoppage of transmission or interception or detention of messages”.

The order reasons that social media sites are “being used by anti-national and anti-social elements by transmitting inflammatory messages in various forms”. It directs all ISPs to block these websites in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

But questions are already being raised over its legality.

“This is an illegal order because the Telegraph Act and Rules, which the order cites, doesn’t give the government the power to block websites. The Telegraph Act is a colonial-era legislation first passed in 1885 in the aftermath of the Mutiny, making telegraphs a monopoly of the colonial British government, and restricting Indians’ access to communications technologies. In 1996, in the PUCL case, the Supreme Court laid down that powers to intercept or block transmission of messages cannot be exercised without procedural safeguards in place. In 2007, procedural safeguards were made for interception, but not for blocking of telegraphic communications,” points out Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society.

Pavan Duggal, senior lawyer specialising in cyberlaw, concurs. “Legally, the order is not viable. This is because the IT Act applies for blocking, under Section 69 (A). Also Section 81 of the IT Act also make it clear that this is a special law, which will prevail over any other older law. The IT ACT deals with everything related to the internet.”

The IT ACT notes in Section 1, that “It shall extend to the whole of India and, save as otherwise provided in this Act, it applies also to any offence or contravention there under committed outside India by any person.”

But even blocking under the IT Act isn’t something that can be ordered over night, and the powers for this rest with the central government.

“There’s a provision (69A) in the Information Technology Act which provides for blocking of specific web pages for national security reasons, but only by the Central government. The J&K government, thus can only request the Central government to block. The central government has in the past denied requests by state governments as they were unlawful requests,” Prakash said.

However, blocking of URLs or in fact complete internet shutdowns is not new in India. “This is an example of Internet manipulation by the governments world over. The first casualty of any disturbance is now the Internet and the government, even the democratic ones living under rule of law have decided that is a-okay to prevent people from communicating in the name of law and order,” said Mishi Choudhary, President and Legal Director at SFLC.in

SFLC.in has also been keeping a track of internet shutdowns in India. It has a dedicated website Internetshutdowns.in which crowd-sources information on these bans, and India has already seen seven shut internet shutdowns in first three months of 2017. For instance, in the state of Nagaland internet and mobile services were down for nearly a month from January 30 to February 20.

The issue of url blocking and internet shutdowns inevitably gets linked to one of freedom of speech. While reasonable restrictions can be imposed under Article 19 (2) of the Constitution, experts are not convinced the current order makes enough of a case to justify such a blanket ban.

“The citizens of J&K are Indian citizens and can challenge the order as violative of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution, violative of right to free speech and expression,” says Choudhary.

“Any kind of blocking must conform to the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, and any blocking must be legally “reasonable” for it to be acceptable as a legitimate restriction under Art.19(2). This blanket ban of 22 arbitrarily chosen service — why block QQ or WeChat, but not LinkedIn — and that too for a month, cannot be called reasonable under any circumstances,” argues Prakash.

Prakash adds that the order also raises other international concerns for India. “It also violates India’s international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), whose Article 19 protects the freedom of thought, opinion and expression. Only those restrictions that are provided by law, have a legitimate aim, are necessary with less restrictive option being available, and are proportionate to the harm being address are allowed. For instance, targeting of hate speech that is calling for genocide is reasonable. But such blanket bans of communications platforms are not,” he argues.

So can the citizens challenge such an order, which puts a blanket ban on social networks? The answer is yes, as in this case this order “is legally untenable,” explains Duggal.

On the practice of blocking, he points that in today’s world it can only be seen an antiquated practice. “To give an analogy it is like fixing a leaking roof with a band-aid. It will only increase traffic to the blocked websites, and there are indirect ways to reach these sites via proxies and other tools as well,” he adds.

The orders can always be reviewed by the courts. “While the IT Act allows for blocking, it should be remembered the process is always open to judicial review. Courts have final authority, and they can examine whether the principles of law were applied when passing such a blocking order,” explains Duggal.

The affected social media websites or ISPs don’t yet have a response to this order. When we reached out, Facebook said it did not have an official comment on the ban. Mobile internet service providers Vodafone and Airtel also refused to comment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-april-28-2017-shruti-dhapola-j-k-social-media-ban

It's That Eavesdrop Endemic

praskrishna — 2016-07-30T15:45:31Z

Whatsapp Says It’s Snoop-Proof Now, But There’s Always A Way In

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook on July 25, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Lock and Key

WhatsApp says it has end-to-end encryption, so no one, not even WhatsApp, can snoop into calls.

Experts say any encryption can be broken by security agencies. Android phones can also get infected by malware.

For years, a Delhi power-broker used to call from nondescript landline numbers, changing them ever so often. Of late, he has started using WhatsApp calls for ‘sensitive’ conversations. He’s not alone. WhatsApp has revealed that over 100 million voice calls are being made on the social network every day. That’s over 1,100 calls a second! India is one of the biggest user bases of WhatsApp. And many Indian users are making the app their main engine for voice calls.

One reason for this shift is that WhatsApp calls are seen to be essentially free (though they indeed have data charges). But for a lot of people, the chief allure lies in the touted fact that WhatsApp calling is far more secure than mobile calling. In April, the app introduced end-to-end encryption for its messages and voice calls.

Consequent to this, Sudhir Yadav, a Gurgaon-based software engineer filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking a ban on WhatsApp on the grounds that its calls are so safe that it could be misused by ‘terrorists’. Last month, a court in Brazil issued orders to block WhatsApp for 72 hours after it failed to provide the authorities access to encrypted data.

Are WhatsApp calls really impenetrable? WhatsApp believes so and says that the encryption key is held by the two persons at the two ends of the message or call and no one, not even the company, can snoop in. “The calls are end-to-end encrypted so WhatsApp and third parties can’t listen to them,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told Outlook. This is precisely Yadav’s concern. “Because the encryption is end to end, the government can’t break it and WhatsApp cannot provide the decryption key,” he says.

However, experts do not buy this argument. They believe everything on the Internet is vulnerable. “Anything that uses a phone number is vulnerable,” says Kiran Jonnalagadda, founder of technology platform HasGeek. “Anyone can impersonate the phone number by getting a duplicate SIM and get access to a phone. There are also bugs in the system which security agencies use.”

WhatsApp uses a person’s phone number to open an account and authenticate a user. So, if the government or a security agency wants to get access to a WhatsApp call, it would be very easy. “Telecom companies cannot access these calls as they are encrypted before they reach the network. But the government can. It just has to replicate a SIM to access any number and its messages or voice calls,” says Aravind R.S., a volunteer for Save the Internet campaign and founder of community chat app Belong,

There are other modes of attack as well. It is a given that Android phones, which form the majority of mobile phones used in India today, are most vulnerable to malware attacks. So, even if the app itself is secure, the device is not and if the device is attacked, just about everything in it can be tapped into. For instance, there’s the ‘man in the middle’ mode of attack, where a third person gets into a call and mirrors the messages to both the sides and relays the messages or calls to a different server. There is also the SS7 signalling protocol that can help hackers get into networks and calls. These attacks can make even a WhatsApp encryption vulnerable.

Security agencies and hackers routinely implant viruses into the phones of people they are monitoring. Once a phone is “infected”, everything is accessible. And Android phones are extremely prone to attacks from malware. “It's not perfectly secure, especially if there is any virus in an Android phone, which is what security agencies work with. They have many more ways to get into a phone. There is no defence against that,” says Aravind,

Experts believe it is possible that US intelligence agencies like the FBI and the NSA may have access to or are capable of breaking into even the WhatsApp encryption. This is proven by the recent incident where the FBI, after being refused by Apple to open up an iPhone used by a terrorist, broke into the phone by itself.

“If you are on the NSA list, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself,” says Pranesh Prakash, policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society. “They will find a way to get into your phone. In WhatsApp, many things like photographs and videos are not encrypted; these can get access to a person’s account.”

In India, the debate on access to encrypted phones has been on since the government engaged with Blackberry a few years ago. “There is no law governing an Over The Top (OTT) service like WhatsApp. If the government orders decryption of a call and WhatsApp cannot comply, it will become illegal,” says cyber lawyer Asheeta Regidi. The government’s seeming comfort level with all this legal ambiguity is yet another indicator that all is not what is seems with WhatsApp. As for callers, they would do well to speak discreetly on any network.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-july-25-2016-arindam-mukherjee-its-that-eavesdrop-endemic

ISIS and Recruitment using Social Media – Roundtable Report

Vidushi Marda, Aditya Tejus, Megha Nambiar and Japreet Grewal — 2016-12-16T02:19:16Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Takshashila Institution held a roundtable discussion on “ISIS and Recruitment using Social Media” on 1 September 2016 from 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. at TERI in Bengaluru.

The objective of this roundtable was to explore the recruitment process and methods followed by ISIS on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and to understand the difficulties faced by law enforcement agencies and platforms in countering the problem while understanding existing counter measures, with a focus on the Indian experience.

Reviewing Existing Literature

To provide context to the discussion, a few key pieces of existing literature on online extremism were highlighted. Discussing Charlie Winter’s “Documenting the Virtual Caliphate”, a participant outlined the multiple stages of the radicalisation process that begins with a person being exposed to general ISIS releases, entering an online filter bubble of like minded people, initial contact, followed by persuasion by the contact person to isolate the potential recruit from his/her family and friends. This culminates with the assignment of an ISIS task to such person. The takeaway from the paper, was the colossal scale of information and events put out by ISIS on the social media. It was pointed out that contrary to popular belief, ISIS publishes content under six broad themes: mercy, belonging, brutality, victimhood, war and utopia, least of which falls under the category of brutality which in fact garners the most attention worldwide. It was further elaborated that ISIS employs positive imagery in the form of nature and landscapes, and appeals to the civilian life within its borders. This strategy is that of prioritising quantity, quality, adaptability and differentiation while producing media. This strategy of producing media that is precise, adaptable and effective, according to the author, must be emulated by Governments in their counter measures, although there is no universal counter narrative that is effective. This effort, he stressed cannot be exclusively state-driven.

JM Berger’s “Making Countering Violent Extremism Work” was also discussed. Here, a slightly different model of radicalisation has been identified with potential recruits going through 4 stages: the first being that of Curiosity where there is exposure to violent extremist ideology, the second stage is Consideration where the potential recruit evaluates the ideology, the third being Identification where the individual begins to self identify with extremist ideology, and the last being that of Self-Critique which is revisited periodically. According to Berger, law enforcement need only be involved in the third stage identified in this taxonomy, through situational awareness programs and investigations. This paper stated that counter-messaging policies need not mimic the ISIS pattern of slick messaging. A data-driven study had found that suspending and suppressing the reach of violent extremist accounts and individuals on online platform was effective in reducing the reach of these ideologies, though not universally so. It also found that generic counter strategies used in the US was more efficient than targeted strategies followed in Europe.

Lack of Co-ordination, Fragmentation between the States and Centre

Speaking of the Indian scenario in particular, another participant brought to light the lack of co-ordination and consensus between the State and Central Governments and law enforcement agencies with respect to countering violent extremism with leads to a breakage in the chain of action. Another participant added that the underestimation of the problem at the state level coupled with the theoretical and abstract nature of work done at the Centre is another pitfall. While the fragmentation of agencies was stated to be ineffective, bringing them under the purview of a single agency was also proposed as an ineffective measure. It was instead suggested that a neutral policy body, and not an implementing body, should coordinate the efforts of the multiple groups involved.

Unreliable Intelligence Infrastructure

It was pointed out that countries are presently underequipped due to the lack of intelligence infrastructure and technical expertise. This was primarily because agencies in India tend to use off-the shelf hardware and software produced by foreign companies, and such heavy dependence on unreliable parts will necessarily be detrimental to building reliable security infrastructure. Emphasis was laid on the significance of collaboration and open-source intelligence in countering online radicalisation. An appeal was made to inculcate a higher IT proficiency, indigenous production of resources, funding, collaboration, integration of lower level agencies and more research to be produced in this regard.

Proactive Counter Narratives

The importance of proactive counter-narratives to extremist content was stressed on, with the possibility of generating inputs from government agencies and private bodies backing the government being discussed. Another solution identified was the creation and internal circulation of a clear strategy to counter the ISIS narrative and the public dissemination of research on online radicalization in the Indian context.

Policies of Social Media Platforms

The conversation moved towards understanding policies of social media. One participant shed light on a popular platform’s strategies against extremism, wherein it was pointed out that the site’s tolerance policy extends not only to directly extremist content but also content created by people who support violent extremism .The involvement of the platform with several countries and platforms in order to create anti-extremist messaging and its intention to expand these initiatives was in furtherance of its philosophy to prevent any celebration of violence. The participant further explained that research shows that anti-extremist content that made use of humour and a lighter tone was more effective than media which relied on gravitas.

Having identified the existing literature and current challenges, the roundtable concluded with suggestions for further areas of research:

Understanding the use of encrypted messaging services like Whatsapp and Telegram for extremism, and an analysis of these platforms in the Indian context. A deeper understanding of these services is essential to gauge the dimensions of the problem and identify counter measures.
A lexical analysis of Indian social media accounts to identify ISIS supporters and group them into meta-communities, similar to research done by the RAND Corporation
Collation of ISIS media packages was also flagged off as an important measure in order to have a dossier to present to the government. This would help policymakers gain context around the issue, and also help them understand the scale of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/isis-and-recruitment-using-social-media-2013-roundtable-report

Is This The Beginning Of The End For Facebook?

Admin — 2018-04-17T14:44:23Z

After two days of congressional hearings that collectively lasted over ten hours, there are many questions about Facebook, its policies and its future that experts are debating.

The article by Aayush Ailawadi was published in Bloomberg Quint on April 15, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Do Facebook’s privacy policies confuse more than they inform? Is the platform a near monopoly that may need to be broken? And how do you ensure that the vast wealth of data that Facebook has is not misused, particularly in elections?

BloombergQuint has collected views on some of these issues.

Privacy Policy Or Legalese?

Since the Cambrdge Analytica scandal came to light, Facebook has been receiving a lot of flak for its ambiguous and verbose privacy and data policy. Lawmakers quizzed founder Mark Zuckerberg about how an ordinary user was expected to decipher the terms of the user agreement, something even some of the lawmakers grilling him couldn’t comprehend.

Jitendra Waral of Bloomberg Intelligence says, “It’s so complicated that nobody reads it. Essentially the data sharing beyond the Facebook ecosystem came into question here. Is it just necessary to have data sharing for the service to work? Is it restricted to you sharing your content with your friends in your network or do the restrictions go beyond that? So basically they have a lot of work to do in terms of transparency, in terms how the data is used and shared.”

During the conversations, it also came to light that Facebook collects data even on those who don’t use the platform.

“In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes," Zuckerberg said Wednesday in a hearing about the social network’s privacy practices in Washingtonbefore the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

While privacy experts and tech geeks have been crying foul for years about the data collection and storage practices adopted by tech behemoths like Facebook, this revelation by the Facebook founder was the first public acknowledgement of the fact.

Is Facebook A Monopoly?

It’s not just data concerns that were brought up at the hearings.

Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Zuckerberg if Facebook enjoys a monopoly on the type of service it provides to its users. He asked, “If I buy a Ford and it doesn’t work well and I don’t like it, I can buy a Chevy, if I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product that I can go sign up for?”

Zuckerberg responded to say that there are other tech companies which operate in the same sphere as Facebook does. He offered statistics of how many Americans use different social apps nowadays, in support of his argument that Facebook does not enjoy a monopoly in the tech world.

Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project at the non-partisan Center for Economic and Policy Research says, “ Zuckerberg's answer to who his competitor was kind of comically unsatisfying because there is no competition for Facebook and they do have monopoly power in the United States and in many other countries across the world. ”

So one idea is to take Facebook and break it into many other parts that it acquired through previous acquisitions. Instagram would be a powerful competitor to Facebook if it was independent of Facebook. WhatsApp would be a powerful competitor to Facebook if it was an independent competitor to Facebook.

Jeff Hauser, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Time To Regulate The Internet?

Another big moment during the testimony was when Zuckerberg conceded that it was only a matter of time before the internet would be regulated.

He said, “The internet is growing in importance around the world in people’s lives and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation.”

Waral agrees that light touch regulation is the way to prevent a Cambridge Analytica like scandal from occurring again in the future. But, he believes that regulation will only raise costs for a company like Facebook. He explains, “What it does is raise compliance costs through out the ecosystem. So, the impact on Facebook from this is that the company is going to increase expenses due to compliance costs.”

The Big Election(s) Year

During his testimony, Zuckerberg did acknowledge that a lot needs to be done to ensure data does not get misused, particularly in elections. Concerns about misuse of user data have emerged in countries like the U.S., but also in India.

Last month, the Union Minister for Law and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad warned Zuckerberg that if there was any data theft of Indian users due to Facebook’s data collection practices, he would stop at nothing short of summoning the Facebook founder to India.

While Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre For Internet and Society, doesn’t believe the government would actually summon Zuckerberg to India, he says, “One new concern that's valid across the world, where there are limitations put on freedom of expression during times of campaigning and elections, how do they translate online? There is no typical answer to this.”

Most of the speech regulations apply to candidates and apply to media platforms, which are largely mass media platforms. Now, social media platforms where individuals express themselves might not be regulated the same way or currently at least aren’t regulated the same way.

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre For Internet and Society

Pranesh thinks it is time to re-look at the existing election laws which might not prove to be as useful now as they were some time ago.

Hauser thinks Facebook should help users discern between fakes news and a legitimate source of news.

In the 2016 elections cycle, for fake news, a lot of bots and trolls liked them and they started appearing in the lot of users’ feeds. So the algorithm of Facebook encouraged manipulation. Facebook needs to address these concerns. I don’t think we can trust Facebook if it doesn’t make hard decisions about its algorithms. Right now, Facebook needs to say this is what the algorithm does.

Jeff Hauser, Center for Economic and Policy Research

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-quint-aayush-ailawadi-april-15-2018-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-facebook

Is India the next frontier for Facebook?

praskrishna — 2014-11-05T00:43:00Z

Pushing to bring hundreds of millions of Indians into the online world, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday called for expanding his pet project to provide free mobile Internet for developing countries into India.

The article by Rama Lakshmi was published in Washington Post on October 9, 2014. Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.

Zuckerberg, 30, the billionaire founder of the Facebook empire, arrives in India at a time when Facebook is losing its luster among American teens, but India’s vast market has yet to be fully tapped. A democratic country with a growing economy like India’s, with 1.2 billion people, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 35, is a market the company cannot afford to ignore.

India has the third-largest population of Internet users in the world at 205 million now, ranking after the United States and China. Yet the majority of its rural poor don’t have Internet access, and less than a tenth of its people, about 100 million, are on Facebook.

“Connectivity can’t be restricted to just the rich and powerful,” Zuckerberg said at a conference on connectivity in New Delhi. Rather, he said, it’s a basic “human right.”

Zuckerberg hopes to use his Internet.org connectivity initiative, which he started with a handful of other tech companies in 2013, to expand Indians’ online footprint and promote Facebook. He said the program will set aside $1 million to help develop local language apps for farmers, women and students in developing countries, including India.

In the past year, Zuckerberg said, Internet.org helped nearly 3 million people around the world gain access to the Internet and Facebook by working with cellphone operators in Indonesia, the Philippines, Paraguay, Tanzania and Zambia. In those countries, cellphone users signed up for data plans that included free but limited access to health and job information, Wikipedia, Google — and, of course, Facebook.

About 4.4 billion people in the world have no access to the Internet, and “the offline population is . . . disproportionately rural, low income, elderly, illiterate, and female,” said a report by McKinsey and Facebook. Countries such as Egypt, India and Indonesia face the greatest challenges with respect to incentives and infrastructure, the report said.

“It took 10 years for India to touch 100 million Internet users, but it grew to 200 million in just the last two years,” said Subho Roy, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India. There are 930 million cellphone users in India today. “Cellphones have acted as the primary driver pushing Internet usage in the last two years,” Roy said.

Researchers note that new users’ first experience on the Internet is often on Facebook.

The free basic services that Facebook has promoted in different countries help cellphone users “to experience the Internet, use some things, to understand why it would be valuable for them and get exposure to other services that they might over time want to pay for,” Zuckerberg said.

But many critics say that commerce is driving Zuckerberg’s push for connectivity rather than philanthropy. They say many new users may not pay for wider Web access and that can create entrenched monopolies for companies like Facebook and Google.

“You are allowing people to roam the walled garden of Internet for free. But if they don’t pay to use unlimited Web access, you are also creating monopolies and blocking competition in the Internet space,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore. “But in India, we are so hungry for Internet access that we cannot afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. Until India builds physical Internet infrastructure, this will help us in the short term to get connected.”

Zuckerberg said cellphone operators are free to choose which services they want to include in the package: “There is no rule that says that Facebook or any other company has to be included in this. All we are saying is that this is a model that works to get more people on the Internet.”

And Facebook’s India push is not all about chasing numbers, Zuckerberg said.

“The sheer numbers are obviously a very important part of it,” he said. “If you can do it in a country like India, you are improving hundreds of millions, or maybe a billion, people’s lives, whereas doing it in almost any other country, you wouldn’t be able to have that impact.”

India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, a user of social media, has set an ambitious target of building a broadband highway connecting 250,000 village councils across the country in the next three years. Zuckerberg said he will meet Modi on Friday to “see how Facebook can help” in India’s new connectivity drive.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-october-9-2014-rama-lakshmi-is-india-the-next-frontier-for-facebook

Is Facebook too powerful without legal safeguards?

Admin — 2018-03-25T01:38:57Z

The absence of a data protection law and a competition watchdog to oversee Internet companies are key shortcomings, according to some experts.

The article by Vidhi Choudhary was published in Hindustan Times on March 24, 2018

It’s time India moves to put in place legal safeguards to contain the potential harm that Internet giants like Facebook Inc. can cause, experts say, amid a raging scandal over access gained by political marketing firm Cambridge Analytica to user data on the social media network. India is a key market for Facebook with 217 million people using the platform every month.

Concerns centre around protection of user privacy and freedom of speech, harassment by Internet trolls, spread of misinformation and fake news, said Apar Gupta, a Delhi-based lawyer who is part of Save The Internet , a group of individuals and non-government organisations fighting to preserve net neutrality. It’s time to take stock of the concerns and the sufficiency of India’s legal framework to address them, Gupta said.

“Companies like Facebook have grown too big and too powerful without adequate legal safeguards,” he said.

On Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to stop the misuse of user data on its site to manipulate voters in India,Brazil and the US. The social media network is under scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that London-based Cambridge Analytica accessed user data to prepare voter profiles that helped Donald Trump win the US presidential election in 2016.

Information technology and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday warned social media platforms such as Facebook of “stringent action” in case of any attempt to sway the country’s electoral process. The government is considering a new regulatory framework for online content, including on social media and websites, Union minister for information and broadcasting Smriti Irani said on 17 March at the News18 Rising India Summit , conceding that the law is not clear about online news and broadcast content.

“We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We have announced that we are planning to introduce improvements to our settings and give people more prominent controls ,” an India-based Facebook spokesperson said in response to an emailed query from Hindustan Times .” We have a lot of work to do to regain people’s trust and are working hard to tackle past abuse, prevent future abuse and will continue to engage with the Election Commission of India and relevant stakeholders to answer any questions they may have.”

The absence of a data protection law and a competition watchdog to oversee Internet companies are key shortcomings, said Sunil Abraham, founder of the think tank Centre for Internet and Society.

“Evil is a function of power. As internet giants get bigger and bigger, they’ll become more and more evil. In fact, in jurisdictions like India, where we don’t have a data protection law and a sufficiently agile competition commission to take on these Internet giants, they can do whatever they want to..,” said Abraham.

Internet networks have helped undermine the business model for real news and replace it with a vibrant fake news model, in the process cornering the lion’s share of the digital advertising revenue, said Abraham . Facebook and Google dominate the Rs 9,490 crore digital advertising market in India.

“Since they don’t see themselves as a media company, their primary objective is to maximize the amount of time their users spend on the platform,” he said, adding that social media networks aren’t concerned whether the content they present is the truth or lies

“It would be laziness on our part to just blame Facebook and then feel morally superior. We have to regulate them using competition law and a data protection law so that they behave themselves on our jurisdiction,” Abraham said.

The legal framework for Indian social media users is limited. Section 43 (A) of the IT Act operates merely as a data security law applicable only to someone whose privacy has been infringed and can demonstrate that he/she has suffered a financial loss in the process.

“Whatever is known from the Cambridge Analytica episode is that none of the users have lost money or property but democracy has been undermined. So we cannot use the IT Act in India to save our democracy,” he said.

Facebook operates in an opaque manner in the manner in which it regulates content, said Geeta Seshu, consulting editor for media website The Hoot.

“When complaints are launched, they are upheld if they meet Facebook’s so-called community standards. Often users who are dissenting voices against hate or discrimination or misogyny have found themselves blocked. The process to appeal back to Facebook is very arbitrary. Users spend months and years being blocked on the platform. Facebook manipulates user data, when it decides to use algorithms to push content or boost certain articles for a certain sum of money,” she added.

In December, Alex Hardiman, head of news products at Facebook, said restoring trust and credibility to news on Facebook is one of the biggest priorities for the company.

“There is a lot that we are doing to make sure that we eradicate any false news or misinformation on Facebook. We’ve found that false news is actually a very small percentage of content. But there were a lot of financial motivations for posting false news,” she said in an interview to Mint when he was in Delhi to attend the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. “So, one of the first things we have done is remove any financial incentives. We have also done a lot to make sure we can quickly identify and remove fake accounts. Also, we have been doing a lot to better understand clickbait content and train classifiers to identify and downlink it.We have also started third-party fact-checking. We have partnered with third-party organizations in the US, France, Germany and a few other countries,” said Hardiman.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-march-24-2018-vidhi-choudhary-is-facebook-too-powerful-without-legal-safeguards

Interview with Pranesh Prakash

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T06:58:39Z

Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society talks to Mint’s Surabhi Agarwal about the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act and the government’s decision to tweak it.

This video was published in LiveMint on November 30, 2012:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-november-30-2012-video-interview-with-pranesh-prakash

Interoperability and Portability as a Lever to Enhance User Choice and Privacy in Messaging Platforms

Kamesh Shekar — 2021-07-06T11:37:05Z

Since last year, digital platforms have been actively making the headlines in various countries for different acquisitions, raising questions around the anti-competitive nature of their behaviour. In the US, about 46 states filed an antitrust case against Facebook along with the Federal Trade Commission in December 2020, accusing them of buying out rivals such as WhatsApp, Instagram etc[1]. Recently, the US supreme court overturned the case by 46, stating it to be tardy and FTC’s case to be “legally insufficient”[2]. However, one of the solutions proposed for this problem by various experts and politicians is to break up Facebook[3].

Influential people such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma (CEO, Paytm) in India argued similarly when Whatsapp updated its privacy policy to share data with Facebook. They suggested that the movement of users towards Signal could break Facebook's monopoly[4]. While it is conceivable that breaking up a platform or seeking an alternative for them will bring an end to their monopoly, well, in reality, is it so? This post will try to answer this question. In section 1, I discuss the importance of interoperability and portability amongst the messaging platforms for tackling monopoly, which, in turn, helps in enhancing user outcomes such as user choice and privacy. Section 2 discusses the enablers, legislative reimagining, and structural changes required in terms of technology to enable interoperability and portability amongst the messaging platforms. In section 3, I discuss the cost structure and profitability of a proposed message gateway entity, followed by the conclusion.

1. Introduction

In the case of the platform economy, the formation of a monopoly is inevitable, especially in messaging platforms, because of (a) network effects and (b) lack of interoperability and portability between messaging platforms[5]. As the network effect gets vigorous, more users get locked into a single messaging platform leading toward a lack of user choice (in terms of switching platforms) and privacy concerns (as the messaging platforms get more significant, it poses a high risk in terms of data breaches, third-party data sharing etc.). For instance, as a WhatsApp user, it is difficult for me to switch towards any other messaging platforms as my friends, family and business/work still operate on WhatsApp. Messaging platforms also use the network effect towards their favour (a) by increasing the switching cost (b) by creating a high barrier to entry within the market[6].

If there was interoperability between the messaging platforms, I could choose between the platforms freely- thereby negating some of the aforementioned limitations. Therefore, to create a competitive environment amongst messaging platforms to enhance user choice and privacy, it is crucial to have an interoperability and portability framework. To deploy interoperability and portability, it is imperative to have coordination among platforms while still competing for individual market share[7]. Interoperability and portability will also bring in healthy competition, as platforms will be nudged to explore alternative value propositions to remain competitive in the market[8]. One of the outcomes of this could be better consumer protection through innovation of privacy safeguards, etc. In addition to this, interoperability and portability could enable a low barrier to entry (through breaking the network effect), which could, in turn, increase online messaging penetration in untapped geographies as more messaging platforms emerge in the market.

There are two kinds of interoperability, vertical interoperability – i.e., interoperability of services across complementary platforms and horizontal interoperability – i.e., interoperability of services between competing platforms. While vertical interoperability exists in the form of the cloud system, multiple system login, etc., horizontal interoperability is yet to experiment at the market level. Nonetheless, realising the competition concerns in the digital platforms’ market, the European Union (European Electronic Communications Code[9], Digital Service Act etc[10].), the US (Stigler Committee Report[11]) and the UK Competition and Markets Authority[12] are mulling a move towards interoperability amongst the digital platforms. Furthermore, Facebook has already commissioned its efforts towards horizontal interoperability[13] amongst its messaging platforms, i.e., Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram direct messages. This again adds to the competition concerns, as one platform uses interoperability towards its favour.

Besides, one of the bottlenecks towards enabling horizontal interoperability is the lack of technical interoperability – i.e., the ability to accept or transfer data, perform a task etc., across platforms. In the case of messaging platforms, lack of technical interoperability is caused due to the presence of different kinds of messaging platforms operating with different technical procedures. Therefore, to have effective horizontal interoperability and portability, it is crucial to streamline technical procedures and have guidelines which will enable technical interoperability. In the following section, I discuss the enablers, legislative reimagining, and structural changes required in terms of technology to enable interoperability and portability amongst the messaging platforms.

2. Message Gateway Entity

2.1. Formation of Message Gateway Entity to Enable Interoperability

To drive efficacious interoperability, it is imperative to form message gateway entities as for-profits that are regulated by a regulator (either an existing one such as TRAI or a newly established one). The three key functions of message gateway entities should be: (a) Maintain standard format for messaging prescribed by a standard-setting council, (b) Provide responsive user message delivery system to messaging platforms, (c) Deliver messages from one messaging platform to another seamlessly in real-time. There have to be multiple message gateway entities to enable competition, which will bring out more innovations, penetration, and effectiveness. Besides, it is prudent to have private players as message gateway entities as government-led message gateway entities for interoperability will not be fruitful as there will be a question of efficacy. Also, this might, in a way, bring the tender style business, which is problematic as the government could have a say in how and who it will provide its service (gatekeeping). However, the government has to set it up by itself only if it is a public good (missing markets) which might not be the case in message gateway entities.

Messaging platforms should be mandated through legislation/executive order to be a member of at least one of the message gateway entities to provide interoperability benefits to its users. Simultaneously, messaging platforms can also handle internal message delivery - User A to User B within the platform - amongst themselves.

While message gateway entities will enable interoperability between messaging platforms, it is crucial to have interoperability among themselves to compete in the market. For instance, a user from messaging platform under gateway A should be able to send messages to a user of a messaging platform under gateway B. Perhaps as we enable competition amongst the message gateways entities, the enrollment price will also become commensurate and affordable for small and new messaging platforms. In addition to this, to increase interoperability, message gateway entities should develop various awareness programs at the user level.

Further, the regulatory guidelines for message gateway entities (governed by the regulator) must be uniform, with leeway for gateways to innovate technology to attract messaging platforms. Borrowing some of the facets from the various existing legislations, the below suggested aspects should advise the uniform guidelines,

End-to-end encryption: As part of the uniform guidelines, message gateway entities should be mandated to enable end-end encryption for message delivery. In contrast, the recent Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021[14] tries to break the end-end encryption by mandating significant social media intermediaries to identify the first originator of a particular message (part II section 4 rule 2) sought through an order. As this mandate impinges upon user privacy and free speech, the Indian government should revise this rule to keep end-to-end encryption intact. Besides, WhatsApp (a significant social media intermediary) has moved to Delhi High Court to block the implementation of the rules, which came into force on May 27th, 2021[15]. Also, Rule 4(2) of IT Rules 2021 contradicts provisions of the PDP Bill 2019 such as privacy by design[16] (Section 22) and the right to be forgotten (Section 20).
Neutrality: The guidelines should have a strict rule for enforcing non-discrimination (similar to the Indian Government's 2018 net neutrality principles[17]) in delivering messages by message gateway entities. Discrimination against both messaging platforms and other message gateway entities has to be scrutinised. In addition to that, to hold message gateway entities accountable, the guidelines should mandate monthly disclosure of information (at the messaging platform level with information on which gateway entity they are routed through) on message deliveries and failures in a prescribed user-friendly format to the public.
Standard Format Setting: As various messaging platforms follow different formats for providing messaging services, to have seamless interoperability, message gateway entities must adhere to a standard format, which is compatible with formats followed within the market. This standard format has to keep up with technological evolution in this space and to be formulated by an independent standard-setting council (through stakeholder consultation) commissioned by the regulator. The maintenance of this standard format falls into the ambit of message gateway entities and should be governed by the regulator.
Uniform identification information: As the users of messaging platforms identify other users through various means, for instance, on WhatsApp, we use the telephone number, whereas, on Instagram, we use profile name; thus, the unique identification information (UII) of a user (which can be something existing like a phone number or a new dedicated identification number) has to be standardised. Message gateway entities should facilitate messaging platforms with this process, and the generation of UII should be seamless for the user. Besides, a user's unique identification information has to be an additional way to search for other users within a messaging platform and would be crucial for messaging across platforms.
Consumer choice: While interoperability should be a default option for all the users, there has to be a user-friendly way of opt-out for the user who wishes to compartmentalise different kinds of messages depending upon the platform used. The unique identification information (in case of a new dedicated number) of a user who had opted out must be ceased to avoid misuse.One of the major reasons users opt-out of interoperability services could be to keep various digital public spheres (personal, leisure, professional, etc.) distant. To tackle this dilemma of the users, the messaging platforms should enable options such as (a) the optional notification for cross-platform messages with the snooze option, so that the user can decide if she wants the cross-platform message to hit the enrolled messaging platform at the given time. (b) The messaging platform should enable the “opt-out from messaging platform” setting for the users to disable messages from a list of platforms. Besides, users might choose to opt-out due to lack of trust. This has to be tackled by both the message gateway entities by creating awareness amongst the users on their rights and messaging platforms by providing a user-friendly privacy policy.
Data Protection: As the emergence of message gateway entities creates new data flow, this new flow of data has to take a data minimisation approach. Message gateway entities should be recognised as the data processor (one who processes data for data fiduciary, i.e., messaging platforms). They should adhere to the upcoming Personal Data Protection regime[18] to protect the data principals' personal data and collect personal data as per the proportionality principle. Message gateway entities should not collect any non-personal data or process any form of data to infer the behavioural traits of the data principals or messaging platforms. In addition to this, the name of the message gateway entity enrolled by the messaging platform, data collected and processed by the message gateway entity should be disclosed to the data principals through the messaging platform’s privacy policy.
Licensing: There should be a certain level of restriction on licensing to create a level playing field. Applicants for message gateway entities should not have an economic interest in any messaging platforms or social media intermediaries. Applicants have to ensure that the delivery failure of the messages should be at the level of 2% to 1%. Besides, to ensure low levels of delivery failure, data protection compliance and to check other requirements, message gateway entities have to go through technical and regulatory sandbox testing before issuing a license.
Consumer Protection: Users should be given a choice to block another user (using unique identification information) for various reasons such as personal, non-personal, phishing etc. After a stipulated number of blocking by multiple users, the suspected user should be denied access (temporarily or permanently according to the reasons) to message gateway entities. Before denying access, the message gateway entities should indicate the messaging platforms to notify the user. There has to be a robust grievance redressal mechanism for users and messaging platforms to raise their complaints regarding blocking, data protection, phishing etc. Besides, unique identification information has to be leveraged to prevent bot accounts and imposters. In addition to this, message gateway entities should be compatible with measures taken by messaging platforms to prevent the spread of disinformation and misinformation (such as restrictions on the number of recipients for forward messages).

The figure below showcases the use case of the message exchange with the introduction of message gateway entities.

Source: Author’s own illustration of the process of interoperability

2.2. Portability Feature to Compliment Interoperability

In the case of messaging platforms, when we talk about portability, it is essential to differentiate it into two: (a) portability of the unique identification information of the user from one platform to other seamlessly (b) portability of the user data from one platform to other followed by the portability of unique identification information. As the generation of unique identification information is facilitated by the message gateway entities, the portability of the same has to be done by the respective messaging gateway entity. Adopting some features of process and protocols from Mobile Number Portability[19] mandated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, standard-setting council for messaging gateway entities (discussed above) should streamline the unique identification information portability process across messaging gateway entities.

Followed by the unique identification information porting, the message gateway entities should trigger a notification to the messaging platform (on behalf of the user) to transfer user data towards the requested platform. As mentioned in chapter V, section 19(1)(b) of The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, messaging platforms should transfer the user data towards the platform notified by the message gateway entity in the suggested or compatible format.

Globally since the emergence of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other legislation that mandates data portability, platforms have launched the Data Transfer Project (DTP)[20] in 2018 to create a uniform format to port data. There are three components to the DTP, of which two are crucial, i.e., Data models and Company Specific Adapter. A Data Model is a set of common formats established through legislation to enable portability; in the case of messaging platforms, the standard-setting council can come up with the Data Model.

Under Company Specific Adapter, there are Data Adapters and Authentication Adapters. The Data Adapter converts the exporter platform’s data format into the Data Model and then into the importer platform’s data format. The Authentication Adapter enables users to provide consent for the data transfer. While Company Specific Adapters under DTP are broadly for digital platforms, adopting the same framework, message gateway entities can act as both a Data Adapter and as an Authentication Adapter to enable user data portability amongst the messaging platforms. Message gateway entities can help enrolled messaging platforms in format conversion for data portability and support users' authentication process using the unique identification information. Besides, as messaging gateway entities are already uniform and interoperable, cross transfer across message gateway entities can also be made possible.

3. Profitability of Message Gateway Entities

As the message gateway entities would operate as for-profits, they may cost the messaging platform one-time enrolment fees for membership through which the member (messaging platform) can avail interoperability and portability services. The enrolment fees should be a capital cost that compensates the messaging gateway entities for enabling technical interoperability. In addition to this, message gateway entities may levy minimal yearly fees to maintain the system, customer (messaging platforms) service and grievances portal (for both users and messaging platforms). Besides, in terms of update (as per new standards) or upgradation of the system, message gateway entities may charge an additional fee to the member messaging platforms.

On the other hand, messaging platforms don’t charge[21] a monetary fee for the service because the marginal cost of providing the service is near zero, while they incur only fixed cost. Besides, nothing is free in the platform economy as we pay the messaging platforms in the form of our personal and non-personal (behavioural) data, which they sell to advertisers[22].

Therefore, messaging platforms have to consider the fee paid to the message gateway entities as part of their fixed cost such that they continue not to charge (monetary) users for the service as the cost-per-user would still be very low. Besides, messaging platforms also have economic incentives in providing interoperability as it could reduce multi-homing (i.e., when some users join or use multiple platforms simultaneously).

4. Conclusion

While breaking up Facebook and other bigger social media or messaging platforms could bring a level playing field, this process could consume a large portion of resources and time. Irrespective of a breakup, in the absence of interoperability and portability, the network effect will favour few platforms due to high switching cost, which leads to a high entry barrier.

When we text users using Short Message Service (SMS), we don't think about which carrier the recipient uses. Likewise, messaging across messaging platforms should be platform-neutral by adopting interoperability and portability features. Besides, interoperability and portability will also bring healthy competition, which would act as a lever to enhance user choice and privacy.

This also opens up questions for future research on the demand-side. We need to explore the causal effect of interoperability and portability on users to understand whether they will switch platforms when provided with port and interoperate options.

This article has been edited by Arindrajit Basu, Pallavi Bedi, Vipul Kharbanda and Aman Nair.

The author is a tech policy enthusiast. He is currently pursuing PGP in Public Policy from the Takshashila Institution. Views are personal and do not represent any organisations. The author can be reached at kameshsshekar@gmail.com

Footnotes

[1] Rodrigo, C. M., & Klar, R. (2020). 46 states and FTC file antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. Retrieved from The Hill: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/529504-state-ags-ftc-sue-facebook-alleging-anti-competitive-practices

[2] Is Facebook a monopolist? (2021). Retrieved from The Economist:https://www.economist.com/business/2021/07/03/is-facebook-a-monopolist

[3] Hughes, C. (2019). It’s Time to Break Up Facebook. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html

[4] Shekar, K. (2021). An Elephant in the Room – Recent Case of WhatsApp Fallout Amongst Indian Users. Retrieved from Takshashila Institution: https://takshashila.org.in/an-elephant-in-the-room-recent-case-of-whatsapp-fallout-amongst-indian-users/

[5] Manur, A. (2018). How to Regulate Internet Platforms Without Breaking them . Retrieved from AsiaGlobal Online: https://www.asiaglobalonline.hku.hk/regulate-internet-platforms-antitrust-competition/

[6] Ibid

[7] Nègre, A. (2021). How Can Funders Promote Interoperable Payments? Retrieved from CGAP Blog: https://www.cgap.org/blog/how-can-funders-promote-interoperable-payments;

Cook, W. (2017). Rules of the Road: Interoperability and Governance. Retrieved from CGAP Blog: https://www.cgap.org/blog/rules-road-interoperability-and-governance

[8] Punjabi, A., & Ojha, S. (n.d.). PPI Interoperability: A roadmap to seamless payments infrastructure. Retrieved from PWC: https://www.pwc.in/consulting/financial-services/fintech/payments/ppi-interoperability.html

[9] Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act) . (n.d.). Retrieved from European Union: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?qid=1608117147218&uri=COM%3A2020%3A825%3AFIN

[10] European Electronic Communications Code (EECC). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/339a9-european-electronic-communications-code-eecc/

[11] Stigler Center News Stigler Committee on Digital Platforms: Final Report. (n.d.). Retrieved from Chicago Booth: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/news-and-media/committee-on-digital-platforms-final-report

[12] Brown, I. (n.d.). Interoperability as a tool for competition regulation. CyberBRICS.

[13] Facebook is hard at work to merge its family of messaging apps: Zuckerberg. (2020). Retrieved from Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/facebook-is-hard-at-work-to-merge-its-family-of-messaging-apps-zuckerberg-120103000470_1.html

[14]Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/Intermediary_Guidelines_and_Digital_Media_Ethics_Code_Rules-2021.pdf

[15] Menn, Joseph. 2021. "WhatsApp sues Indian government over new privacy rules - sources." Reuters. Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/exclusive-whatsapp-sues-india-govt-says-new-media-rules-mean-end-privacy-sources-2021-05-26/

[16] Raghavan, M. (2021). India’s New Intermediary & Digital Media Rules: Expanding the Boundaries of Executive Power in Digital Regulation. Retrieved from Future of Privacy Forum:https://fpf.org/blog/indias-new-intermediary-digital-media-rules-expanding-the-boundaries-of-executive-power-in-digital-regulation/

[17]Net Neutrality. (n.d.). Retrieved from Department of Telecommunications: https://dot.gov.in/net-neutrality;

Parsheera, S. (n.d.). Net Neutrality In India: From Rules To Enforcement. Retrieved from Medianama: https://www.medianama.com/2020/05/223-net-neutrality-india-rules-enforcement/

[18]The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://164.100.47.4/BillsTexts/LSBillTexts/Asintroduced/373_2019_LS_Eng.pdf

[19] Consultation Paper on Review of Interconnection Usage Charges, 2019. TRAI.

Mobile Number Portability. (n.d.). Retrieved from TRAI: https://www.trai.gov.in/faqcategory/mobile-number-portability

[20] Data Transfer Project. (2018). Retrieved from https://datatransferproject.dev

[21] Aulakh, G. (n.d.). How messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat can make money while offering free texting and calling. Retrieved from Economic Times: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/how-messaging-apps-like-whatsapp-wechat-can-make-money-while-offering-free-texting-and-calling/articleshow/62666227.cms

[22] (2019). Report of the Competition Law Review Committee. Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

Bibliography

Master Direction on Issuance and Operation of Prepaid Payment Instruments. (n.d.). Retrieved from Reserve Bank of India: https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_ViewMasDirections.aspx?id=11142
Privacy Without Monopoly: Data Protection and Interoperability. (2021). Retrieved from Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy
Sullivan, M. (2021). How interoperability could end Facebook’s death grip on social media. Retrieved from Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/90609208/social-networking-interoperability-facebook-antitrust
Tinworth, A. (n.d.). Why Messenger Interoperability is a digital canary in the coal mine. Retrieved from NEXT: https://nextconf.eu/2019/06/why-messenger-interoperability-is-a-digital-canary-in-the-coal-mine/#gref

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/interoperability-and-portability-as-a-lever-to-enhance-user-choice-and-privacy-in-messaging-platforms

Internet users fume as govt blocks 32 sites

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T13:46:25Z

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has ordered Internet service providers to block 32 websites, in cluding popular video-sharing plat forms such as Dailymotion and Vimeo, reportedly over concerns that they are being misused by Islamic State jihadists.

The article by Jaison Lewis was published in Mumbai Mirror on January 1, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

The ban has angered free-speech proponents who allege that the Narendra Modi government is using national security as a pretext to censor online content. On Wednesday, tweets criticising the restrictions were trending on #GOIBlocks. Senior lawyer Karuna Nandy said that she would challenge the DoT order in the Supreme Court.

Apart from Dailymotion and Vimeo, Internet service providers have also been ordered to block Github and Pastebin, which are popular among programmers; Weebly, a free website creator; and Archive.org, a non-profit digital library.

Some Internet users, however, were able to access some of the sites. This could be because their Internet service providers have not yet implemented the DoT order or because the government has lifted restrictions on some web addresses, according to activists monitoring the blockage of the websites.

The order was issued under Section 69A (procedure for blocking public access) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The section allows authorities to block websites without giving any formal reason or making any public announcement.

However, Arvind Gupta, BJP's national head for information and technology, tweeted that the sites had been blocked over security concerns. "The Web sites have been blocked based on an advisory by Anti-Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS.The sites that have removed objectionable content andor cooperated with the ongoing investigations, are being unblocked," he wrote.

Gupta, however, did not explain how the sites were being misused by terrorists. Some of the sites are mostly frequented by programmers looking for open-source software and codes.

Nandy, a Supreme Court lawyer who specialises in human rights litigations, criticised the ban. "I will challenge the order in the Su preme Court this week. I will seek directions to lift the secrecy surrounding such bans and also request for a right to appeal," she said.

She added that censoring the Internet was against the idea of free expression guaranteed under the Constitution. "Such steps are not good for a healthy society," she said.

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society and one of the most vocal opponents of the blockage, said that the people had the right to know why the websites had been blocked.

"We still don't know why these blocks were issued: was it an overzealous copyright lawyer who found an indulgent judge to issue an overbroad and baseless order? Or was it a public servant who wrongly directed the Department of Electronics and IT to block the sites under the IT Act? We have no idea," said Prakash, who tweeted a picture of the DoT order on Wednesday.

He added that websites were frequently blocked without clear evidence of wrongdoing. "These laws must be changed," Prakash said.

Internet users also voiced their anger over the DoT order. "This only proves ATS is an idiot. If terrorists use buses, phones & Whatspp, you'll block whole system? #GOIBlocks," Poonam Sharma tweeted.

Some users retweeted a Modi post from August 2012: "As a common man, I join the protest against crackdown on freedom of speech!"

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mumbai-mirror-jaison-lewis-jan-1-2015-internet-users-fume-as-govt-blocks-32-sites

Internet Freedom

Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — 2016-02-15T02:51:10Z

The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom.

The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by Asian Age on February 14, 2016.

What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.

Possible impact on elections

Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.

What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.

Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?

In times of disasters

Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.

This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.

Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.

Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.

During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.

Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.

Content and carriage converge

Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

What is Net neutrality?

According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.

2006: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholdersFeb. 2012: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway
July 2012: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.
August 2012: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent
Feb. 2013: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype
June 2013: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data
Feb. 2014: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated
August 2014: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government
Nov. 2014: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates
Dec. 2014: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.
Feb. 2015: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app
March 2015: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback
April 2015: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news
April 2015: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country
23 April 2015: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators
27 April 2015: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm
Sept. 2015: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public
Feb. 2016: Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.

The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom

International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice (IV)

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T09:05:40Z

Building on the workshop in Dagstuhl in June-July 2011 (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice), Beijing (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice II), and Athens (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice III) that set the stage for discussions on cryptography among a group of key researchers from Europe, Asia, and North America, the one day workshop in Bangalore, following AsiaCrypt 2013 will again bring together internationally recognized scientists to discuss direction and development in theoretical and applied cryptography and surrounding societal issues.

There will be four focus areas:

Real-life cryptography
Standardization
Regulatory requirements
Innovative use cases for cryptography

Each focus area will be anchored in an invited talk and/or panel, but the emphasis will be on discussion. The participants will address broad research directions in encryption and secure computation and their applications in cloud computing, smart grid, mobile and embedded computing, hardware, software, and network security. They will also examine non-technical issues surrounding deployment and adoption of new security technologies using encryption, such as privacy or economic consideration. Approaches and projects in different countries will be discussed, in order to increase awareness of the R&D activities internationally and continue to for a strong community of research and practice and in order to generate new ideas in this field.

Although the workshop will cover a broad spectrum of issues from the list presented below with a specific focus that will be announced shortly. The topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following subjects:

Secret versus public ciphers
Cipher and algorithm development process
Algorithms maturity and review
Lightweight cryptography
New requirements for cryptography for novel applications
Cipher implementation and interoperability
Standardization
Regulatory initiatives
Privacy enhancing cryptography

8:15 a.m.	Registration
8:30 a.m.	Opening statement (Organizers)
8:40 a.m.	Opening keynote (TBD)
9:10 a.m.	Panel 1 and discussion: Advances in cryptography; new use cases, Participants: Dan Bernstein (University of Illinois at Chicago), Tanja Lange (Eindhoven), Veni Madhavan (ERNET), others TBD
10.30 a.m.	Coffee break
11.00 a.m.	Panel II and discussion: Regulatory environment and standardization: Sunil Abraham (India CIS), Kazue Sako (NEC), Claire Vishik (Intel), others TBD
12.30 a.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m.	Panel 3 and discussion: Implementation and interoperability for new environments (e.g., smart grid, Internet of things): Reji Kumar (Smart Grid India), other TBD
3.00 p.m.	Coffee break
3.30 p.m.	Panel IV and discussion: Privacy, social networking, ubiquitous connectivity and cryptography: Rene Peralta (NIST), Kumar Ranganathan, others TBD
5.00 p.m.	Thoughts and next workshop
5.20 p.m.	Closing statements (Organizers)
5.30 p.m.	Adjourn

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/international-view-of-state-of-the-art-of-cryptography-and-security-and-its-use-in-practice

Indians Ask: Is Visiting a Torrent Site Really A Crime?

subha — 2016-09-06T14:09:26Z

India has banned various large-scale torrent sites for a long time — this is old news. But under a new federal policy in India, one can be jailed for three years and fined 300,000 Indian Rupees (~US $4464) for downloading content on any of these blocked websites.

The blog post was first published in Global Voices on September 5, 2016.

Netizens who regularly use these and similar services have become anxious about what the rule may mean for them. Last week, a new legal notice concerning copyright violations sparked widespread rumors that users could be penalized for simply viewing torrent sites.

The notice now appears when one visits any of the banned websites. It reads:

This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto Rs. 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at urlblock@tatacommunications.com who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance.

Soon after news of the notice began to circulate, the Chennai High Court – one of the oldest courts in India — issued a John Doe order to block as many as 830 websites, including several torrent websites such as thepiratebay.se, torrenthound.com, and kickasstorrents.come.in.

Indian tech news portal Medianama published a blog post arguing that it is the downloading of pirated content from certain banned websites and not accessing those website that should lead to the legal issues. The problem, it seems, lies in the poor wording of the notice. Medianama described this as “bizarre by any rational standard” and noted that, taken literally, it does not comply with the Indian Copyright Act. Digital piracy legislation in India has been modified quite a lot in the recent times in general and over last five years in particular (Sections 63, 63A and 65 of the Indian Copyright Act of 1957 in particular.) But it has not been implemented with such force in the past.	What is a torrent? A torrent is part of a system that enables peer-to-peer file sharing (“P2P”) that is used to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet. Known as BitTorrent, this file distribution system is one of the most common technical protocols for transferring large files, such as digital audio files containing TV shows or video clips or digital audio files containing songs. Within this system, files labeled with the .torrent extension contain meta data about files — e.g. file names, their sizes, folder structure and cryptographic hash value for integrity verification. They do not contain the content to be distributed, but without them, the system does not work. (via Wikipedia)

This is not the first time India has put a blanket ban on such sites. In December 2014, 32 websites — including including code repository Github, video streaming sites Vimeo and Dailymotion, online archive Internet Archive, free software hosting site Sourceforge — were banned in India. They were later unblocked after agreeing to remove some ISIS-related content.

As they have in the past, tech-savvy netizens began suggesting hacks to mask or fake one's IP address. Sumiteshwar Choudhary, a practicing criminal and matrimony lawyer, described on Quora how the law had existed for quite some time but the government had never fully enforced it:

[..] The only reason that India has not been able to successfully ban these services is because the servers rest outside India and we don’t have any law to extend our jurisdiction to that extent today. As an end user if you download a pirated version of things you are not entitled to, you can be booked criminally under this Act and can face prison for up to 2 years…

Twitter user Prisma Mama Thakur criticized the ban, arguing that it should be a low priority in a moment when India has many other important problems to solve:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-september-5-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-indians-ask-is-visiting-a-torrent-site-really-a-crime