Centre for Internet and Society

Online Pre-Censorship is Harmful and Impractical

pranesh — 2011-12-12T17:00:50Z

The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal wants Internet intermediaries to pre-censor content uploaded by their users. Pranesh Prakash takes issue with this and explains why this is a problem, even if the government's heart is in the right place. Further, he points out that now is the time to take action on the draconian IT Rules which are before the Parliament.

Mr. Sibal is a knowledgeable lawyer, and according to a senior lawyer friend of his with whom I spoke yesterday, greatly committed to ideals of freedom of speech. He would not lightly propose regulations that contravene Article 19(1)(a) [freedom of speech and expression] of our Constitution. Yet his recent proposals regarding controlling online speech seem unreasonable. My conclusion is that the minister has not properly grasped the way the Web works, is frustrated because of the arrogance of companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. And while he has his heart in the right place, his lack of knowledge of the Internet is leading him astray. The more important concern is the IT Rules that have been in force since April 2011.

Background

The New York Times scooped a story on Monday revealing that Mr. Sibal and the MCIT had been in touch with Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, asking them to set up a system whereby they would manually filter user-generated content before it is published, to ensure that objectionable speech does not get published. Specifically, he mentioned content that hurt people's religious sentiments and content that Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor described as 'vile' and capable of inciting riots as being problems. Lastly, Mr. Sibal defended this as not being "censorship" by the government, but "supervision" of user-generated content by the companies themselves.

Concerns

One need not give lectures on the benefits of free speech, and Mr. Sibal is clear that he does not wish to impinge upon it. So one need not point out that freedom of speech means nothing if not the freedom to offend (as long as no harm is caused). There can, of course, be reasonable limitations on freedom of speech as provided in Article 19 of the ICCPR and in Article 19(2) of our Constitution. My problem lies elsewhere.

Secrecy

It is unfortunate that the New York Times has to be given credit for Mr. Sibal addressing a press conference on this issue (and he admitted as much). What he is proposing is not enforcement of existing rules and regulations, but of a new restriction on online speech. This should have, in a democracy, been put out for wide-ranging public consultations first.

Making intermediaries responsible

The more fundamental disagreement is that over how the question of what should not be published should be decided, and how that decision should be and how that should be carried out, and who can be held liable for unlawful speech. I believe that "to make the intermediary liable for the user violating that code would, I think, not serve the larger interests of the market." Mr. Sibal said that in May this year in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. The intermediaries (that is, all persons and companies who transmit or host content on behalf of a third party), are but messengers just like a post office and do not exercise editorial control, unlike a newspaper. (By all means prosecute Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft whenever they have created unlawful content, have exercised editorial control over unlawful content, have incited and encouraged unlawful activities, or know after a court order or the like that they are hosting illegal content and still do not remove it.) Newspapers have editors who can take responsibility for content published in the newspaper. They can afford to, because the number of articles in a newspaper is limited. YouTube, which has 48 hours of videos uploaded every minutes, cannot. One wag suggested that Mr. Sibal was not suggesting a means of censorship, but of employment generation and social welfare for censors and editors. To try and extend editorial duties to these 'intermediaries' by executive order or through 'forceful suggestions' to these companies cannot happen without amending s.79 of the Information Technology Act which ensures they are not to be held liable for their user's content: the users are. Internet speech has, to my knowledge, and to date, has never caused a riot in India. It is when it is translated into inflammatory speeches on the ground with megaphones that offensive speech, whether in books or on the Internet, actually become harmful, and those should be targeted instead. And the same laws that apply to offline speech already apply online. If such speech is inciting violence then the police can be contacted and a magistrate can take action. Indeed, Internet companies like Facebook, Google, etc., exercise self-regulation already (excessively and wrongly, I feel sometimes). Any person can flag any content on YouTube or Facebook as violating the site's terms of use. Indeed, even images of breast-feeding mothers have been removed from Facebook on the basis of such complaints. So it is mistaken to think that there is no self-regulation. In two recent cases, the High Courts of Bombay (Janhit Manch v. Union of India) and Madras (R. Karthikeyan v. Union of India) refused to direct the government and intermediaries to police online content, saying that places an excessive burden on freedom of speech.

IT Rules, 2011

In this regard, the IT Rules published in April 2011 are great offenders. While speech that is 'disparaging' (while not being defamatory) is not prohibited by any statute, yet intermediaries are required not to carry 'disparaging' speech, or speech to which the user has no right (how is this to be judged? do you have rights to the last joke that you forwarded?), or speech that promotes gambling (as the government of Sikkim does through the PlayWin lottery), and a myriad other kinds of speech that are not prohibited in print or on TV. Who is to judge whether something is 'disparaging'? The intermediary itself, on pain of being liable for prosecution if it is found have made the wrong decision. And any person may send a notice to an intermediary to 'disable' content, which has to be done within 36 hours if the intermediary doesn't want to be held liable. Worst of all, there is no requirement to inform the user whose content it is, nor to inform the public that the content is being removed. It just disappears, into a memory hole. It does not require a paranoid conspiracy theorist to see this as a grave threat to freedom of speech. Many human rights activists and lawyers have made a very strong case that the IT Rules on Intermediary Due Diligence are unconstitutional. Parliament still has an opportunity to reject these rules until the end of the 2012 budget session. Parliamentarians must act now to uphold their oaths to the Constitution.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/online-pre-censorship-harmful-impractical

Time Out Bengaluru - Software Patenting

pranesh — 2013-01-16T06:39:27Z

An article by Akhila Seetharaman published as a precursor to the national public meeting on software patents held on 4th in Bangalore.

Original article on Time Out Bengaluru website

In August this year, the US Patents and Trademarks Office granted Microsoft ownership of “page up” and “page down”. So in theory, no other company can scroll without permission and acknowledgement to Microsoft in monetary terms.

A number of seemingly ubiquitous software ideas have been patented: the use of tabs to shift from one hyperlink to another on a web page, the “Add to Shopping Cart” function that appears on every online store, automated online loan requests, and even reducing image size to make a webpage load faster.

“Most companies register defensive patents to protect themselves, not offensive ones,” said Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society. “Not many actively pursue patent infringement, but it is still very scary for a small-time entrepreneur.”

At a time when the Indian Patent Office is in the process of putting together a new Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure, the Centre for Internet and Society is holding a one-day consultation on the issue of software patenting in the city. Participants include the Delhi Science Forum, RedHat, IT for Change, Open Space, as well as the Alternative Law Forum.

From mobile phone technology to pacemakers in healthcare, everybody is dependent on software. “Each software patent is a 17-year monopoly on an idea,” said Anivar Aravind of the Free Software User Group Bangalore.

“If formulaic Hindi films were protected by patent laws, we would be able to make only one film,” joked Abraham. The system of software patenting wipes out smaller businesses and innovation, he said. “Software, like poetry and literary works, is already protected by copyright. After all, Bill Gates made his fortunes from copyright and not patents. But many software companies are trying to get additional protection.”

Copyright and patents are both part of intellectual property rights, but copyright restricts the expression of an idea while patents restrict the idea itself, according to Abraham. Under a patenting regime, even before a kid writes one line of code he has to read many patents.”

Kiran Patil of Turtle Linux Lab agreed. “If every little thing is patented, there’s nothing a developer can do.” He cited Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU (a recursive acronym for GNU’s Not Unix) Project, who likened patents to explosive devices: “Software patents are the software project’s equivalent of land mines: each design-decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.”

Worst of all, the world sees those with patents as the innovators, said Patil, which, according to him, is a big misconception.

While corporate giants like Microsoft and IBM fix exchange deals through cross-licensing, smaller companies get left out of the loop entirely. Despite not having many patents of their own, several Indian software companies support software patenting because they have huge contracts with the large software companies in the United States and Europe who do.

The Indian Patent Act of 1970 did not allow for software patents until 2002 when an amendment, which ironically excluded “computer programmes per se” from the scope of patenting, was introduced.

The amendment implied that while computer programmes themselves were not eligible for patents, programmes used in combination with hardware were. The Act was further amended through an ordinance in 2005 to narrow the scope of software excluded, but the ordinance was rejected by the Indian

Parliament and the Act effectively reverted to what it was after the 2002 amendment. “The law has left it somewhat ambiguous,” said Abraham. “Nobody is sure what can or cannot be patented. Many people are using the clause “computer programmes per se” to get pure software patents.”

This occurs either due to incompetence among patent officers or by accident, he said. “While many of the patent officers have expertise in the area of industrial inventions or medical inventions, very few know enough about software patents at the moment.”

-- Akhila Seetharaman

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/time-out-software-patenting

Screening of Partners in Crime

pranesh — 2011-09-07T11:03:46Z

Vikalp@Smriti Nandan along with Centre for Internet and Society invite you to a screening of 'Partners in Crime' by Paromita Vohra on Friday, September 9, 2011, followed by a discussion with the director.

“Come along for a rollicking trip through the grey worlds of copyright, art, and the market in a story about love, money and crime”

Vikalp@Smriti Nandan along with Centre for Internet and Society invite you to the screening of

PARTNERS IN CRIME

Directed by Paromita Vohra
Duration: 94 minutes

@ 6.30pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
@ Smriti Nandan Cultural Centre, 15/3 Palace Road (at the end of the lane opposite NGMA / Maruti temple)
For more details – 9845766808 / 9916158217

The Director will be present at the screening.

Please note that non-members of Smriti Nandan are encouraged to pay Rs. 49/- or above towards the Auditorium.

Watch the trailer and read reviews.

Synopsis

Who owns a song – the person who made it or the person who paid for it? Is piracy organized crime or class struggle? Are alternative artists who want to hold rights over their art and go it alone in the market, visionaries or nutcases? Is the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration a cop-out or a whole other way of looking at the fluid nature of authorship? When more than three fourths of those with an
internet connection download all sorts of material for free, are they living out a brand new cultural freedom – or are they criminals? Full of wicked irony, great music and thorny questions Partners in
Crime explores the grey horizons of copyright and culture in times when technology is changing the contours of the market. Metal heads who market their own music, folklorists who turn tribal aphorisms into short stories, music archivists who hoard and share everything they can get their hands on, anti-piracy fanatics who think piracy funds terrorism, a smooth talking DVD street salesman who outlines the efficiency of the illegal market, media moguls, lobbyists, “monetizers”, downloaders, uploaders, the biggest hit song of 2010 and the small time nautanki singer whose song it was inspired by – these places and people throng the world’s bazaar in which the film is set. Partners in Crime takes you through a story about art, crime, love and money to check if the times, they may be a-changing after all.

Featuring

Vijay Dandetha, Thermal and a Quarter, Lawrence Liang, Demonic Resurrection, Pete Lockett, itwofs.com, Scribe, Rampat Harami & Rani Bala, Ram Sampath, Juma Khan, Irfan of Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya, FM Gold, CDrack.in and many others.

About the Director

Paromita Vohra is a documentary filmmaker and writer based in Mumbai whose films explore issues of politics, feminism, culture and desire. Some of her celebrated films are ‘Morality TV and the Loving Jehad: A Thrilling Tale’, 'Q2P', 'Un-limited Girls', 'Where’s Sandra?', ‘Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City’ and 'A Woman’s Place'. She is also scriptwriter of 'Khamosh Pani' (directed by Sabiha Sumar) which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2003; 'A Few Things I Know About Her' (directed by Anjali Panjabi) which won the Silver Conch at the MIFF 2002; and 'Skin Deep' (directed by Reena Mohan). Her prose writing has been carried in various anthologies including Electric Feather: The Tranquebar Book of Indian Erotica, Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays and Bombay Meri Jaan, among others. She writes a weekly column in Sunday Mid-day. She is currently working on a book about love in contemporary India. Partners in Crime is her latest film. To find out more about her work you can visit www.parodevi.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/partners-in-crime

Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code

pranesh — 2012-04-08T22:53:24Z

Section 295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. 295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/section-295a-indian-penal-code

Glaring Errors in UIDAI's Rebuttal

pranesh — 2016-09-18T03:22:32Z

This response note by Pranesh Prakash questions Unique Identification Authority of India’s reply to Hans Verghese Mathews' article titled “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW, March 12, 2016), which found “serious mathematical errors” in the article.

The article was published in Economic & Political Weekly Vol. 51, Issue No. 36, September 3, 2016.

While I am not a statistician, I have followed the technical debate between Hans Verghese Mathews and the UIDAI closely, and see a number of glaring errors in the latter’s so-called rebuttal in EPW (March 12, 2016).

The UIDAI alleges Mathews to have ignored the evidence that the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) "flattens" with more factors. However, Mathews cannot be accused of ignorance if the flattening of the ROC is not relevant to his argument. To explain this in simple terms, the ROC curve is used to choose the appropriate "threshold distance" which determines false positives and false negatives, and belongs to a stage which precedes the estimation of the false positive identification rates (FPIR).

However, Mathews has used the FPIR estimates provided by the UIDAI (based on evidence from the enrolment of 84 million persons), and calculated how the FPIR changes when extrapolated for a population of 1.2 billion persons. In other words, he did not need to look at the ROC curve as that factor is not relevant to his argument, since he has used UIDAI data (which has presumably been estimated on the basis of all 12 factors : 10 fingerprints and 2 irises).

Further, UIDAI asks why Mathews has assumed a linear curve for his extrapolation. Mathews has done no such thing. In fact, in their paper "Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Enrollment," the UIDAI states: "FPIR rate grows linearly with the database size" (nd, 19). Thus, this is an assumption formerly made by them (without providing rationale for it to be a linear curve as opposed to anything else). Mathews mathematically derives bounds for the FPIR in his paper, that is, the range within which the FPIR lies. One gets a linear curve only if they use the upper bound and not on the usage of anything else. So while Mathews does, as he explains, provide the results of the calculation based on the upper bound for the sake of simplicity, he nowhere asserts nor assumes a linear curve.

If, as the UIDAI claims, one cannot perform such an extrapolation and needs to depend on “empirical evidence” instead, the question arises as to how the UIDAI decided to scale up the programme to 1.3 billion people given the error rates. One could also ask if the machines being used to capture biometrics are good enough for the enlargement. Surely they would have performed some extrapolations to decide this.

In their paper they note that "although it [FPIR] is expected to grow as the database size increases, it is not expected to exceed manageable values even at full enrolment of 120 crores" (UIDAI nd, 13). They do not illustrate the extent to which the FPIR is expected to grow—neither in their initial paper, nor in their rebuttal to Mathews—whereas Mathews provides a method of estimating the increase of FPIR. Even if UIDAI is correct in its appraisal of FPIR and that it will not exceed "manageable values," they need to either exemplify their calculations or release the latest data. They have done neither, and that is quite unfortunate.

References

UIDAI (nd): “Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Enrollment,” Unique Identification Authority of India, Government of India, New Delhi, viewed on 18 August 2016, https://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/role_of_biometric_technology

Related Links

Flaws in the UIDAI Process http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/9/special-articles/flaws-uidai-process.html
Erring on Aadhaar http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/11/discussion/erring-aadhaar.html
Request for Specifics http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/36/documents/request-specifics-rebuttal-u...
Glaring Errors in UIDAI's Rebuttal http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/36/documents/glaring-errors-uidais-rebutt...
Overlooking the UIDAI Process http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/36/documents/response-hans-verghese-mathe...

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/glaring-errors-in-uidai-rebuttal-epw

CIS Submission on CCWG-Accountability 2nd Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations

pranesh — 2015-11-23T14:58:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submitted the below to ICANN's CCWG-Accountability.

The CCWG Accountability proposal is longer than many countries' constitutions. Given that, we will keep our comments brief, addressing a very limited set of the issues in very broad terms.

Human Rights

ICANN is unique in many ways. It is a global regulator that has powers of taxation to fund its own operation. ICANN is not a mere corporation. For such a regulator, ensuring fair process (what is often referred to as "natural justice") as well as substantive human rights (such as the freedom of expression, right against discrimination, right to privacy, and cultural diversity), are important. Given this, the narrow framing of "free expression and the free flow of information" in Option 1, we believe Option 2 is preferable.

Diversity

We are glad that diversity is being recognized as an important principle. As we noted during the open floor session at ICANN49: [We are] extremely concerned about the accountability of ICANN to the global community. Due to various decisions made by the US government relating to ICANN's birth, ICANN has had a troubled history with legitimacy. While it has managed to gain and retain the confidence of the technical community, it still lacks political legitimacy due to its history. The NTIA's decision has presented us an opportunity to correct this.

However, ICANN can't hope to do so without going beyond the current ICANN community, which while nominally being 'multistakeholder' and open to all, grossly under-represents those parts of the world that aren't North America and Western Europe.

Of the 1010 ICANN-accredited registrars, 624 are from the United States, and 7 from the 54 countries of Africa. In a session yesterday, a large number of the policies that favour entrenched incumbents from richer countries were discussed. But without adequate representation from poorer countries, and adequate representation from the rest of the world's Internet population, there is no hope of changing these policies.

This is true not just of the business sector, but of all the 'stakeholders' that are part of global Internet policymaking, whether they follow the ICANN multistakeholder model or another. A look at the board members of the Internet Architecture Board, for instance, would reveal how skewed the technical community can be, whether in terms of geographic or gender diversity.

Without greater diversity within the global Internet policymaking communities, there is no hope of equity, respect for human rights — civil, political, cultural, social and economic — and democratic functioning, no matter how 'open' the processes seem to be, and no hope of ICANN accountability either.

Meanwhile, there are those who are concerned that diversity should not prevail over skill and experience. Those who have the greatest skill and experience will be those who are insiders in the ICANN system. To believe that being an insider in the ICANN system ought to be privileged over diversity is wrong. A call for diversity isn't just political correctness. It is essential for legitimacy of ICANN as a globally-representative body, and not just one where the developed world (primarily US-based persons) makes policies for the whole globe, which is what it has so far been. Of course, this cannot be corrected overnight, but it is crucial that this be a central focus of the accountability initiative.

Jurisdiction, Membership Models and Voting Rights

The Sole-Member Community Mechanism (SMCM) that has been proposed seems in large part the best manner provided under Californian law relating to public benefit corporations of dealing with accountability issues, and is the lynchpin of the whole accountability mechanism under workstream.

However, the jurisdictional analysis laid down in 11.3 will only be completed post-transition, as part of workstream. Thus the SMCM may not necessarily be the best model under a different legal jurisdiction. It would be useful to discuss the dependency between these more clearly. In this vein, it is essential that the Article XVIII Section 1 not be designated a fundamental bylaw. Further, it would be useful to add that for some limited aspects of the transition (such as IANA functioning), ICANN should seek to enter into a host country agreement to provide legal immunity, thus providing a qualification to para 125 ("ICANN accountability requires compliance with applicable legislation, in jurisdictions where it operates.") since the IANA functions operator ought not be forced by a country not to honour requests made by, for example, North Korea.

It should also be noted that accountability needs independence, which may be of two kinds: independence of financial source, and independence of appointment. From what one could gather from the CCWG proposal, the Independent Review Panel will be funded by the budget the ICANN Board prepares, while the appointment process is still unclear.

One of the most important accountability mechanisms with regard to the IANA functions is that of changing the IANA Functions Operator. As per the CWG Stewardship's current proposal, the "Post-Transition IANA" won't be an entity that is independent of ICANN. If the PTI's governance is permanently made part of ICANN's fundamental bylaws (as an affiliate controlled by ICANN), how is it proposed that the IFO be moved from PTI to some other entity if the IANA Functions Review Team so decides? Additionally, for such an important function, the composition of the IFRT should not be left unspecified.

While it is welcome that a separation is proposed between the IANA budget and budget for rest of ICANN's functioning, the current discussion around budgets seems to be based on the assumption that all IANA functions will be funded by ICANN, whereas if the IANA functions are separated, each community might fund it separately. That provides two levels of insulation to IANA functions operator(s): separate sources of operational revenue, as well as separate budgets within ICANN.

It should be noted that there have been some responses that express concern about the shifting of existing power structures within ICANN through some of the proposed alternative voting allocations in the SMCM. However, rather than present arguments as to why these shifts would be beneficial or harmful for ICANN's overall accountability, these responses seem to assume that shift from the current power structures are harmful. This is an unfounded assumption and cannot be a valid reason, nor can speculation of how the United States Congress will behave be a valid reason for rejecting an otherwise valid proposal. If there are harms, they ought to be clearly articulated: shifts from the status quo and fear of the US Congress aren't valid harms. Thus, while it is important to consider how different voting rights models might change the status quo while arriving at any judgments, that cannot be the sole criterion for judgment of its merits. Further, as the French government notes:

[T]he French Government still considers that linking Stress Test 18 to a risk of capture of ICANN by governments and NTIA’s requirement that no “government-led or intergovernmental organization solution would be acceptable”, makes no sense. . . . Logically, the risk of capture of ICANN by governments in the future is as low as it is now and in any case, it cannot lead to a “government-led or intergovernmental organization solution”.

While dealing with the question of relative voting proportions, the community must remembered that not all parts of the world are equally developed with regard to the domain name industry and with respect to civil society as those countries in North America, Western Europe, and other developed nations, and thus may not find adequate representation via the SOs. In many parts of the world, civil society organizations — especially those focussed on Internet governance and domain name policies — are non-existent. Thus a system that privileges the SOs to the exclusion of other components of a multistakeholder governance model would not be representative or diverse. A multistakeholder model cannot disproportionately represent business interests over all other interests.

In this regard, the comments of former ICANN Chairperson, Rod Beckstrom, at ICANN43 ought to be recalled:

ICANN must be able to act for the public good while placing commercial and financial interests in the appropriate context . . . How can it do this if all top leadership is from the very domain name industry it is supposed to coordinate independently?

As Kieren McCarthy points out about ICANN:

The Board does have too many conflicted members
The NomCom is full of conflicts
There are not enough independent voices within the organization

Reforms in these ought to be as crucial to accountability as the membership model.

The current mechanisms for ensuring transparency, such as the DIDP process, are wholly inadequate. We have summarized our experience with the DIDP process, and how often we were denied information on baseless grounds in this table.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-on-ccwg-accountability-2nd-draft-proposal-on-work-stream-1-recommendations

Will Indians have to pay for WhatsApp?

pranesh — 2015-08-24T02:00:56Z

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) formed a panel in January 2015 to look into net neutrality in the country.

This was originally published by BBC on July 25. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted.

Net neutrality means service providers should treat all traffic equally. Users should be able to access all websites at the same speed and cost.

A battle to decide the future of the internet in India is being fought online, between telecom users and operators.

The panel has now released its report to the public and invited comments. Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet Studies decodes the report and what it means for Indians.

What does the panel say?

Internet-based Over-the-top (OTT) communication services like WhatsApp, Viber, and the like are currently taking advantage of "regulatory arbitrage", meaning that the regulations that apply to non-Internet based communications services (telephone calls) are different from OTT communications services.

Under current rules, the OTT services don't have to get a licence from the government, don't have to abide by anti-spam, do-not-disturb regulations, share any revenue with the government or abide by national security conditions. The panel wants to bring these services under a licensing regime.

The report distinguishes between Internet-based voice calls (voice over IP, or VoIP) and messaging services and doesn't wish to interfere with the latter. This means it could regulate services like Skype, Viber and WhatsApp calls but not WhatsApp or Viber messages. It also distinguishes between domestic and international VoIP calls, and believes only the former need regulation. It is unclear on what basis these distinctions are made.

The core principles of net neutrality - which are undefined in the report, though definitions proposed in submissions they've received are quoted - should be adhered to. In the long-run, these should find place in a new law, but for the time being they can be enforced through the licence agreement between the government and telecom providers.

Where does the panel report go wrong?

The proposal by the panel to regulate VoIP services like Skype or Viber is a terrible idea.

Many important terms are left undefined, and many distinctions that the report draws are left unexplained. For instance, it is unclear on what regulatory basis the report distinguishes between domestic and international VoIP calls or between regulation of messaging services and VoIP services.

Will it increase cost of access to WhatsApp and Viber?

"Zero-rating" is a policy whereby telecoms providers agree not to pass on the costs of handling the data traffic so that consumers can receive services for free.

On the one hand, this could decrease the cost of access to WhatsApp and Viber. But that might not be allowed because free services could harm competition and distort markets.

Whether this will lead to consumers paying for WhatsApp and similar services depends on what kinds of regulations are placed on them, and if any costs are imposed on them.

Does the report uphold net neutrality?

The report is clear that it strongly endorses the "core principles of net neutrality".

On the issue of "zero-rating" the panel proposes some sound measures, saying that there should be a two-part mechanism for ensuring that "harmful" zero-rating doesn't go through.

First, telecom services need to submit "zero-rating" tariff proposals to an expert body constituted by telecoms department.

Second, consumers will be able to complain about the harmful usage of "zero-rating" by any service provider, which may result in a fine.

Where have people got the report wrong?

There have been reports saying that the panel has recommended increased charges for domestic VoIP calls. This is untrue.

There are reports saying the panel has given the go-ahead for all forms of zero-rating. Once again, this is untrue. The panel cites instances of zero-rating that aren't discriminatory, violative of net neutrality and don't harm competition or distort consumer markets (such as zero-rating of all Internet traffic for a limited time period). Then it goes on to state that the regulator should not allow zero-rating that violates the core principles of net neutrality.

Pranesh Prakash is policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society. A longer article he wrote on the panel report can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-july-25-2015-will-indians-have-to-pay-for-whatsapp

Open Government Data Study

pranesh — 2015-09-03T08:08:22Z

CIS produced a report on the state of open government data in India, looking at policy, infrastructure, and particular case studies, as well as emerging concerns, future strategies and recommendations. The report is authored by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, and Nishant Shah. We are grateful to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for providing generous funding for this report.

Cross-posted from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative website.

Open Government Data Study: India

India provides one of the most fascinating examples of the use of open government data in a developing country context. It has one of the best right to information laws in the world and the government’s approach to open data builds on this legacy of making open data relevant to Indian citizens. An estimated 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day and a key issue for India, and other developing countries, is how open data can be accessible to them.

This paper reviews the progress being made towards open government data in India. Using case studies, it examines some of the pressing challenges facing the adoption of OGD in India. These include infrastructural problems, privacy concerns and the power imbalances that improved transparency can unwittingly create. It also examines government attitudes towards open data and related policies and reviews the relationships between open government data, the media and civil society.

The authors argue that the Indian Government’s responsibility should not stop short at just providing information, but also extend to making it available and accessible in a way that facilitates analysis and enhances offline usability – and ultimately makes it accessible to the poorest.

The paper concludes by suggesting technical and policy strategies to develop, promote, implement and maintain a robust open government data policy in India.

Download the report [PDF, 1.03 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study

RTI Application to Visvesvaraya Technological University

pranesh — 2011-08-18T05:01:46Z

The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors.

The grip software vendors have over courses in technology (at both the school and the university levels) is a matter for concern. Due to what can be termed institutional inertia, educational institutions often don't realise that alternatives exist in the form of FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source software), as proprietary software is entrenched in the system (and is sometimes the market leader in that tech sector). To further tighten their grip, software vendors enter into commercial deals with governments and universities in attempts to penetrate the crucial education sector. This often results in students being taught courses on how to use particular (usually proprietary) software instead of being taught standard technologies. In turn, this denies them the opportunity to learn the concepts behind the software effectively, and ties them to the particular software that they were taught. For software vendors, getting their products into the curricula is very important because the supply of students trained in particular software also affects the demand for that software.

Students should be taught technologies first and foremost, and these technologies should be taught via the vehicle of both free and proprietary software (this is much easier if the technology itself is an open technology). That would allow students the opportunity to understand different implementations of the same technology and make an informed decision as to what they wish to use. It would also offer them more opportunities and choices in their future careers. The importance of FLOSS in the education sector is highlighted in a guide brought out by the United Nations Development Programme's International Open Source Network.

Against this backdrop, when news reports appeared in the Hindu (19 November 2008) and the Deccan Herald (20 November 2008) about a curriculum tie-up between Microsoft and Visvesvaraya Technological University, we filed a Right to Information application to get more details about it. The response stated that this matter was still under discussion and no agreement had been signed.

To read the application, click here; to read the response, click here. You can download a scanned copy of the response here.

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This entry was originally posted on 30 March 2009 and was updated on 3 April 2009.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/rti-application-on-microsoft-vtu-deal

The National Public Meeting on Software Patents

pranesh — 2011-08-23T03:02:56Z

On Saturday, October 4, 2008, the Centre for Internet and Society, with the support of eighteen other organization, held a meeting on the National Public Meeting on Software Patents in the United Theological College campus. The aim of the event was to explore various issues surrounding software patents, especially from the perspective of the draft Patent Manual.

After introductions by Sunil Abraham of CIS, the discussions were kicked off by Sudhir Krishnaswamy (an Assistant Professor at National Law School), who spoke about typology of laws; principle-based arguments for excluding software from patenting; policy-based arguments for the same; and lastly, strategies for combating the patent manual. About the rationale behind excepting software ("computer programmes per se") from patentability, he theorised that given the location of "computer programmes per se" in section 3(k) of the Act, surrounded as it is by "mathematical or business method" and "algorithms", the exception seems to be a principle-based one and not a policy-based one. He also talked about what he saw as the practical realities of the Patent Office, and questioned the role the Draft Manual would actually play in the decisions of Patent Examiners.

He listed out economic arguments as:

Inapplicability of the incentive arguments. The software industry does not need patents since copyright covers software, and even if incentives are required, that is incentive enough;
Return on investment. Short shelf-life, and hence 17-year patent terms are irrelevant when the shelf-life is so small;
New intermediaries are created, who are neither producers nor consumers of software. These intermediaries who help in price-discovery. They discover value in patents which were previously thought neglected by the process known as patent trolling.

Apart from these, he also briefly talked of the legal arguments around software patents, and argued that the question is not only about copyright vs. patent, but also about property vs. contract. He asked questions such as: "What role does copyright play in the software industry, or is contract more important?", and pointed out that while this might have been addressed around a decade ago, those questions need to be revisited given the current scenario. Further, he proposed that the strategies should not revolve solely around the Patent Act and Draft Manual, but around pre- and post-grant oppositions as well.

Prabir Purkayastha of the Delhi Science Forum and Knowledge Commons spoke next, giving a quick run-through of the history, both legal and philosophical, surrounding software patents in India and in the U.S. and Europe (pointing out that most of the wordings of Draft Manual on this point are borrowed from a similar document in the U.K.). He asked the question of why people are opposing software patents. Is it because it is damaging to 'public interest', because it bad for Indian domestic software industry, or because it is an abstract idea which is sought to be patented in the guise of something else? He concluded that ultimately it is not the manual that groups are opposing, but the notion of software patents themselves. Thus, he focussed on how the phrase "per se" used in the Act ought to be interpreted by the Patent Office so as to give credence to the Indian Parliament's rejection (in 2005) of the 2004 patent ordinance (in which section 3(k) read: "a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware"). Lastly, he talked about the various strategies to be employed in the fight against software patents, including pre- and post-grant oppositions.

Dr. Nagarjuna G. of the Free Software Foundation of India focussed on what he termed "the absurdity of software patents". He emphasised how software requires an interpreter or hardware, and hence talk of "software per se" often becomes meaningless. Further, he underlined how embedding software in hardware was not innovation in itself, and stressed ont he changing notions of software and hardware as we evolve technologically. His equation of software with abstract ideas gives us a glimpse into the foundation of his objection to software patents.

First up in the second session (which was more focussed on the manual, and the law in India) was Prashant Iyengar of the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum. He first listed out the different kinds of objections to software patents, including the point that there are only limited ways of thinking about programming, as Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming shows. Then he went on to go through the history of software patents in India, from the first software patent, granted in 1996, through the 2002 Amendment, the 2004 Ordinance, the 2005 Amendment, and the 2005 and 2008 Draft Manuals. He looked at the vocabulary surrounding software patents, including the words "per se" and "as such", and the cases and legislations from which the language used in the Draft Manual might have been borrowed. He also started a fruitful debate on the different ways to attack the implicit inclusion of that which is not "computer programmes per se" within the scope of patentable subject matter.

After Prashant was Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat. He spoke on the practical benefits and harms of software patents, and spoke at length about the difference between legal protection of software in the form of patents and via copyright. He pointed to data showing that lawyers are the ones who benefit most from software patents, and that software developers were the ones who suffered most. Pointing to such practical issues such as how does one go about coding a simple e-commerce transaction when more than 4000 patents have already been granted in that area, he brought down the level of discussion from abstract notions of laws and legalities to practical experiences of software programmers.

Next, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society made a presentation on a small sample of software patents that have been applied for in India, and pointed out the infirmities in both the patents that have been applied for, as well as the problems in uncovering these patents because of various errors on the Indian Patent Office website. Going through a few of the patent applications, he showed how a great number applications have very badly worded abstracts, filled with weasel words, whose sole purpose is obfuscating the fact that what is being applied for is a software patent. This, he pointed out, made it difficult to both determine the scope of the applications (subject matter) as well as the innovations contained in the invention (novelty and non-obviousness), and thus difficult to examine from the perspective of pre-grant oppositions.

After these presentations, the meeting continued with the Open House session which had many people making presentations, including Abhas Abhinav of DeepRoot Linux, Arun M. of FSF India, and Joseph C. Matthew, who is the IT Adviser to the Chief Minister, Kerala. With the wrapping up of this session, the proceedings for the day came to a close.

Coverage in the press

Audio Recordings and Slides

The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents

Sudhir Krishnaswamy (National Law School) | mp3 | ogg
Prabir Purkayastha(Delhi Sience Forum) (Knowledge Commons) |mp3 | ogg
Nagarjuna G.(Free Software Foundation of India) | mp3 | ogg

Software Patents in India: The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual

Prashant Iyengar(Alternative Law Forum) | mp3 | ogg
Venkatesh Hariharan(Red Hat) | mp3 | ogg

Software Patent Applications in India

Pranesh Prakash (Centre for Internet and Society) | mp3 | ogg | ppt

Open House

Abhas Abhinav (DeepRoot Linux) | mp3 | ogg

Arun M.(Free Software Foundation of India)| mp3 | ogg
Joseph Mathew (IT Adviser to the Chief Minister, Kerala)| mp3 | ogg

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents

Open Standards Workshop at IGF '09

pranesh — 2011-08-23T02:54:03Z

The Centre for Internet and Society co-organized a workshop on 'Open Standards: A Rights-Based Framework' at the fourth Internet Governance Forum, at Sharm el-Sheikh. The panel was chaired by Aslam Raffee of Sun Microsystems and the panellists were Sir Tim Berners-Lee of W3C, Renu Budhiraja of India's DIT, Sunil Abraham of CIS, Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft, and Rishab Ghosh of UNU-MERIT.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee started the session with an address on various rights. Rights, he noted can range from being things like the rights to air and water to the right not to have the data carrier you use determine which movie you watch. Then, there are tensions between rights: the right to anonymity can clash with the right to know who posted information on making a bomb. Berners-Lee stated that for 2009, he has chosen to pursue one particular right: the right to government-held data. This data can include everything from where schools are to emergency services such as locations of hospitals. Today, we are talking about standards.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a fifteen-year old body in which all kinds of people come together for purposes of setting standards around the World Wide Web. Thus, everything from HTML, which is used to write Web pages to WCAG, which are guidelines to enable people with disabilities access websites through assistive technologies. W3C conducts its discussions openly: anybody who has a good idea has a right to participate in its discussions -- it does not matter who one works for, who one represents -- what does matter are the ideas one brings to the table. The kinds of standards that W3C deals with are of interest to an immensely wide-ranging group of people. Even ten-year olds have actually expressed their opinions about standards like HTML. All this openness of participation must be guaranteed while ensuring that the processes move forward.

Next spoke Renu Budhiraja of the Department of Information and Technology, which is a part of the Indian government. She started off by hoping that this workshop would be not only a platform to share knowledge, but also to reach consensus on a few matters. Next, she laid out why open standards are extremely important for the Indian government. What citizens want in their interactions with the government are ease of interaction and efficiency. For them it is immaterial whether a certain service is provided by Department A or Department B. Thus we need to move towards a single-window government service for citizens, enabling them to interact easily with the government's various departments. While such an initiative must be centralized for it to be effective, it is crucial that its implementation be decentralized and suited to each district or localities' needs.

There is, understandably, a huge institutional mechanism behind ensuring that these systems are based on open standards. We have expert committees, consisting of academics and knowledgeable bureaucrats, and working groups, which include industry groups. Through these, we have evolved a National Policy on Open Standards, which is currently in a draft stage, but shall be notified soon. This policy outlines the principles based on which particular standards required for governmental functioning are to be chosen or evolved. This document will ensure long-term accessibility to public documents and information, and seamless interoperability of various governmental services and departments. It will also reduce the risk of vendor lock-in and reduce costs, and thus ensure long-term, sustainable, scalable and cost-effective solutions.

Ms. Budhiraja noted that there are a few aspects of the policy that bear discussion in a forum such as the IGF. First is the issue of whether royalty-free is the only choice for innovation. All other things equal, between royalty-free and reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) standards, of course royalty-free is to be preferred. But what if a superior technology (JPEG200 vs. JPEG) is RAND? What should the government's position be in such a case? Further, what should the government's position be when in a particular domain a RAND standard is the only option?

Next is the issue of single vs. multiple open standards. When interoperability is what we are aiming at, can multiple standards be recommended as some in the industry are asking us to do? And then is the issue of market maturity. The government sometimes finds itself in a situation where a standard is available, but well-developed products around that standard aren't and there aren't sufficient vendors using that standard. All these issues are of great practical importance when a government works on a policy document on standards.

Next up was Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. His presentation was on open standards as citizens' and consumers' rights. He started off by citing the example of the Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application (SCOSTA) standard, and the implications that the SCOSTA story has on large-scale projects such as the National Unique ID project currently under way in India. SCOSTA, an open standard, was being written off as unimplementable by all the MNC smart card vendors who wished to push RAND standards. IIT Kanpur helped the government develop a working implementation. Within twenty days, the card manufacturers submitted modified cards for compliance testing by NIC. Because of SCOSTA being an open standard, local companies also joined the tender. The cost went down from Rs. 600 per card to Rs. 30 per card. This shows the benefits of open standards as a means of curbing oligopolistic pricing, and working for the benefit of consumers.

From a rights-based perspective, access to the state machinery is a primary right. Citizens should not be required to pirate or purchase software to interact with the state. If e-governance solutions are based on proprietary standards, not all citizens would be equal. The South African example or requiring a particular browser to access the election commission's website shows that in a rather drastic fashion. When intellectual property interferes with governmental needs, governments have not been shy of issuing compulsory licences. This was seen when during the Great War the United States government pooled various flight-related patents and compulsorily licensed them, as well as what we are currently seeing with many Aids-related drugs being compulsorily licensed in developing countries. Thus, there are precedents for such licensing, and governments should explore them in the realm of e-governance. Many countries now have statutes that guarantee the right to government-held information. Government Interoperability Frameworks should take these into account, and mandate all government-to-citizen (G2C) information be transacted via open standards. This must be backed up by a strong accessibility policy to ensure that the governments don't discriminate between their citizens.

Proprietary standards act like pseudo-intellectual property rights, just as DRMs do. They add a layer on top of rights such as copyright, and can prevent the exercise of fair use and fair dealing rights because of an inability to legally negotiate the standards in which the content is encoded in a cost-free manner. In guaranteeing this balance between copyrights and fair dealing rights, free software and alternative IP models play a crucial role. Because of software patents being recognized in a few countries, development of free software which allows citizens to exercise their fair use rights is harmed in all countries.

Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft spoke next and placed the standards debate in a large context. He noted that standards are a technicality that are only a small part of the large issue which is interoperability in e-governance and delivery to citizens. The real challenges are organizational and semantic interoperability. Frequently interoperability is not harmed by technical issues, but by legal and organizational issues. Governments used to work on paper; during the shift to electronic data, they didn't engage in any organizational changes. Thus they continue to function with electronic data the same way that they did with paper-based data. Governments often lack strong privacy policies regarding the data that each of their departments holds. This harms governmental functioning. Additionally, legacy hardware and software have to be catered to by the standards we are talking about: sometimes an open standard just will not work.

Standards don't guarantee interoperability, and there is significant work done on this by noted academics ("Why Standards Are Not Enough To Guarantee End-to-End Interoperability" Lewis et al.; "Difficulties Implementing Standards" Egyedi & Dahanayake; "Standards Compliant, But Incompatible?" Egyedi et al.). Mandated standards lists will not help address interoperability issues between different implementations of the same standard. What would help? Transparency of implementations; collaboration with community; active participation in maintenance of standards, etc., would help. There is a need for continued public sector reform, with a focus on citizen-centric e-governance, and a need to engage with the question of whether government-mandated standards lists lead the market or follow the market.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, a senior researcher at UN University, Maastricht, spoke next. He started by noting that technical standards are left to technical experts. That needs to change, which is why discussing open standards at the IGF is important. He next set off a hypothetical: imagine you go to the city council office in Sharm el Sheik, and at the parking lot there it says that your car has to be a Ford if you are to park there; or if the Dutch government insists that you have a Philips TV if you are to receive the national broadcaster's signal. While these might seem absurd, situations like this arise all the time when it comes to the realm of software. Thus, the social effects of open standards are of utmost importance, and not just their technical qualities. Analysing the social effects of open standards takes us back to the economics of technology and technological standards. Technological standards exhibit network externalities: their inherent value is less than the value of others using them. Being the only person in the world with a telephone won't be very useful. Technological standards also exhibit path dependence: once you go with one technological format, it is difficult to change over to another even if that other format is superior to the first. Thus, clearly, standards benefit when there is a 'natural monopoly'. The challenge really arises when faced with the question of how to ensure a monopoly in a technology without the supplier of that technology exhibiting monopolistic tendencies. This can only be done when the technology is open and developed openly, of which the web standards and the W3C are excellent examples. If the technology or the process are semi-open, then because of the few intellectual property rights attached to the technology, some would be better off than others. Just as governments cannot insist on driving a particular make of cars as a prerequisite for access to them, they cannot insist on using a particular proprietary standard as a means of accessing them.

Many interesting questions arose when the floor was thrown open to the audience. "Should governments only mandate a particular standard when it is certain that market maturity exists?" Not really, since governmental decisions also give signals to the market and help direct attention to those standards. It would be best if roadmaps were provided, with particular under-mature standards being designated as "preferred standards", thus helping push industry in a particular direction. Examples where this strategy has borne fruit abound. This is also the strategy found in the Australian GIF. On the issue of multiplicity of standards, Sir Tim was very clear that they have to be avoided at all costs. He gave the example of XSLT and CSS, which are both stylesheet formats. He noted that their domain of operation was very different (with one being for servers and the other for clients), so having two standards with similar functions but different domains of operation does not make them multiple standards. Multiple standards defeat the purpose of the standardization process.

It was noted that governmental choices are of practical importance to citizens. During the Hurricane Katrina emergency, the federal emergency website only worked properly if Internet Explorer was used. How do we move forward? We must move forward by having policies that strike a balance between allowing for the natural evolution of standards and stability. The Government Interoperability Frameworks must be dynamic documents, allowing for categorization between standards and having clear roadmaps to enable industry to provide solutions to the government in a timely fashion. Governments must be strong in order to push industry towards openness, for the sake of its citizens, and not let industry dictate proprietary standards as the solution. Some opined that since there are dozens of domains that governments function in, maintaining lists of standards is a time-consuming process that is not justified, but others rebutted that by noting that for enterprise architectures to work, governments have to maintain such lists internally. Opening up that list to citizens and service providers would not entail greater overheads.

Sunil Abraham talking Open Standards at IGF09

(Video added on December 30, 2009)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09

Second Response to Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance

pranesh — 2011-08-18T05:06:31Z

The government is in the process of drafting a national policy on open standards for e-governance. The National Informatics Centre recently released draft version 2 of the policy, and CIS sent in its comments on the draft.

CIS has been following the drafting of the national policy on open standards for e-governance with much interest. Last year, we offered our comments on the first draft of the policy. The policy has since gone through two more iterations (copies of which are kept on the Fosscomm site), labelled versions 1.15 and 2, and we have again offered comments on the latest version. The evolution the draft policy has been mired in controversy, as documented by Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat. It seems that the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has been trying to nullify the effect of the policy by pushing for recognition of proprietary standards within the policy, and that too without consultation with its members.

We believe that proprietary standards go against the interests the government, which as the primary consumer of the standards would have to pay royalties and would face vendor lock-in, of small and medium enterprises, which provide direct and indirect services to the government, since they would be required to invest in those closed standards to service the government, and most of all, of the citizens of India.

Based on that view, we have noted four deficiencies in version 2 of the draft policy: the possibility of following the letter of policy while violating its spirit; the possibility of patenting and closed licensing of government-developed standards; that no framework provided for review or phasing out interim standards; and certain problematic definitions in the glossary to the policy.

All these points are elaborated upon in the comments we submitted to the Department of Information Technology.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/second-response-to-draft-policy

DCOS Agreement on Procurement

pranesh — 2011-08-23T02:58:35Z

On December 6, 2008, at the closing of the third Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS), of which the Centre for Internet and Society is a member, released an agreement entitled the "Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-agreement-on-procurement

Workshop on Reforming the International ICT Standardization System

pranesh — 2011-08-23T02:56:30Z

On Day 4, the last day, of the Internet Governance Forum, a workshop was conducted by the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards on the reforming the international ICT standardisation system. The panellists were Bob Jolliffe of Freedom to Innovate South Africa, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, Ashish Gautam of IBM India, and Aslam Raffee, Chairperson of the Government IT Officers' Council, OSS Working Group, Republic of South Africa, who moderated the session.

Mr. Rafee, after introducing the panellists, laid out the parameters of the discussion. He noted that the discussion was not about "open standards" per se, but about the standardisation process.

Mr. Jolliffe noted that the main problems revolved around the question of legitimacy of the Standard Setting Organizations, which often arises from "standardisation by corporations" (a phrase coined by Martin Bryan), as shown by the representatives of the individual countries to the international bodies. For the international standardization process to acquire legitimacy, the national bodies need to do so first. A start can be made, Mr. Jolliffe noted, through simple steps like increase in stakeholder participation beyond vendors, full disclosure of institutional affiliations at the standardisation bodies, better streamlining of processes such as the fast-track system, and full and clear disclosures with regard to IP licensing terms would help in increasing accountability and legitimacy of standard setting organizations.

He also indicated that financial transparency, modernisation of processes (including remote participation), regulation of proportional influence of private interests, a code of best practices and innovation in patent searches, full interest disclosures, and clear display of IPR policies of committees would help in increasing the openness of standards.

Mr. Abraham chose to focus on the national standardization processes, and the lessons that can be learnt from those. He highlighted that the discussions around open standards were really discussions about standards followed by public institutions. He analogized the situation to private houses vs. the public road infrastructure, noting how the road infrastructure cannot be private. Ensuring that the public infrastructure was open to all, he said, was the important role played by the standardisation process. He went on to highlight the importance of open standards as a lever in the hands of governments which can be used to fix monopoly situations, as it was in the case of SCOSTA smart card standard, where the use of an open standard led to a drop in price from Rs.600 to Rs.30 and increased the number of vendors from 3 to 12. He then narrated a number of "stories" from India, Pakistan and Malaysia to show the various forms of weaknesses within the national standard setting processes. He further concluded that countries with weak institutions are the ones less likely to support open standards.

Mr. Abraham added the need to adopt common definitions of "open standards" and transparency of processes and encouragement of remote participation as suggestions for the standardization system.

Mr. Gautam from IBM India chose to talk about the standards principles that the company follows, and the need for reform of the standardization processes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/workshop-on-reforming-the-international-ict-standardization-system

Research Project on Open Video in India

pranesh — 2011-08-23T02:51:36Z

Open Video Alliance and the Centre for Internet and Society are calling for researchers for a project on open video in India, its potentials, limitations, and recommendations on policy interventions.

Project Timeline

From mid-April to mid-July.

Summary of Outputs

A 15-20 page paper surveying the online video environment in India and the opportunities it presents for creative expression, political participation, social justice, and other such concerns. The paper should deal with the structural limitations of the medium (e.g.: limited bandwidth, IP lobbies discourage re-appropriation of cultural materials, online video is inaccessible to the deaf, and so on) and how they can be addressed. Recommendations should be bold but in touch with the real policy and business frameworks of present-day India.
Several 1-2 page briefs on specific policy matters like: where is jurisdiction being exercised? what are the policy inflections? and, what interventions are needed to solve the structural limitations of the medium?

Survey Paper

The survey paper should describe the online video scenario in India, and three or more policy tensions. The paper should focus on areas of intellectual property rights, network issues, standards, device freedom and interoperability, accessibility, etc. The Open Video Alliance website[ova] for a complete list of relevant issues.

Overall, it should paint both a qualitative as well as a quantitative picture of online video in India, and in which structural improvements are needed (if any) to empower individuals.This paper should not be viewed as a recommendation to policymakers but instead as a general interest document which will inform and appeal to many audiences. While we expect the paper to span several distinct issues, there should be a prevailing narrative to weave them together.

Basic Assumptions

We want online video to be a participatory and collaborative social medium powered by open source. We also value the ability of individuals to express themselves using these tools, and the ability of new entrants to challenge incumbents and innovate on top of existing technologies. No time is needed to be spent establishing these values—instead, through this paper we try to identify structural improvements to the online video medium. How do we get from the status quo to the ideal open video environment? What investments must be made? What protections must be put into place for users, producers, etc.? Further, we should be able to make some broad recommendations to governments, foundations, and big institutions.

Because the network and IP enforcement environment in India are still malleable, we want to stress that there are many possible shapes that the online video medium could take. Our goal is to shine some light on how a medium that privileges the values outlined above could take shape.

Suggested Methodology

First, you would need to carry out a basic survey of the literature. Second, you should talk to various organizations using video, discover what they consider the structural limitations of online video, and what might be considered open video practices: some are legal, some are technical. You would use this data to direct original research and weave your findings into an engaging narrative.

Next Steps

You send 2 writing samples, a CV, and letter of recommendation;
We'll discuss the unifying themes and identify a more detailed timeline;
We produce a contract;
We Pick a regular time to meet every other week, to track progress.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-research