Centre for Internet and Society

Books shut by law blinkers

radha — 2011-04-02T14:20:16Z

An article in The Telegraph (Kolkata) by Chandrima S Bhattacharya - 6th December, 2009

Imagine a life without books. Try to imagine it, really, said Moiz Tundawala, a student at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS). He cannot read: he has lost his eyesight slowly over the years. He can only distinguish between light and dark now. But he is one of the toppers in his class and he initiated the meeting on the “Right to Read” campaign at the NUJS last month.

The campaign aims to amend the Indian copyright law, so that Moiz and millions like him in the country have far greater access to books. Now Moiz uses JAWS, a software that reads out the text from a computer screen. Sruti Disability Rights Centre, Calcutta, organised the programme that was hosted by the NUJS and launched “Right to Read” campaign in Calcutta, after The Centre for Internet and Society from Bangalore had launched it in Chennai.

Technology has helped the visually impaired tremendously over the past decade or so. But not enough, certainly not enough people in India, which is home to the world’s largest number of blind people.

Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are Indians. One problem India faces is that such software is expensive. JAWS costs Rs 50,000 for every user. It is difficult for most to afford the software. So most use demo versions. The price also encourages piracy. And when the text is read out in English, since the software often comes from the US, the voice uses an American accent, said S.B. Patnaik, the principal of the Blind Boys’ Academy, Narendrapur, part of a panel that discussed technology as an aid to the visually impaired at the NUJS event. Many Indians find that accent difficult to follow.

The biggest problem is access to Indian texts. The Indian copyright law does not allow the conversion of all texts into formats accessible to the blind, such as in large print, audio, Braille or any electronic format. Nirmita Narasimhan of the Centre for Internet and Society said only a small percentage of Indian texts are now accessible to the visually impaired.
With her was Rahul Cherian of eBookbole, a website that encourages visually impaired and print-disabled people to connect and share books that have been converted into an accessible format.

The amendment of the copyright law is additionally important since India has already ratified the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

The UN convention broadens the definition of accessibility for disabled persons considerably compared with its definition in Indian law. The activists are also demanding a change in the Persons with Disabilities Act, which defines access only in terms of built-in environment. They want to extend the definition of access, by taking it beyond the purely physical.
The UN convention extends the idea of access to many freedoms, and not only access to information, but to freedom of speech and expression and the right to culture and the right to leisure. In other words, it requires the written word to be fully available to the visually impaired, in whatever format the user is friendly with.

“India is under the obligation to implement the UN convention, since it has ratified it,” said Rukmini Sen, who teaches at the NUJS and was part of the panel.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/books-shut-by-law-blinkers

Books at a Click

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:52:06Z

The OdiaWikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make rare science books available online for readers, students & science educators.

The article by Diana Sahu was published in the New Indian Express on January 9, 2016.

Readers can now access rare science books in Odia language at Odia Wikisource, an online library of popular books in the language. The Odia Wikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to make these books available online for readers, students and science educators. This apart, books of Sahitya Akademi award winning writer Jagannath Prasad Das have been added to the library. Srujanika's co-founder Puspashree Pattnaik recently provided 700 popular science books that were published by the organisation to the Wikimedia community for digitisation. “These books were appreciated by many and even in demand after going out of print. Hence, we thought if these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population. Wikipedia contributors can use these as resources and enhance science content in Odia Wikipedia as well", says Puspashree, a former teacher. She along with her husband Nikhil Pattnaik, a former scientist with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, had published several science books as part of their project to popularise the subject among children. With support from Vigyan Prasar in New Delhi, the couple had also documented rare works of science published in books, magazines, periodicals and newspapers from 1850 to 1950 in electronic format, a few years back. Around science 765 articles written over a century have been put on CDs and DVDs according to the names of authors and year of publication. The science books have been digitised by volunteers of the Odia Wikimedia community and the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit working for supporting Indian language Wikipedia projects and the communities.

Pushpashree Pattnaik

Similarly, the Wikimedia community has re-licensed 30 books of Das under a free license CC-by-SA 4.0. His books can now be accessed at https://orwikisource.org and anyone can use them for academic or research work. “My tryst with internet started very late. I was introduced to digital books through Srujanika's online version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha - comprising 9,500 pages in seven volumes- which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how convenient it would be to have Odia books avail. able on the internet. As a beginning. I decided to put my own writings on the internet", said Das. Prior to Das, eminent writers and litterateurs Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Manoj Panda, Subrat Prusty, Bharat Majhi and organisations like 'Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa' and Aama Odisha' had come forward to make their books available online for free using Odia Wikisource as a platform. At present, Odia Wikisource has 280 Odia books and all are either under Public Domain or Creative Commons Share Alike licences. A team of 10 active contributors, known as "Uikiali' in Odia, are digitising books of various genres ranging from science writing, fiction to 0dia classics. “Apart from the science writ. ings, we are also working on digitising the biography of Nandini Satpathy which has been published by Ashisa Ranjan Mohapatra of Srimati Nandini Satpathy Memorial Trust,” says Mrutyunjaya Kar, administrator of Odia Wikisource and Odia Wikipedia who has been contributing to the Wikimedia projects in Odia, Hindi, Sanskrit and English for the last four years. Odia Wikisource is a sister project of Odia Wikipedia.

These books were appreciated by many and going out of print. If these can be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population.
Pushpashree Pattnaik

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/new-indian-express-january-9-2016-diana-sahu-books-at-a-click

Books are a bridge between generations

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T09:27:05Z

Kannada litterateurs stressed on the importance of books and cultivating the habit of reading on the occasion of ‘World Book Day’ on Wednesday.

The article was published in the Deccan Herald on April 23, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker on the occasion.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, writer Narahalli Balasubramanya said “We should ensure children emulate great minds if we want them to be responsible citizens. This is possible only if we make them read good books.

Today, we are increasingly finding ourselves in the company of corrupt people. It is through books that we can interact with great literary figures such as Bendre and Kuvempu.”

The event was jointly organised by Karnataka Publishers Association, Kendra Sahitya Akademi, Karnataka Lekhakiyara Sangha and Indian Institute of World Culture.

Balasubramanya maintained that the Kendra Sahitya Academy sold books at affordable rates and also gave a funding of Rs 400 crore to the book publishers, annually. “But not many people are aware of books entering market and the works don’t reach people,” he added.

A series of Kannada works written by authors were released on the occasion. Writer Dr Siddalingaiah who released the books said “Books are bridges between our minds and our ancestors’ minds. Every home should have a small library.”

‘Pustaka Bhagya’

“The State government has introduced Anna Bhagya, Ksheera Bhagya and other schemes. Similarly, they should also implement Pustaka Bhagya,” said M V Nagaraj Rao of Shrungara Prakashana.

Technical writer in Kannada U B Pavanaja maintained that in Kannada Wikipedia there was dearth of information on Kannada literary works. “There is enough information about English works but not on Kannada novels and literary publications. The Kannada publishers should strive to feed information and synopsis of each work into the Kannada wikipedia,” he added.

Public Library Department celebrated the occasion by holding a book exhibition and essay competition for children at City Central Library premises on Wednesday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-23-2014-books-are-a-bridge-between-generations

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons

subha — 2014-05-28T06:29:57Z

This blog post is cross-posted from Opensource.com. It was published on May 2, 2014.

Image by opensource.com

I began working with the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2012 for program and community support in India. With the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program, we focus on open access for scholarly publications to help communities enrich Wikipedia entries for Indic languages.

While I was negotiating with a few authors to relicense their copyrighted books to a Creative Commons license (a license that allows anyone to reuse, modify and use content), I began identifying certain areas of motivation for an author to donate their work as free content.

We worked closely with Goa University, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, and the Institute of Odia Studies and Research.

Increasing open access for publications gained a lot when the government of India launched the National Repository of Open Educational Resources in August 2013 by the request of Wikimedia India. It generally takes a long time and much effort to negotiate with copyright holders for relicensing material as Creative Commons. But, when we do negotiate it, and win, the content is a permanent and valuable addition to open knowledge and the movement.

So far, authors might be avoiding open licensing because:

They think it might put them out of business because others could plagiarize and republish their work without attribution.
They think if they will lose ownership of the content due to the nature of open licenses, which allow reuse.

Open licensing should be important to authors because as more readers and reviewers get access to their books and other online content, the visibility of their work increases, allowing them to gain more respect and popularity. This can, in turn, help authors sell more of the reprints.

The "one book in every child's hand" campaign by Pratham Books was an initiative by a large publisher to license Indian langage books with a CC BY-SA license. The campaign's mission was to provide access to knowledge and good quality education of native Indian languages to students whose families cannot bear educational costs. Pratham Books gained a lot of attention globally and the campaign proved to be a sustainable model for publishers and free licenses.

Scholarly research publications are less prone to plagiarism because of their low retail value compared to mainstream fiction, self-help books, or travel and lifestyle books. Encyclopedic books have even less retail value. Thus, releasing content online under free licenses would not affect such scholarly works or encyclopedic print publications to a large extent.

Photo by Veethika Mishra, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Relicensing projects

Last year, Goa University applied a CC BY-SA 3.0 license to their four-volume encyclopedia, Konkani Vishwakosh. It is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource, attracting new volunteers.
Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa relicensed eleven of the noted author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty's Odia books under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Classical Odia is a 600+ page book of historical documents and manuscripts on Odia language and literary heritage of more than 2,500 years. The researchers Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty moved from copyright to a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty have been relicensed to CC BY-SA 3.0. They are Jati, Jagruti O Pragati, and Bhasa O Jatiyata and have been digitized as well using ISCII standard fonts (not Unicode). ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters.
A recent addition is the relicensing of the Kannada language encyclopedia published and copyrighted by Mysore University to a Creative Commons license.

The community and the publishers of books gain mutual benefits when more Indic language books are digitized, put online, and made freely available. By expanding online content and readership, a new life is given to many South Asian and non-Latin works, creating a revival for these languages and cultures.

Read the original post here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-education-may-2-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-books-and-more-are-relicensed-to-creative-commons

books

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T09:00:58Z

Books

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Book Stack

radha — 2009-09-18T09:56:25Z

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Book Review: Apocalypse Now Redux

nishant — 2016-08-06T04:16:07Z

My review for Arundhati Roy and John Cusack's new book that captures their encounter with Edward Snowden, 'Things that can and cannot be said' is now out. It's an engaging, if somewhat freewheeling, political critique of the times we live in.

The review was published in the Indian Express on August 6, 2016.

Book: Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
Authors: Arundhati Roy & John Cusack
Publication: Juggernaut
Pages: 132
Price: Rs 250

The title of the book — Things That Can and Cannot be Said — demands an imperative. It is as if Arundhati Roy and John Cusack, aware of their internal turmoil in dealing with a world that is rapidly becoming unintelligible, though not incomprehensible, are demanding an order where none exists. Hence, they are advocating for certainty and assurance, only to undermine it, ironically, through their own freely associative writing that mimics linear time and causative narrative. This deep-seated irony of needing to say something, but knowing that saying it is not going to shine a divining light on the sordid realities of the world that is being managed through the production of grand structures like valorous nation states, virtuous civil societies, the obsequious NGO-isation of radical action, and the persistent neutering of justice through the benign vocabulary of human rights, defines the oeuvre, the politics and the poetics of the book. Written like a scrap book, filled with excerpts from long conversations scattered over time and space, annotated by reminiscences of books read long ago that have seared their imprints on the mind, and events that are simultaneously platitudinous for their status as global landmarks and fiercely personal for the scars that they have left on the minds of the authors, the book remains an engaging, if a somewhat freewheeling, ride into a political critique that makes itself all the more palatable and disconcerting for the levity, irreverence and the dark sense of humour that accompanies it.

Composed in alternating chapters, the first half of the book is about Cusack and Roy laying themselves bare. They spare no words, square no edges, and put their personal, political and collective wounds on display with humble pride and proud humility. Cusack’s experience as a screenplay writer comes in handy — he rescues what could have been a long tirade, into a series of conversations. The familiar narratives are rehistoricised and de-territorialised, put into new contexts while eschewing the older ones, thus providing a large landscape that refers to state-sponsored genocide, structural reorganisation of nation states, the dying edge of political action, the overwhelming but invisible presence of capital, and the dithering state of social justice that treats human beings like things. Cusack, identifying the poetic genius of Roy, gives her centre stage, making her the voice in command.

Roy, for her part, seems to have enjoyed this moment in the soapbox — something that she has been doing quite effectively and provocatively to a national and global audience — and gives it her all. There are moments when the text feels indulgent, when the voice feels a little relentless, when the almost schizophrenic global and historical references become a litany of mixed-up events that might have required further nuance and deeper interpretation. However, the whimsical style of Roy’s narrative, with her sense of what is right, and her demeanour that remains friendly, curious and disarming, saves the text from being heavy handed, even when it does dissolve into cloying poignancy and makes you pause, just so that you can breathe.

Surprisingly, it is the second part of the book, where the two encounter Edward Snowden along with Daniel Ellsberg, the “Snowden of the 1960s” who had leaked the Pentagon papers, that falters. Snowden had jocularly mentioned that Roy was there to “radicalise him”. She does that, but in a way that doesn’t give us anything more than what we already know. While Cusack and Roy were committed to getting to know Snowden beyond his systems-man image, there wasn’t much that they could uncover, either in dialogue or in discourse, that could have told us more, endeared us further to possibly the most over-exposed person in recent times. However, one realises that the genius of the narrative is actually in reminding us how transparent Edward Snowden has become to us. We know all kinds of things about this young man — from his girlfriends past to his actions future, from his values and convictions to his opinion on the NSA watching people’s naked pictures — and yet, what has been missing in the Snowden files, has been the larger arc of global politics, social reordering, and perhaps, a glimpse of the post-nation future that Snowden might have seen in his act of whistleblowing that is going to remain the landmark moment that defines the rest of this century.

Once you have gotten over the fact that this is not a book about Snowden, the expectations are better tailored for what is to come, and suddenly, the long prelude to the meeting falls into place. Snowden matches Roy and Cusack in whimsy, irony, political conviction, and the sacred faith in human values that make you want to give them all a fierce hug of hesitant reassurance. What Snowden says, what Roy and Cusack make of it, and how they leave us, almost abruptly at the end, breathless, unnerved, and severely conflicted about some of the 20th century structures like society, activism, nation states, governance, communication, technologies, sharing and caring is what the book has to be read for. The tight screen-writing skills of Cusack meet the perfect timing of Roy’s prose, and all of it becomes surreal, futuristic and indelibly real when it gets anchored on the physical presence of Snowden, who, in exile, talks achingly of the home that has thrown him out and the home that he can never really call his own.

And while there are lapses — fragments, translations and evocations which might have needed more explanations to have their pedagogic intent shine through — there is no denying that, in all its flaws, much like the narrators, the book manages to first immerse you in the cold shock of a sobering reality, clearly positioning the apocalypse as the now, and then drags you out and wraps you up in a warm blanket, opening up forms of critique, formats of intervention, and functions of political commitment towards saying things that have and have not been said. The book should have, perhaps, been titled what could, would, should have been said, but can’t, won’t, shan’t be said — not because of anything else, but because it seems futile.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-august-6-2016-book-review-apocalypse-now-redux

Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2011-09-15T14:47:04Z

In Book 4, To Connect of the Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? series, we try to understand digital natives through their environment. Digital natives do not operate in a vacuum, their actions are shaped by the fast changing geo-political landscape, interaction with other actors and the global architecture of technology. In our Digital Natives with a Cause? research, it has become clear that at the heart of all digital natives discourse lies the question of power. Along with power, questions of race, class, gender and socio-economic situation cannot be ignored when talking about digital natives. We found that on one hand digital natives are destabilising existing power structures and challenging the status quo. On the other, the geo-political context in which digital natives live, affect their activities, beliefs and opinions. Then there are actors that can destroy, influence or support digital native activity which give rise to questions of control that resonate within this new generation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook4

Book 3: To Act : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2011-09-15T14:40:51Z

In Book 3 of the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? collective, we enter into dialogue with some of the severest and most heated debates around digital natives and their ability to effect change. To Act collides with the discourse on young people’s ability and role in technology mediated processes of change, heads-on. It deliberates on some very dense questions about how digital natives execute their visions of change using new forms of mobilisation of resources and sharing/production of information.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook3

Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2011-09-15T14:35:43Z

We started the Digital Natives with a Cause? Knowledge programme, with a series of questions, which were drawn from popular discourse, research, practice, policy and experiences of people engaging with questions of youth, technology and change. Our ambition was to consolidate existing knowledge and to look at knowledge gaps which can be addressed in order to build new frameworks to understand the role that digital natives see themselves playing in their own understanding and vision of change. This Book 2 To Think, takes up the challenge of constructing new approaches and each essay in this book, through case-studies, analyses and divergent perspectives, offers a novel way of understanding processes of technology mediated citizen-driven change.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook2

Book 1: To Be, Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2015-05-15T12:08:32Z

In this first book of the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Collection, we concentrate on what it means to be a Digital Native. Within popular scholarship and discourse, it is presumed that digital natives are born digital. Ranging from Mark Prensky’s original conception of the identity which marked all people born after 1980 as Digital Natives to John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s more nuanced understanding of specific young people in certain parts of the world as ‘Born Digital’, there remains a presumption that the young peoples’ relationship with technology is automatic and natural. In particular, the idea of being ‘born digital’ signifies that there are people who, at a visceral, unlearned level, respond to digital technologies. This idea of being born digital hides the complex mechanics of infrastructure, access, affordability, learning, education, language, gender, etc. that play a significant role in determining who gets to become a digital native and how s/he achieves it. In this book, we explore what it means to be a digital native in emerging information societies. The different contributions in this book posit what it means to be a digital native in different parts of the world. However, none of the contribution accepts the name ‘Digital Native’ as a given. Instead, the different authors demonstrate how there can be no one singular definition of a Digital Native. In fact, they show how, contextualised, historical, socially embedded, politically nuanced understanding of people’s interaction with technology provide a better insight into how one becomes a digital native.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook1

Bombay Report

praskrishna — 2014-07-18T06:03:48Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bombay-report.pdf

Bolstering right to remain private

praskrishna — 2012-10-29T09:00:13Z

The Justice AP Shah panel has done to well to lay down an enforceable roadmap that can strengthen privacy laws in the country. It’s now for the legislature to take the issue to a logical conclusion.

Apar Gupta's column was published in the Pioneer on October 29, 2012.

A haveli courtyard is an apt metaphor for the complexity which is involved in drafting a law on privacy. Though the courtyard gives an appearance of openness, it is limited by the walls, doors and windows which surround it. The architecture represents a mediated understanding of the options which are available to the resident in sharing and limiting information to family and strangers. A somewhat similar project is in the works with the Union Government taking steps towards the enactment of a privacy law.

Privacy law as it is understood at present is usually limited to the odd writ petition filed against the Government by a private individual seeking enforcement of a fundamental right to privacy. Recently, such adjudication has been limited to high-profile individuals, and where there is wide voyeuristic interest. For instance, two recent petitioners include industrialist Ratan Tata and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh. Here, it is important to stress that with the state gathering more and more data about individuals through the Unique Identification Authority of India scheme, there is a need to democratise the right by making legal provisions for its enforcement. In making such provisions a balance has to be maintained, where information which serves public interest or gathered through informed consent is not encumbered in the name of protecting individual privacy.

To find this balance, the Government late last year tasked a Committee of Experts chaired by Justice AP Shah to prepare a report on the Privacy Bill. Readers would recall that Justice Shah had authored a judgement which read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, decriminalising homosexual activity. A closer reading of the judgement shows the reliance placed by the court on the privacy right and to reach its determination. With such credentials, the Justice Shah Committee has exceeded the high expectations placed on it, presenting a fair and balanced approach towards a privacy law in India.

At the very outset the report clearly marks its objectives, from which it then commences to study judicial precedent on privacy as well as the experience of foreign jurisdictions. On the basis of this study, it has evolved nine privacy principles which encompass within it distinct aspects of individual privacy. Such a nuanced approach to privacy is certainly welcome given that privacy as a right is often subjective, varying drastically in its appreciation as per civil society, private industry and even Government itself.

Beyond the specific aspects of the privacy right, the report extends the right both to Government as well as private industry. This is a sign of the times, best put by Pranesh Prakash, policy director, Centre for Internet and Society, when he says that citizens reveal more data about themselves to social networking websites than they would to the Government under torture!

Another significant aspect is the proposed co-regulatory regime which the report suggests. And, experience has taught us that a right without an effective remedy to enforce it counts for a little more than a black letter on paper. In this respect, the report proposes a sectoral regulator which has supervision over State level privacy commissioners. In addition to this, the report also proposes a system of self-regulation where industry-specific standards may be proposed and then sanctioned by the privacy commissioners. However, contrary to the present approach of tribunalisation, the report suggests that recourse to civil courts for aggrieved persons should always be kept open.

Though the origins of the privacy rights may be antiquated, widespread consensus suggests that the modern practice and substance of privacy law owes its beginning to an article published in the fourth volume of the Harvard Law Review. The article, authored by Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren drawing a physical justification for what seemed like a novelty back then, stated that the law regarded a man’s house as his castle.

Sadly, the right has not seen a proper development in India, mainly due to the absence of an overarching legislation as well as a lack of understanding of its proper contours. At least in this respect, the report marks a significant development in the drafting of a comprehensive privacy legislation in India. A haveli, a house or a castle — the Justice Shah panel has provided a useful blueprint to the legislature to build an effective and balanced statute to safeguard individual privacy.

(The writer is a partner in a Delhi-based law firm and visiting faculty at the National Law University, Delhi)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/daily-pioneer-columnists-oct-29-2012-apar-gupta-bolstering-right-to-remain-private

bollywood

praskrishna — 2012-04-10T09:00:33Z

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Bodhisattwa

praskrishna — 2019-09-22T23:43:27Z

Bodhisattwa

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