Centre for Internet and Society

March 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T07:33:44Z

In this month we announced the new clusters from Researchers at Work: Locating the Mobile, Interface Intimacies and Habits of Living.

Research

New series from RAW, new Clusters now Online!

From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. We hope to build knowledge networks and production of new knowledge around questions of body, governance and cultural production in the digital times that we live in. Spearheaded by experts in the field of science, technology, society and culture the clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Locating the Mobile: An Ethnographic Investigation into Locative Media in Melbourne, Bangalore and Shanghai
Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Melbourne), Genevieve Bell (Intel, Shanghai)
As yet we know little about the impact locative media is having, and will have upon people’s livelihoods and identity, or on public policy around privacy, identity, security and cultural production. Discourse in the field has opened up questions of art, innovation and experimentation. But there is a dearth of nuanced research on locative media that provides in-depth, contextual accounts of its socio-cultural and political dimensions. Not much work has been conducted into locative media as it migrates from art to the ‘messy’ area of everyday. The project seeks to address this knowledge gap by studying locative media in Bangalore, Melbourne and Shanghai.

Interface Intimacies
Audrey Yue (Melbourne University) and Namita Malhotra (ALF)
Users of technologies often express their engagement with technologies in affective terms. The interfaces that we see all around us constantly deflect our attention, emotions and desires on to different surfaces, creating flattened universes with the promises of deep immersion. Digging deep into interfaces, to examine peoples’ relationships with the digital interfaces around them the research cluster examines: What are the affective relationships that people have with their interfaces? What goes into anthropomorphising an interface? What are the larger politics of labour, performance and ownership that surround interface design? What are the ways in which people simulate presence and connections through their interfaces? How is the human presumed in computer-human interface design? What aesthetic and political moves are we witnessing with the rise of interface mediated publics? What and who is made opaque when interfaces become transparent? When interfaces get distributed, what are the possibilities and potential for art, theory and practice to move into new forms of politics?

Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects
Wendy Chun (Professor, Brown University), Kelly Dobson, (Chair, Digital + Media, RISD, Providence), Matthew Fuller, David Gee (Reader in Digital Media, Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London) and Eivind Rossaak, (Associate Professor, Department of Research, National Library of Norway, Oslo).
This is a global collaborative project to renew the conceptual power of networks. It concentrates on changing the habits of living. The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University will be an important locus. Habits are crucial to understanding networks not simply as broad organizational structures but also as structures created through constant actions that are both voluntary and involuntary.

Digital Natives

Video Contest

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? A global video contest finds the answer!
CIS and Hivos are excited to announce the top five videos. The finalists will each win EUR 500. According to Nishant Shah, the 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘today I will change the world’. Yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change.

Public Lectures

D:Coding Digital Natives (Nishant Shah, University of California, Los Angeles, March 9, 2012)
"In the last three years of revolutions we have also now witnessed this extraordinary thing where lot of promises were made of different kinds of revolution but which never materialised in terms of what they intended to. Citizen action happens but it doesn’t lead into anything concrete." The lecture is featured in YouTube.

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Annenberg School of Communication, University of South California, March 8, 2012): Nishant Shah made a presentation on 'Questioning the Radical Potential for Citizen Action'.
5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Digital Media and Learning Conference on Beyond Education Technologies, Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, March 1, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk.
Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (UC Santa Cruz, Monday, March 5, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a lecture. The lecture focused more on the India against Corruption case-study rather than the theoretical framework to understanding revolutions.

Column in Indian Express

Pinning the Badge
Nishant Shah, March 18, 2012
In a world of competition, badging provides a holistic way of grading and learning, where individual talents are realized and the knowledge of the group is used. A peer-2-peer system of badging, which enables learners to be critically aware not only of their own interaction with knowledge but also recognises the ways in which larger communities of knowledge — including the peers and teachers — opens up an extraordinary way of thinking about education.

Book Review...A Few Excerpts

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar
‘Engineering a cyber twin’ is an attempt to inventory the ontological features of an avatar... Ansher’s essay… eschews a simplistic binary of offline/online, preferring to focus on the domain of interaction between the two ‘personae’ of the same self.
Pramod K. Nayar reviews Nilofar Shamim Ansher’s essay ‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ from Digital Alternatives with a Cause? Book One: To Be.

Accessibility

Analysis

Analysis of Comments by WBU & IPA
Rahul Cherian provides an analysis of the comments by the World Blind Union and the International Publishers Association after the 23rd session of the Standing Committee of Copyright and Related Rights.

Event Organised

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 to 15, 2012): At the invitation of the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India, International Telecommunication Union organized a two-day Tutorial on Audio Visual Media Accessibility. The Tutorial was preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility on March 13, 2012. Sunil Abraham participated in the event and was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1, March 14, 2012.

Access to Knowledge

Op-ed in Economic Times

Patented Games, Sunil Abraham, March 8, 2012
Some prefer Steve Jobs, patron saint of perfection, others prefer Nicholas Negroponte, messiah of the masses. While Mr. Jobs may be guilty of contributing to the digital divide, Mr. Negroponte may have contributed to bridging it with his innovation: the One Laptop per Child, also known as the $100 laptop or XO.

Events Participated

Consumers International Global Meeting 2012 (Kuala Lumpur, March 8 and 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in the global meeting organised by Consumers International and spoke on UN Consumer Guidelines. Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter and Guilherme Varella were the other speakers in the session.
Expert Meeting on Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property Rights (London, November 18, 2011): The meeting was organized by ARTICLE 19. Nineteen international scholars, experts and human rights activists met to explore the antagonistic relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) and the rights to freedom of expression and information. Pranesh Prakash was one of the participants.

Openness

Events Organised

Open DataCamp — 2012 (Google, Old Madras Road, Bangalore, March 24, 2012): This was a one-day unconference for people working with data from various sectors to come together and share their projects and ideas. It was organised by the DataMeet group. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Google, India Water Portal, Gramener, Microsoft Research, Akshara Foundation, DataMeet, HasGeek and CIS were the sponsors.
Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners): (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). The workshop drew participants such as interaction designers, artists and those enthusiastic to get started with creative projects but didn’t have prior experience with electronics. About 20 people participated in the workshop.

Events Participated

Water Data Consultation (Evoma Hotel, Bangalore, March 23, 2012). Pranesh Prakash spoke on Policy Issues and Developments around Open Data. The event was organized by Arghyam.

Internet Governance

Column in FirstPost

Why your Facebook Stalker is Not the Real Problem, Nishant Shah, March 20, 2012:We live in networked conditions. This is a statement that can now be taken at face-value, and immediately explains our highly connected, inter-meshed environments…We need to start looking at larger invasive policies exercises by the different invisible actors like the ISP, ICT ministries, corporate policies, design choices and architecture of interception that sustain the networks we so gladly embrace.

Blog Entries

Statutory Motion against Intermediary Guidelines Rules, Pranesh Prakash:A motion to annul the Intermediary Guidelines Rules was moved on March 23, 2012, by Shri P. Rajeeve, CPI (M) MP in the Rajya Sabha from Thrissur, Kerala. We are very glad that Shri Rajeeve has moved this motion, and we hope that it gets adopted in the Lok Sabha as well, and that the Rules get defeated, notes Pranesh Prakash.

Events Organised

India Explores the Balance Points between Freedom of Expression, Privacy, National Security and Law Enforcement (New Delhi, March 5, 2012). Sunil Abraham participated in this closed-door meeting jointly organised with the Global Network Initiative. Issues relating to freedom of expression and privacy were discussed in the meeting.
Climate Change and Controversy Mapping (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, March 19 to 21, 2012). The Devechia Centre for Climate Change, the Indian Institute of Science and CIS organized a three-day workshop with Professor Bruno Latour. Doctorate students doing empirical work in various types of ecological crisis participated in the event and experimented with some of the digital tools and methods developed within the "mapping controversies" consortium.
GeekUp with Erica Hagen (CIS, Bangalore, March 1, 2012). HasGeek organized a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative. Erica gave a lecture on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation.
Cartonama Workshop (CIS, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2012). HasGeek organized a hands-on training for managing and building location based services. Twenty-two participants attended the workshop.
Global Censorship Conference

Events Participated

The Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School is holding a conference on global censorship from March 30 to April 1, 2012, at Yale Law School. The programme is sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and Thomson Reuters. Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow who worked at CIS office in Bangalore on freedom of expression and internet-related policy issues is participating in the event as a speaker in the panel on Case Studies of Censorship.

What is Stewardship in Cyberspace? (Innis Townhall, University of Toronto, Canada, March 18 and 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session “Plenary Panel and Discussions” at the second annual Cyber Dialogue.
Secure IT 2012 — Securing Citizens through Technology (Claridges, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): The event was co-organised by DST and NSDI, Govt. of India in partnership with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. Sunil Abraham was a panelist. The video is now online.
International Conference on Mobile Law (ASSOCHAM House, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): Pranesh Prakash spoke in the panel on Mobiles - Privacy and Social Media on March 1, 2012.
Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes

Media Coverage

Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes
"The state government's use of unsolicited SMS a “clear abuse of the powers afforded by elected office... elected representatives would be justified in such measures, and in utilising public funds, in the event of a disaster, or when public order, public health or national security are compromised."
Sunil Abraham, The Statesman, March 25, 2012.

Open access to government data on the cards
"Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, said, “None of the criticisms ... CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed."
Pranesh Prakash, The Hindu, March 25, 2012.

Is your facebook page your mini resume?
"Background checks are common as some companies deal with sensitive information. So it’s not illegal, but intrusive. I think some power relationships can be abused if they cross the social networking barrier — like a boss-employee and teacher-student relationship."
Sunil Abraham, IBN Live, March 26, 2012.

Click, Play, Watch
"Earlier, creative artistes depended on intermediaries like studios, TV channels and theatres to screen their work and connect with viewers. Now, they are looking at the online medium to connect with the audience directly."
Sunil Abraham, MidDay, March 18, 2012.

Save Your Voice — A movement against Web censorship
"Private sector does not protect the freedom of expression."
Daily News & Analysis, March 13, 2012.

India’s Big Bet on Identity
"There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you’re collecting personal data from more than a billion people. “You can’t change your biometrics,”… so if they become compromised, it’s a difficult problem to fix."
Ieeespectrum. March 2012 edition.

Telecom

Columns in Business Standard

The 2G Supreme Court Judgment
Shyam Ponappa, March 1 and March 4, 2012
The Business Standard published Shyam Ponappa's two-part article deconstructing the assumptions in the Supreme Court's 2G judgment, and suggesting possible ways forward. The first one was published on March 1, 2012, and the second on March 4, 2012.

Blog Entry

Convergence India 2012
Yelena Gyulkhandanyan
Yelena attended an event organised by the Exhibitions India Group from March 21 to 23, 2012. She shares her experiences.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with International Telecommunications Union, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter

Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

April 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:26:40Z

In this issue of our newsletter, we bring you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, news and media coverage during the month of April 2012:

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Google Policy Fellowship

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet
Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow
CIS in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a fellow. He researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.

Announcement

The Centre for Internet & Society Joins the Global Network Initiative
CIS officially joined the Global Network Initiative. CIS would bring to GNI in-depth expertise on global internet governance as well as online freedom of expression and privacy in India. GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan said “We are delighted to add our first member based in India and welcome CIS’s engagement in support of transparency and accountability in technology.”

Op-ed in the Hindu

Chilling Effects and Frozen Words (Lawrence Liang, Hindu, April 30, 2012): “What if the real danger is not that we lose our freedom of speech and expression but our sense of humour as a nation?...One hopes that our lawmakers, even if they are averse to reading the Indian Constitution, will be slightly more open to the poetic licence granted by Kautilya.”

Columns in the Indian Express

The Idea of the Book (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 8, 2012): “Its future lies in a trans-media format that is ever evolving... The form of the book is going to change as it has over the last 500 years. However, the idea of the book — a receptacle that contains and records collective wisdom, information, ideas, knowledge, experiences and imagination of humankind – is here to stay.”
India's Broken Internet Laws Need a Shot of Multi-stakeholderism by Pranesh Prakash. (An edited version of this article was published in the Indian Express as "Practise what you preach" on Thursday, April 26, 2012.)

Event Reports

The All India Privacy Symposium (India International Centre, New Delhi, February 4, 2012): The symposium was organised around five thematic panel discussions: privacy and transparency, privacy and e-governance initiatives, privacy and national security, privacy and banking and health privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.
The High Level Privacy Conclave (Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens, New Delhi, February 3, 2012): The conclave was organised around two panels: national Security and privacy and internet and privacy. Malavika Jayaram moderated the first panel discussion on national Security and privacy. Sunil Abraham moderated the second panel discussion on internet and privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.

Events Organised

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India (Bangalore International Centre, TERI Complex, Domlur, April 21, 2012): CIS co-organised this event with the Foundation for Media Professionals. Members of Parliament, P. Rajeeve and Rajeev Chandrashekar and Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka, V.R. Sudarshan participated in the event.
Konkan Corridor Project — A Lecture by Vasant Gangavane (Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Bangalore, April 16, 2012): Well known social worker Vasant Gangavane gave a lecture.
Braitenberg Cybernetic Vehicles: Workshop, Film Screening & Discussion (Metaculture Media Lab, CIS, Bangalore, April 14, 2012): There was a short presentation about Braitenberg vehicles.

Events Participated

GIGA International Conference Series - 1 (NALSAR University of Law, Justice City Campus, Shameerpet, Hyderabad, April 5 and 6, 2012): The Institute of Global Internet Governance and Advocacy and Department of Electronics and Information Technology organised the conference. Sunil Abraham gave a lecture on Digital Natives vs. Digital Naivety in the session on Internet Governance & Society.
Expert-Group on Privacy Issues (New Delhi, April 13 and 14, 2012): The Planning Commission constituted this expert group under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah. Sunil Abraham participated in the first meeting of the sub-group on privacy issues.

Video

Privacy International's Trip to Asia (by Emma Draper in Privacy International blog): In February 2012, the Privacy International team travelled to India, Bangladesh and Hong Kong to meet with local partners in the region and speak at four conferences they had organized. The team got a chance to interview its partners in India and Bangladesh on the privacy issues facing them at the moment. This is captured in a video about contemporary privacy issues in India and Bangladesh.

Media Coverage

It’s mainstream vs social (Guest column by Mahima Kaul, Sunday Guardian, April 30, 2012): “If the video is judged to be 'obscene', then under s.67 of the Information Technology Act, 'causing [obscenity] to be transmitted', is also a crime,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
From Cyber India to Censor India: Groups challenge didactic govt (by Satarupa Paul, Sunday Guardian, April 29, 2012): “Instead of a court deciding what makes content illegal, private intermediaries get to decide. And there is no penalty for anyone abusing the take-down notice system,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
Social Media 1, Indian Government 0 (by Heather Timmons, New York Times, April 26, 2012): “Because India does not have a bilateral cyber-crime agreement with the United States (as the European Union does), getting American companies like Facebook and Google to take down or investigate the source of content that offends Indian government officials can be a slow and cumbersome process,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the New York Times.
Private sector censors (by Salil Tripathi, LiveMint, April 25, 2012): “Companies which have no interest in free speech are now taking these decisions. They have the power to do so and they are using it without any sense of responsibility,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in LiveMint.
Views | Why the Left may for once be right (by Pramit Bhattacharya, LiveMint, April 23, 2012): “It has become much easier in India to ban an e-book than a book,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in LiveMint.
Campaign against curbs on websites gathers steam (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 23, 2012): “If a company wants to target your organization’s social media network, they can keep sending fraudulent emails to you and you will have to keep deleting it unless you are ready to face litigation or government action...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Expect anti-net censorship echo in house (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 25, 2012): “why should freedom of speech and expression be any different on the Internet?”...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Mobilising support for freedom on the Web (by Deepa Kurup Hindu, April 22, 2012): Rishabh Dara’s research published as part of the Google Policy Fellowship is quoted.
MPs to be taught ‘draconian’ IT Act Rules as India.net support galvanises for annul motion (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, April 23, 2012): Prachi has blogged about the Resisting Internet Censorship co-organised by CIS and the Foundation for Media Professionals in Bangalore.
India arrests professor over political cartoon (by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, April 13, 2012): “The state’s new-found aversion to non-believers has gone a bit too far,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in Washington Post.
A beauty’s blog creates furore (by Lakshmi Krupa, Deccan Chronicle, April 10, 2012).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Public Lecture

5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, California, March 1, 2012): Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk. The video is now online.

Book Review...a few excerpts

Immigrants not Natives: “‘To Be’, ‘To Think’, ‘To Act’ and ‘To Connect’ provides many fascinating and thought-provoking insights into the possibilities for reflection, action and interaction,”... Sally Wyatt, eHumanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences/Maastricht University.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Event Report

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 – 15, 2012): CIS in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India organised a two-day tutorial on Audio-Visual Media Accessibility. Sunil Abraham was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1. Ravi Shanker, Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund, Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Swaran Lata, Director and Head of Department, TDIL Programme, DIT, R.N. Jha, Deputy Director General (International Relations), Department of Telecommunications and Archana Gulati, Financial Advisor, National Disaster Management Authority participated in this event.

New Fellow at CIS

Rahul Cherian joins CIS: Disability policy activist, lawyer and co-founder of Inclusive Planet, Rahul Cherian has joined CIS as a Fellow. Rahul will be working on disability policy reform and advocacy.

Access to Knowledge

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

New Event

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We are pleased to announce the Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Setting the positive agenda in motion,” and will have a special focus on developments and opportunities in the so-called “BRICS” group of emerging economies. CIS is one of the six members of the Global Congress Planning Committee..

News & Media Coverage

Hacking, Modding & Making (by Brendan Shanahan): “If something has been made technologically possible, we cannot make it illegal and hope that everyone will now pretend that this is no longer technologically possible...We can't have the government checking everyone's iPod and laptop. The better move is to change the model,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in GQ.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Event Reports and Video

Arduino Workshop at CIS (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). Video is now online.
Hejje — Together with Kannada & Technology (Bangalore, January 22, 2012): The event marked the first step to bring everyone working in Kannada in the IT field to brainstorm the ideas for future steps, and create a space for technological collaboration in Kannada. CIS co-organised the event with Sanchaya.net, Vishwakannada.com and Chanda Pustaka.

Events Organised

Bangalore Meet-up for the Open Government Partnership Brasilia (CIS, Bangalore, April 17, 2012): Ananya Panda and Pranesh Prakash participated in the first annual meeting of Open Government Partnership remotely.
Design!PubliC – Event in Delhi (New Delhi, April 19 and 20, 2012): The event was co-organised by Centre for Knowledge Societies in partnership with IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, HeadStart, India@75, LiveMint and CIS.
International Space Apps Challenge (CIS, Bangalore, April 21 and 22, 2012): An international codeathon-style event took place in seven continents, CIS organised the event in Bangalore.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Column in Business Standard

China 3: Build Comprehensive Ecosystems (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, April 5, 2012): “Failures in electricity, transport and broadband have common strands. China's approach offers a possible alternative.”

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

May 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:59:29Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of May 2012! In the current issue, we bring to you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, and media coverage:

Access to Knowledge

Copyright Amendment Bill

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012
Pranesh Prakash
There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era. The analysis was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012.

Op-ed in Indian Express

Copyright Madness (Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala, Indian Express, May 22, 2012): India’s Copyright Act allows owners of content the right to prevent infringement through the use of injunctions, but these injunctions have to be narrowly construed and applied only to specific instances of infringement. This is to say, take down the infringing video, not the whole website, and don’t intimidate the host. When injunctions threaten freedom of speech and expression, then free speech should necessarily trump copyright claims — and the courts cannot be used as convenient shopping forums for maladies that don’t exist.

Call for Participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Event Participated

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles (Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany, May 14 and 15, 2012). The event was organised by the University of Minnesota and Max Planck Institute. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

News & Media

Will the Copyright Law Help the Starving Artist?:(by Margherita Stancati, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2012): "The singers and producers of...unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars."
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers? (FirstPost, May 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article.

Accessibility

Blog Entries

Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled by Rahul Cherian.
An FAQ on the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2012, for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities by Dr. Sam Taraporevala and Rahul Cherian.

Openness

Article in the Indian Express

Cancel the Subscription (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Indian Express, May 8, 2012): It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available... In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

Event Organised

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi (National Museum, New Delhi, April 20, 2012): The event was organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society. Sunil Abraham was a panelist and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation.

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications: CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012. The focus areas for the present fellowship programme include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. The duration of the fellowship will be for about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

Events Participated

Internet at Liberty 2012: Promoting Progress and Freedom (Newseum, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest Washington, D.C., May 23 – 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a speaker in Plenary IV, Debate 3: In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?
Meeting on Internet Governance (Conference Hall No. 4009, Dept. of Electronics & Information Technology, CGO Complex, New Delhi, May 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in this meeting.

Op-ed in Down to Earth

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures (Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, May 31, 2012): The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Columns by Nishant Shah

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You! (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, May 22, 2012): When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.
The Private Eye (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 14, 2012): As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online.

Video

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet: Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012. The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV and featured on YouTube.

Letter

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in ITU’s WCIT (by Center for Democracy and Technology): Academics and civil society groups wrote to the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications process.

Blog Entry

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom (by Sunil Abraham): This blog entry is based on a presentation made in the Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Media Coverage

Why this blocking di? (by R Krishna, Daily News & Analysis, May 27, 2012): “Unlike the Calcutta High Court order in March this year, which specified the 104 websites that should be blocked, a John Doe order doesn’t mention any specific website. In some cases, the websites are being blocked without any evidence (of copyright infringement). Courts need to be informed of what people with John Doe orders are doing. We need to be specific about what can be blocked and what can’t be.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Daily News & Analysis

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Urges PM To Withdraw India’s Proposal For UN Committee On Internet-Policy (by Anupam Saxena, Medianama, May 16, 2012): An interview that Medianama had with Pranesh Prakash is cited in this blog post.
MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions (Times of India, May 18, 2012): “The IT minister has promised to hold consultations but the ideal way to do so would have been to scrap the rules and start from scratch... It's not only about language in these rules. There is a problem with provisions like the one that empowers intermediaries to remove content without notifying the user who had uploaded the content or giving users a chance to explain themselves.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Times of India.

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, May 18, 2012): “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Legally India.

Vimeo Ban: More Web Censorship (by Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012): “Shutting websites merely on the basis of suspicion amounts to private crackdown on free speech of the web...Why didn’t the telecom ministry repeal or object to the move, knowing that the court didn’t spell out the websites to be blocked?”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Wall Street Journal.
Taming the Web, are we? (by Javed Anwer, Economic Times, May 13, 2012): "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery."
Sunil Abraham quoted in the Economic Times.

Cordon tightens: Rajya Sabha nod to harsh IT rules (Anil Sharma and Aishhwariya Subramanian, Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2012): "The trouble with Indian government's proposal to address issues such as network neutrality, privacy and freedom of expression, is top-down. Unlike other countries where internet policies have always been developed with consultation with other stakeholders, here the government imposes its will."
Sunil Abraham quoted in Daily News & Analysis.
"It is an ironical situation where India is not following domestically what it is proposing internationally." Pranesh Prakash quoted in the same article in Daily News & Analysis.

Empires: Individuals in Search of Society (Marc Lafia, Huffington Post, May 18, 2012).
Cyber Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru (Deccan Herald, May 9, 2012): “The state IT secretary has passed more than 80 orders. They include both cases of phishing and orders against cyber cafes for not adhering to rules under the IT Act. The Adjudicator has held that ‘section 43 of IT Act is not applicable to a body or Corporate’, after the amended IT Act came into force in 2008.” Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Deccan Herald.

Digital Natives

Columns by Nishant Shah

Digitally Analogue (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 27, 2012): While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option.
We Are All Cyborgs (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 29, 2012): The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Citizen Action

Resisting Revolutions: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Development, Volume 55, Issue 2, May 2012): In this peer reviewed journal article, Nishant Shah looks into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action that have emerged in the last few years. He seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State–Citizen–Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status quo rather than radically undermining it. He examines a campaign against corruption in India to see how the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present is produced in citizen action.

Telecom

Course

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India: Ford Foundation has given a grant of $200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India over a period of two years. The project involves creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience, organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues and using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Column in Business Standard

The Coming Telecom Monopoly (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 3, 2012): “The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.”

Event Organised

3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at NLSIU, Bangalore (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 27, 2012): Organised by CIS in association with the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. Professor Rohan Samarajiva delivered a lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia.
The Awesome Contracts Project (Geekup @ CIS, May 18, 2012): CIS co-organised the event with Has Geek. Vivek Durai, co-founder at Awesome Contracts gave a public lecture. Amith Narayan participated through Skype.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

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CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

Dot Bharat domain to roll out on August 21

praskrishna — 2014-09-08T07:08:32Z

Web addresses are set to get multilingual in India. Soon you will be able to type in addresses in a web browser in the Devnagri script – with “dot bharat” standing in for the currently common “dot in” domain to begin with. The roll-out of the same begins on August 21.

This was originally published by IANS and mirrored in Firstpost on August 19, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

In the 90-day “sunrise period” of the roll-out those with registered trademarks will be able to register domain names in languages that use the Devnagri script, such as Hindi, Marathi, Boro, Dogri etc. After the sunrise period, it will be thrown open to regular users of the internet.

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), an autonomous non-profit organisation, is responsible for peering of ISPs and routing the domestic traffic within the country. The NIXI and the government’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) have worked on enabling this country code top level domain (ccTLD) of dot bharat. They say more such domains in different scripts and languages will eventually follow.

Currently, one can find content in various languages online. However, the URLs or web addresses are in English. With this rollout, even URLs would be in Hindi or Marathi. “Once the sunrise period runs smoothly, we will introduce other languages in other scripts such as Bengali, Punjabi, Kannada, Telugu etc. There is no timeline set for it yet, but we hope there will be enough pressure with the adoption of the Devnagri domains to implement it soon,” says Mahesh Kulkarni, program coordinator at the C-DAC, heading the language technology group.

A few government websites too will be a part of the launch next week by the union minister of communications and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad. “For example, the pmindia dot gov dot in will be pradhanmantri dot sarkar dot bharat,” says Dr Govind, CEO of NIXI.

While some quarters have welcomed the introduction of the new domain, others are doubtful of its success given the low internet penetration and low literacy rate in the country. A June 2014 report from research firm eMarketer, India had the third largest online user-base globally after China and the US but had the lowest internet penetration growth in Asia Pacific at 17.4%. Osama Manzar, who heads the Digital Empowerment Foundation, suggests getting more people and public institutions online rolling out local language domain names.

“This is not a bad move, but I doubt and wonder if it will encourage people to buy domain names in Indian languages. Is it in sync with the national digital infrastructure? It is important that the government encourage every department and village panchayat to get online with a website along with this,” says Manzar.

Sahitya Akademi-winning Hindi writer Uday Prakash finds the Devnagri domain a welcome move, but stresses on the importance of making quality content in regional languages available online. “It’s a good step and will help those who are not comfortable with English. However, the problem remains that most of the content online is in English. If I search for Robin Williams in English, I will find hundreds of webpages. But if I google the same name in Devnagri, I’ll hardly find anything,” says Prakash.

On the other hand, there is also the view that the move towards a multilingual web need not follow a set path. “If a poor person buys a mobile phone before he build a toilet, who are we to judge? It is a market phenomenon. Like a jigsaw, some pieces of the puzzle may be worked out in advance. There are things like Indic input keyboards, text to speech and speech to text that need to be in place before an Indic language speaker can have the same experience as an English language user of the internet,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization Center for Internet and Society.

In October 2013, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) delegated generic top level domains in Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic scripts. This was under the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) fast track process of the ICANN, which began in 2009, inviting requests from countries for territory names in scripts other than Latin. Meanwhile domestically, the union government has made a push for the use of local languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/tech-first-post-dot-bharat-domain-to-roll-out-on-august-21

CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada: Coverage in Eenadu

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T09:22:23Z

This article was published in Enadu on August 15, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/cis-mou-with-alc-coverage-in-eenadu

'I'm going to ruin you, dear'

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T09:55:47Z

Revenge porn is sweeping across the developed world. And now it's being seen in India. The culprit, says Prasun Chaudhuri, is often a former friend, partner, relative or colleague.

This article by Prasun Chaudhuri with additional reporting by Varuna Verma in Bangalore was published in the Telegraph on August 3, 2014. Rohini Lakshane gave her inputs.

How would you feel if you casually opened a mail and found the link to a pornographic site — and it turned out to contain pictures of yourself naked? That's what Kalpana did. She clicked on a link sent to her and, to her horror, found that the face of the girl who "was available for sex" was hers. Her stomach lurched when she saw that the pictures showed her own bedroom. The site also contained her personal and contact details.

Kalpana was shattered. The subject line of the mail had said "I'm going to ruin you, dear". It had seemed like a prank. Only, it wasn't. It was a very real and malevolent attempt to destroy her reputation.

The 24-year-old Mumbai-based bank executive had become a victim of revenge porn — a new form of cybercrime in which ex-lovers or boyfriends upload intimate photos and videos of their former partners for the world to see. Mostly, the sexually explicit pictures are of women posted by jilted or spurned men.

Kalpana's photos, it was later found, were posted by her recently divorced husband, Pranay. They were taken when the two lived together.

Revenge porn is a trend sweeping across the developed world — from the US and Japan to countries in Europe. And now it's being seen in India, fuelled by the growing access to the Internet and camera-wielding mobile phones — all that is needed for taking and posting offensive pictures.

"Now that you have gadgets you tend to capture every moment of your life in pictures or videos," Calcutta-based psychiatrist J.R. Ram points out. "Not only that, you want to share these images through networking apps in your mobile phone or the Internet — without ever thinking of the consequences."

National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) figures — released on July 1, 2014 — show a 63.7 per cent rise in cyber offences from 2012 to 2013. During this period, the category "transmission of obscene content in electronic form" reflects a quantum jump —104.2 per cent — with 1,203 cases registered and 737 people arrested. "The data show cyber offences against women have increased sharply," NCRB director-general R.R. Verma says. "But we do not have any specific data on revenge crimes."

More and more such cases, however, are now coming to light. Kalpana lodged a complaint with the Navgarh police station in Mumbai. Ashish was arrested under a number of sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

Sneha, a 22-year-old college student from Udupi in Karnataka, also went to the police with the complaint that her ex-boyfriend had put up her photographs and videos on the Internet. M.B. Boralingaiah, superintendent of police, Manipal district, says the boy was arrested and sent to judicial custody.

"There has been an exponential rise in the number of cases of cyber revenge being reported to the police," Boralingaiah says. "This could also be because of increasing awareness of cyber laws, which prompts more people to approach the police." The Karnataka police are now setting up cyber crime police stations at regional levels across the state. Currently, only one police station, in Bangalore, deals with such crimes.

The profile of the criminal in revenge porn, Boralingaiah adds, is different from that of the average criminal plotting a scam using the Internet. In all the cases that have been reported, the accused is a former friend, partner, relative or colleague with no criminal history. They are also educated, intelligent and technologically savvy.

And that is why, despite suspicions, it is not always easy to catch the offender. The police say they have to first track down the origin of the pornographic site where the pictures are posted. "When we receive a complaint we try to locate the IP address (the unique identifier for the computer)," says Siddhartha Chakraborty, in charge of Cyber Police Station, Lalbazar, Calcutta. "But these crooks are clever enough to use some fake IP address of a distant country."

Once the police zero in on the IP address, it asks the web hosts to remove the offensive images, which they normally do. "But the procedure can take weeks or even months," Chakraborty adds.

Debarati Halder, a lawyer and cyber victim counsellor based at Tirunelvelli, Tamil Nadu, says she comes across 10-15 cases of revenge porn every month across the country, mostly involving college students. Often, the victims themselves take pictures while taking a shower or in their inner wear and share them with their boyfriends.

Many young women, Halder says, see such acts as symbols of independence or defiance.

"Taking 'sexy' images of themselves offers them a false sense of liberty, bypassing the repression imposed upon them in the real world," she says. "They feel relatively uninhibited in cyberspace and tend to experiment with their looks and sexuality, but are unable to determine where to draw the line."

The young are not greatly concerned with privacy and security on the Internet, Canada-based Internet safety expert Terry Cutler stresses. "They don't understand that once you send out an inappropriate photo or video, you no longer control it."

There are, according to some estimates, at least 3,000 voyeuristic websites where such pictures can be posted. The visuals are often copied and replicated across multiple porn sites, making it virtually impossible for the authorities to wipe off the digital prints. "Often these clips are available on mirror sites, web archives and caches. Video footage can also go viral on social networks and porn buffs even share these images offline," Chakraborty warns.

But people seldom think that the intimate pictures that they shoot with their lovers may one day become public. "When you're in love you trust your partner. You don't expect him to use these pictures to humiliate you when things fall apart," says Antara, a 32-year-old IT analyst in a government agency who has been a victim of revenge porn. She says that her husband, to seek a quick divorce, uploaded intimate pictures on porn sites to show that she was a woman of "bad character".

Also worrying is that a large number of women are victims of non-consensual and amateur pornography. Abir Atarthy, a Calcutta-based cyber-security expert, recently solved a case in which a college student found her pictures, shot in her bedroom, circulating on a social networking site.

"She was shocked because she not taken those pictures, nor had anybody else," Atarthy says. A thorough check revealed that a boy whose advances she had spurned had installed a hidden spy program in her laptop. "The program — capable of switching on the webcam even if the machine was offline — had been taking her snaps from her private life and sending the visuals to the youth whenever she connected to the Internet," he says.

Rohini Lakshané, a researcher at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, describes such non-consensual acts as sexually violent crimes. "I don't like to use the term 'revenge porn', for it's an act of violence against women," she says. "Sometimes women are even raped and coerced into sex, filmed, threatened and blackmailed over the release of the footage online," Lakshané says.

The intention is to humiliate the woman and make her life miserable is the equivalent of throwing acid on her face, holds Dr Subhrangshu Aditya, a student counsellor at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. "These men can't accept rejection and it's their way to settle scores."

The victim, the experts say, doesn't just feel betrayed but often falls into depression — not just because of the ex-partner's action but because she sees herself as a partner in the crime, for the pictures uploaded may have been shot with her consent. "Their guardians also blame her for this and avoid reporting the matter to the police apprehending a bigger scandal," Halder adds.

The lawyer urges victims of such crimes to always approach the police. "Indian women have a strong legal recourse against perpetrators of revenge porn," she says. The amended 354 [C] of the Criminal Law (Amended) Act 2013, also known as the "voyeurism section", criminalises capturing and sharing images of a woman in private space. Section 66(E) of the IT Act criminalises the publication and transmission of images of an individual's private parts without his or her consent.

"These are watertight laws, strong enough to book an offender," she says, adding that the law also protects a victim's identity.

Across the world, laws are now being framed to punish cyber porn offenders. In January, Israel voted to define posting of images without consent as sexual harassment, punishable by up to five years in jail. Many states in the US already have laws against revenge porn and Britain may bring in one soon.

But perhaps the best way to prevent such crimes is by safeguarding privacy — at home and in the virtual world (see box). Cyber security expert Cutler sums it up aptly: "Just think this before you click the send button: If I were to post the visual on the Internet, would I care if it landed on the front page of a newspaper or the 8pm news?"

Some names have been changed to protect identities

How to Safeguard Your Privacy?

Get acquainted with the privacy settings of the social networks, dating and matrimonial websites you use
Do not upload any single close-shot picture on the Internet; this can be morphed and misused
Never film yourself during sexually intimate acts; even if you delete the pictures and videos these can be recovered from your device
Watch out for weird webcam activity; malicious software can easily infect your computer or phone and control the webcam
Remove your memory card from your mobile or format the hard disc of your computer before giving the device to service centres
Don't give your device to others and always lock your applications (especially picture galleries) in your mobile
Install and update antivirus and antimalware in your device

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-telegraph-august-3-2014-i-am-going-to-ruin-you-dear

RightsCon 2018

Admin — 2018-02-28T15:15:06Z

Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, Vidushi Marda, and Amba Kak will be participating in the seventh event in the RightsCon Summit Series to be held in Toronto from May 16 - 18, 2018 as speakers.

Rohini's proposal “Cheap and chipper: IP in India's affordable smartphones” has been accepted!

As the world’s leading conference on human rights in the digital age, RightsCon brings together business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, and human rights defenders from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and digital technology. This is where our community comes together to break down silos, forge partnerships, and drive large-scale, real-world change toward a more free, open, and connected world.

For more info click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/rightscon-2018

Marathi Language Day events by CIS-A2K in February 2018

subodh — 2018-03-17T08:58:44Z

Marathi Language day is celebrated all over world on 27th February. Dnyanpeeth award winning writer V.V.Shirwadkar alias Kusumagraj was born on this date. Various events and activities were conducted in collaboration with community, institutions and government departments.

Online Workshops

These were conducted at Jeevan Jyoti Women empowerment centre,Velhe ; Garware College of Commerce, Pune and Dayanand college in Solapur. Proof reading of marathi book on Wikisource was completed by the students of Garware college on this day.

Media

Guest editorial in leading newspaper Sakal was published on 10th Feb. The gist is - Everyone speaks, discusses about status of marathi on the occasion of language day on 27th feb and Yearly Litfest. If we want to make marathi, a global language for knowledge sharing and connecting to world lang' communities, it is necessary to adopt unicode and open source softwares in writing, publishing,printing etc. The collaborative works also need unicode as it is a universal bridge. The Wikipedias in 288 lang's is a great success story because it is based on Unicode & open source. The editorial also gives future action plan to achieve this, viz. upgradation of academic courses related to language business, writers/publishers workshops, Indic lang computing centre, digitisation/OCR and content donation in Wikisource, Wiktionary etc., Copyright free/relicense movement among writers or copyright holders, Appeal to social and educational magazines to upload their old issues on Wikisource as reference material.

Radio Interview on Tomato FM 94.3 Kolhapur on 27th Feb. The promotion was made through Facebook post and ads on Radio. The interview received good response from 2 districts.

Event in Sangli

A special event was arranged by 'Janswasthya organisation on 28th Feb. Nearly 80 prominent personalities from Sangli district gathered together to discuss about growth of marathi language. Alongwith Subodh Kulkarni, writer Ramdas Phutane also participated.

Media Coverage

News in Pudhari
News in Lokmat
News in Samana

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-language-day-events-by-cis-a2k-in-february-2018

Chromebook for the Project Tiger- How it is helping me to contribute actively on Wikimedia projects!

Sangram Keshari Senapati — 2018-04-20T06:21:10Z

Project Tiger is a collaboration project of Wikimedia Foundation with Centre for Internet and Society, Wikimedia India and other affiliates of India to improve and create high-quality content in Indic languages like Odia, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi etc.This project helps the active and experienced Wikipedia editors by supporting them with Internet charges for 6 months and Laptops to 50 volunteers to address existing Wikipedia content gaps.

A diverse list of articles related to art, health, culture, and others are provided for Project Tiger Edit-a-thon to bridge the content gap on Odia Wikipedia, and within these 3 months (March, April & May), volunteers who write the most number of articles in their language Wikipedias with the proper guidelines will be awarded prizes worth 3000 INR, 2000 INR and 1000 INR according to their contribution for the month.

I applied for a laptop under this program so that I could contribute more than as usual. I must thank Sailesh Patnaik for guiding me to apply for the laptop. After verifying all the applied list, the final result was out and my username "ssgapu22" was on the 33rd number with other 4 Odia Wikipedia friends.

On 16th March, I received an e-mail from Tito to submit my address to get the laptop. So, I submitted the address of my PG, where I'm staying right now in Bangalore. After 30 minutes, he pinged me on Facebook and called me to the office. So that, I could receive the laptop directly.

I reached there at the CIS-A2K office to receive the laptop. There were Tanveer, Gopala, and Tito and later Ananth joined us. I met them at Mysore for TTT 2018. It was like a reunion with them. After a short conversation with Ravi, I did a live unboxing the Chromebook on Facebook, where I was asked about my experience in the Wikimedia movement and about some features of this laptop.

In that box, there was an Acer Chromebook. I have experience with the Windows OS and Linux OS, but this was little different. Since this has the Chrome browser only and all are available online. So, Tito described some of the features of Chromebook to me.

Now, I must say something about this laptop. It doesn't have any hard disk drive to store movies. So, all the time we hold it must work and all those works could be done in online. So we could focus more on Wikipedia works. The power backup is outstanding, around 10 to 12 hours. So, the power failure doesn't affect the work. And yes, with a short update of Chrome OS, the Google Playsote activated so we could download the play store apps directly.

By getting this laptop, I started working on this and all those online works are done easily. Previously, when I was using other laptops, the works took longer than as usual since the slow processing, but here that problem avoided. Finally, this laptop would definitely help me with the Wikipedia works. Since I'm working on the #1WikiYear project on Odia Wikipedia and Wikisource on a particular subject after contributing to my #1WikiYear project, I also write an article for the Project Tiger from the list.

Link to Sangram Keshari Senapati blogpost

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/chromebook-for-the-project-tiger-in-a-collaboration-with-google-by-wikipedia

Pervasive Technologies: Working Document Series - Research Questions and a Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory

nehaa — 2015-09-05T04:56:03Z

This document is divided into two parts - the first part lays out a series of research questions, potentially seeking to apply actor-network theory as a research methodology. The second part seeks to map literature around the Actor-Network Theory ("ANT") as a research methodology.

Part 1: Research Questions

The aim of this exercise is to delineate the contours of the paper, and provide some insight into the demarcation of the various sections.

The overall context to this paper will be determined by a globalized form of intellectual property ownership, and the various instances in which this narrative finds a place (either overtly or covertly) in the regulation of standard essential patents in India. In our paper, the globalized form of IP ownership is probably most clearly indicated in the standard setting process, where participants are International Standard Setting Organizations determining, in a manner of speaking - the rules of the game - that is - licensing on Fair Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Basis. The other important player to our understanding of global ownership would be multilateral organizations such as Ericsson, involved in many of the disputes before the Delhi High Court and the Competition Commission of India ("CCI"). Perhaps international actors/actants would also be international legal principles as well as international regulators such as the FTC or the ECC themselves. This phase of the paper will also trace India's specific location in global competition. In doing so, not only will the market positions of some of the players be examined, but also some comparisons will be made to illustrate how the relationship of international jurisdictions (mainly the USA and the EU) with international multinational corporations that are a party to litigation differs from that of India. This phase of the chapter will most likely apply the doctrinal method of research, study academic texts as sources as well as study some decisions by international regulators and courts to understand the tools and sites available for regulation as well as the nature of the regulatory process itself.

The second phase of this chapter will seek to map the overall context to specific cases - that is, pending legal processes in India. This includes both, ongoing litigation on patent infringement at the Delhi High Court as well as ongoing disputes before the CCI as well. The characters in this litigation also trace back to the broader context; some of them more directly than others. The multinational corporations are directly involved in both contexts, whereas the domestic regulators may seek to draw inferences or apply commonly understood international legal principles, thus invoking more international actants.

This phase of the chapter will study three key litigations in India - Ericsson and Micromax, Ericsson and Intex, and a third that is yet to be defined. Legal traditions and institutions in India will be used to understand what legal possibilities are available for using competition regulation to regulate SEPs. This includes specifically the levers in competition law such as abuse of dominance as well as the nature of the competition regulator and the role that it identifies for itself. One might also consider the relative 'youth' of the competition regulator as a factor in laying down legal principles, the constraints it imposes on itself as well as a tension between the market regulator and the courts. Perhaps this might also be an actant, in the context of the actor network theory. This phase of the chapter will most likely apply the doctrinal method of research, study academic texts as sources as well as study legal instruments and judicial decisions as sources.

The third phase of this chapter will now ask the question of standard essential patent (SEP) regulation, located within this broader matrix of intellectual property ownership and fluidity of actants. The specific question to be asked will be what is the competition regulation challenge for SEPs in India? This phase will attempt to distill the uniqueness of India in the narrative of global IP ownership around SEP litigation. It will be observed that the nature of the players in international litigation as well as in India is rather different. This phase will also attempt to make a case for IP regulation within India's existing culture of engaging with the public interest in intellectual property regulation.

It is in this phase that one must also examine the usefulness of the actor-network theory as a research methodology to study SEP regulation in India. It must be noted that while SEP regulation so used is used to refer to competition regulation specifically, and not to other levers, such as mechanisms within intellectual property law itself. The focus of this exercise will be competition regulation, with an engagement with other areas of the law and the judicial process only in as much as it informs our understanding of competition regulation of SEPs or impedes it. If one were to apply the actor network theory to this phase of the exercise, one would view courts, parties involved in the litigation, the CCI, international legal principles, international market regulators, international SSOs, competition law as well as issues raised in the litigation as 'actants', both human and non human, who are to be treated on par with each other, with a study of the networks that these actants create, or are a part of.

Part 2: Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory

The aim of this exercise is to first, understand the ANT as a research methodology; second, to study its components and third, to ascertain its suitability as a research method for exploring the challenge of regulating SEP litigation through completion law mechanisms in India.

What is the Actor-Network Theory?

David Banks, in a 2011 blog post, contextualized in trying to trace a relationship between our offline and online behavior presents an overview of the ANT.[1] Banks describes ANT as an ongoing project that seeks to radically transform how social scientists talk about society's relationship to technology and other non human actors ; and identifies Bruno Latour, John Law and Michael Callon as the major authors in this space. (It is observed that there might have been additions or deletions to this core list of thinkers - not to self for further reading).

In his paper[2] reflecting on the ANT, Bruno Latour refers to himself as a 'fellow traveler' of the various network 'revolutions', and says that in the network, he has found a powerful way of rephrasing basic issues of social theory, epistemology and philosophy. Latour says that in its simplest and deepest sense, the notion of the network is of use whenever action has to be redistributed.[3] In a different paper, Latour argues that the purpose of the ANT is not to provide explanations for the behaviour and reasons of actors, but only to map procedures which enable actors to relate to each other and each others' world building capacity. My discomfort with this reading is trying to locate what these procedures would be in an SEP regulation environment.

Identifying the components of the ANT

Latour presents an actant - or an actor - as something that acts, or to which some sort of activity is assigned by others. [4] There is no special motivation of humans or human actors. "An actant," says Latour, "can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of the action."[5] The conception of an actant, Latour further articulates, should be not as fixed entities, but as fluid, circulating objects, whose stability and continuity depends on other actions. [6]

So what is on its agenda? The attribution of human, unhuman, nonhuman, inhuman, characteristics; the distribution of properties among these entities; the connections established between them; the circulation entailed by these attributions, distributions and connections; the transformation of those attributions, distributions and connections, of the many elements that circulates and of the few ways through which they are sent.[7]

Banks[8] identifies actants to be of two types - human and non human, further explaining that 'actors' is typically used to refer to humans. These actants have equal amounts of agency within the actor-network. Banks proceeds to demonstrate this applicability of equal agency with an illustration of getting wi-fi connectivity in Albany. In his narrative [9] (and as he notes later himself), Banks uses the same language (read as according agency to the inanimate) to describe both, the human and non human actants. Says Banks, that the actants are merely nodes that facilitate a larger functioning. It is submitted that the 'larger functioning' being referred to is probably something that would be determined on a case to case basis - depending on what was being studied.

In a 1999 paper On Recalling ANT[10], Latour articulates a problem with the usage of the word 'network' as a result of its usage having changed over time - from using it to refer to a series of transformations incapable of being captured by prevalent social theory at the time, to an unmediated access to every piece of information (to my understanding within the context of the World Wide Web). Latour explains that his new understanding is exactly the opposite of what they meant and that it ought not to be used to mean the transformations they were initially articulating.

Another of Latour's papers is helpful in arriving at an understanding of the 'network', where he argues that it would be fallacious to consider it in a technical sense, as one would a sewage, a train or a telephone network.[11] Unlike a technical network, Latour argues, an actor-network may have no compulsory paths, no nodes and might be quite local in nature. Latour further argues that thinking in terms of a network helps us overcome the tyranny of distance, citing a range of examples including standing one metre away from somebody in a telephone booth and yet being more closely connected to his mother, thousands of miles away, among others[12]. In each of his illustrations, however, Latour articulates closeness or distance in terms of geography or presence in a physical sense, which might not be entirely applicable to the research question we're seeking to study. What might be more useful perhaps, is the articulation of the network where he argues that instead of tracing an individual to the collective or the agency, one could only at the number of connections an element has and gauge the importance of the element in light of these connections . The greater the number of connections, the more important an element and vice versa. [13]

ANT Criticism and Applicability of the ANT to our research question?

Before delving into specifics of the ANT that lend themselves to a critique, I submit a broader reservation with the application of the ANT to studying legal and regulatory processes. From my reading and understanding of the ANT so far, a cornerstone appears to be the exclusion normative ideologies, with a focus on studying processes and networks as is, without formulating a value-judgment on their larger place in the society being studied. In so far as defending this claim, Latour and other supporters of this theory have relied on scientific examples (for instance, the reference to the Colombia Shuttle - NASA and its complex organizational structure)[14] or illustrations from the social sciences or social phenomena. I'm still attempting to locate a paper that utilizes the ANT to study law or regulation. Prima facie, the challenge being posed is to study inherently normative structures and processes with clear power structures.

Banks[15] describes the efficacy of the ANT in describing the processes by which inventions and technological systems come into being, or fail to do so. Perhaps in studying the legal regulation of SEP litigation in India, the efficacy of the ANT would like in describing the processes by which legal regulation and legal systems in India (specifically to regulate SEPs) come into being, or fail to do so. By extension, for our research question, non human actants as identified by Banks[16] would probably be legal institutions and the parties to the litigation themselves. What is unclear at the moment is whether policy and legal instruments or levers themselves would be actors.

Banks, in his article also articulates criticisms[17] to the ANT propounded by Sandra Harding, David Bloor and Sal Restivo, on the grounds of being blind towards other social factors such as race or patriarchy. If one were to extend this to the research question at hand, an argument could be made that the ANT seeks to equate dissimilarly situated institutions. Corollaries to race and patriarchy might be found in the market power of parties (an Ericsson v. a Micromax), or even within regulatory set up itself, where, based on the facts so far, an argument could be made out that different regulators are situated differently, where the Delhi High Court could pass an order restraining another regulator - the Competition Commission of India, from passing its own order.

A reference to the 'agency' critique of the ANT is made by Latour himself, in his 1999 paper. Latour goes on to acknowledges the critiques of the ANT, but says that most have (mistakenly) centered either around the actor or around the network; and that the idea was to never occupy a position in the agency/structure debate.[18] Later in the paper, Latour further clarifies that actants are not to be perceived as playing the role of agency, and network is not to be seen as playing the role of the structure. Instead, says he, they represent two sides of the same phenomenon. Latour further explains that the ANT merely tried to learn from the actors (what was sought to be learnt was difficult to grasp), without attempting to be an explanation of societal pressures (and the reasons for such pressures) on actors. The difficulty in reading this paper for me was that it was rather dense in many respects, with various concepts - including, for instance, the idea of the 'social', which he refers to constantly, not being clearly articulated. Further, what is uncertain to me is how this question of agency will play out if applied to a legal or regulatory context. If, for instance, a legal principle was to be a non human actant, how would this have an agency independent of the human actor (the judge) that would be the one applying the legal principle in the first place? Can we truly exclude the question of agency from the ANT if the very exclusion of agency means a recognition of the existence of agency in the first place? How does one exclude the question of agency in seemingly unequally situated actors with an inherent power dynamic? Is the ANT, then even a useful research methodology? In his 1999 paper, Latour argues that the aim of the ANT is to study actors without the imposition of an a priori definition of their world building capacities.[19] The question now arises for me, is how to divest regulators of their 'world building capacities'.

Explaining the rationale[20] for the ANT (in social science research), Latour articulates a dissatisfaction that social scientists have with both, micro (local sites) and macro levels (more abstract ideas like culture, patriarchy etc.) of research. This dissatisfaction, he argues, results in a back and forth between these sites ad infinitum. The ANT, argues Latour, is a way of tracing these dissatisfactions, not for the purposes of finding a solution, but to follow them elsewhere and explore the very conditions that make these two disappointments possible. Latour further clarifies that one must not understand 'network' in ANT to mean a larger society that would help make sense of local interactions or as an anonymous field of forces. Instead, he says, it refers to summing up various interactions through various devices, inscriptions, forms and formulae into a very local, very practical, very tiny locus. My key takeaway from this articulation was that ANT could be used to study various interactions between various key stakeholders, with a very specific research question. Given that the locus could also be tiny, perhaps if the research question was narrowed further, the key stakeholders, or the 'network' and the 'actants' would reduce as well.

Latour has also argued that the ANT makes no assumptions about how an actor should behave and assumes infinite pliability and absolute freedom of actors. [21] In itself AT is not a theory of action no more than cartography is a theory on the shape of coasts lines and deep sea ridges; it just qualify what the observer should suppose in order for the coast lines to be recorded in their fine fractal patterns. Any shape is possible provided it is obsessively coded as longitude and latitude. Similarly any association is possible provided it is obsessively coded as heterogeneous associations through translations.

there is no difficulty in seeing that AT is not about traced networks by about a network-tracing activity. As I said above there is not a net and an actor laying down the net, but there is an actor whose definition of the world outlines, traces, delineate, limn, describe, shadow forth, inscroll, file, list, record, mark, or tag a trajectory that is called a network. No net exists independently of the very act of tracing it, and no tracing is done by an actor exterior to the net. A network is not a thing but the recorded movement of a thing. The questions AT addresses have now changed. It is not longer whether a net is representation or a thing, a part of society or a part of discourse or a part of nature, but what moves and how this movement is recorded. [22]

A useful articulation of the application of ANT emerges out of Jonathan Murdoch's 1997 paper.[23]He submits that the human gaze is being increasingly considered as an unreliable source of knowledge, being in a constant state of flux. Citing the example of the environment/biosphere to demonstrate the futility of the separations we make between nature and society, Murdoch argues that any solution to the environmental crisis will involve a profound re-thinking of how we link these two domains.[24]Extending this argument to our research question, one might ponder for instance that any solution to the SEP litigation and regulation conundrum will involve a profound re-thinking of how we link the courts and the CCI. What is unclear is what method we will use to arrive at this re-thinking, or what the re-thought out version would look like.

Murdoch does, however, articulate concerns with the 'non dualistic' framework (which the ANT positions itself as) and argues, relying on others before him, that such an adoption could have far reaching consequences; that the very basis of the development of social science is such a binary division. Murdoch argues that the nature-society divide has enabled social scientists to break the hegemony of the natural scientists. Murdoch further submits his reading of Latour, where he states that the power of laboratories arises as a result of their ability to tie together actors that are beyond the lab into networks that are then used to disseminate scientific facts.[25] Murdoch's paper largely focuses on blurring the distance between 'natural' and 'social' actors, and identifies the difficulties in attempting to compare the two. Murdoch questions if natural actors whose identity emerge from nature itself are malleable as social actors, who are by definition, a product of society. What is unclear, however, is how malleable are two dissimilarly situated social actors; and whether 'social actors' is broad enough to encompass all institutions born out of or with a human/societal interaction component. Specifically, for our paper, would courts and the CCI both qualify as social actors? Would legal principles? Would the decision making process by the courts itself? Latour's very example for proposing the ANT was that of pasteurization in France. Murdoch also questions whether it's possible to in fact treat various actants as each other. In order to address another critique of ANT, that where we exclude notions of power, Mudoch says Law's articulation - of focusing on 'victims' instead of 'heroes' might prove to be useful. This has not been discussed in detail, leaving the reader to make their own inferences.

In other words, can ANT, with its seamless webs, forever crisscrossing the human-nonhuman divide, provide a secure platform for critique, for the expression of a profound dissatisfaction with the activities of powerful social actors and the attribution of responsibility to those actors? Can it, in other words, ever do anything more than describe, in a prosaic fashion, the dangerous imbroglios that enmesh us?
Does this emphasis on description necessarily represent "an insuperable obstacle to effective and convincing social criticism

[1] David Banks, A Brief Summary of Actor Network Theory, available at http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/12/02/a-brief-summary-of-actor-network-theory/ (last accessed 29 August, 2015).

[2] Bruno Latour - Networks, Societies, Spheres : Reflections of an Actor - Network Theorist, International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), 796- 810, available at http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewArticle/1094 (last accessed 31 August, 2015).

[3] Id at 797.

[4] Bruno Latour - complications paper - at internal page 7.

[5] Id.

[6] Id at internal page 8.

[7] Id at internal page 7.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Bruno Latour, On Recalling ANT, available at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-77-RECALLING-ANT-GBpdf.pdf (last accessed 28 August, 2015).

[11] Bruno Latour, On actor-network theory. A few clarifications plus more than a few complications, available at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-67%20ACTOR-NETWORK.pdf (last accessed 30 August, 2015) at internal page 2.

[12] Id at internal page 4

[13] Id at internal page 6.i

[14] Latour, the networks, societies, spheres paper

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Latour, recalling the ANT paper.

[19] Recalling ANT paper, page 20

[20] Bruno Latour, On Recalling ANT, available at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-77-RECALLING-ANT-GBpdf.pdf (last accessed 28 August, 2015).

[21] Latour, the complications paper, page 9.

[22] Id at 14.

[23] Jonathan Murdoch, Inhuman/nonhuman/: actor-network theory and the prospects for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1997, Volume 15, 731-576

[24] Murdoch at page 732.

[25] Murdoch at page 737.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-working-document-series-research-questions-and-a-literature-review-on-actor-network-theory

ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ

pavanaja — 2015-09-06T12:09:51Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS-A2K) has ongoing partnership with SDM College, Ujire. Students of Masters in Communication and Journalism will be writing articles in Kannada Wikipedia. This academic year’s programme was inaugurated on August 12. It was followed by hands-on workshop. SahilOnline has reported this on August 14, 2015.

Read the online entry published by SahilOnline on August 14, 2015.

ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ: ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾ ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶವಾಗಿದೆ. ಉಪಯುಕ್ತ ಬರವಣಿಗೆಗಳ ಕೋಶವನ್ನು ಹೊಂದಿದ ಇದನ್ನು ಯಾರು ಬೇಕಾದರೂ ಮುಕ್ತವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಬಹುದು ಎಂದು ಪತ್ರಿಕಾ ಅಂಕಣಕಾರ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಡಾ. ಯು. ಬಿ. ಪವನಜ ಹೇಳಿದರು.
ಅವರು ಗುರುವಾರ ಉಜಿರೆ ಎಸ್.ಡಿ.ಎಮ್. ಸ್ವಾಯತ್ತ ಕಾಲೇಜಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಪತ್ರಿಕೋದ್ಯಮ ವಿಭಾಗದ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳಿಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾ ಬರವಣಿಗೆ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ನೀಡಿ ಮಾತನಾಡಿದರು.

2001ರಲ್ಲಿ ಅಮೇರಿಕಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭಗೊಂಡ ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾ ಪ್ರಪಂಚದ 290 ಭಾಷೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇದೆ. ದೇಶದ 20 ಭಾಷೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಒಳಗೊಂಡಿದೆ. 2003ರಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾ ಬರವಣಿಗೆ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭವಾಗಿದೆ. ಕೇವಲ 20 ಸಾವಿರ ಲೇಖನಗಳು ಇದೆ. ಬೇರೆ ಭಾಷೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಹೋಲಿಸಿದರೆ ಕಡಿಮೆ ಅನ್ನಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಬುದ್ಧತೆಯ ಬರವಣಿಗೆ ಶೈಲಿಯನ್ನು ಸುಧಾರಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇದೊಂದು ಸುಲಭದ ಮಾಧ್ಯಮ. ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳು ಸಂಶೋಧನಾ ಪ್ರವೃತ್ತಿ ಮತ್ತು ಕೌಶಲ ಬೆಳೆಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕು ಎಂದರು.

ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾ ಬಳಕೆಯಿಂದ ನಮ್ಮ ಭಾಷೆ ಮತ್ತು ಶೈಲಿ ಸುಧಾರಣೆಯಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಂಗ್ರಹದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಕ್ರೋಢೀಕರಣ ಮತ್ತು ಉಲ್ಲೇಖವೂ ಅಗತ್ಯ. ಗೂಗಲ್‍ನಲ್ಲಿ ಯಾವುದೇ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಇರುವುದಿಲ್ಲ. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಎಲ್ಲಿ ಸಿಗುತ್ತದೆ ಎಂದು ಮಾತ್ರ ಅದು ಸೂಚಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಯಾವುದೇ ಪ್ರಕರಣ ಘಟಿಸಿದ ತಕ್ಷಣ ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ ಅದು ನವೀಕರಣ ಆಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತರು ನಿರಂತರ ಅಧ್ಯಯನಶೀಲರಾಗಿ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಂಗ್ರಹಿಸಬೇಕು. ಭಾಷೆ ಬಳಸಿದಾಗ ಅದು ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತದೆ ಹಾಗೂ ನಮ್ಮ ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತಿ ಉಳಿಯುತ್ತದೆ ಎಂದರು.

ಕಾಲೇಜಿನ ಪತ್ರಿಕೋದ್ಯಮ ವಿಭಾಗದ ಮುಖ್ಯಸ್ಥ ಪ್ರೊ. ಭಾಸ್ಕರ ಹೆಗ್ಡೆ ಉಪಸ್ಥಿತರಿದ್ದರು. ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳಾದ ಅರಹಂತ ಸ್ವಾಗತಿಸಿ, ಚೇತನ್ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ನಿರ್ವಹಿಸಿದರು.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/sahil-online-august-14-2015

'We Need to Proactively Ensure that People Can't File Patents Representative of the Creativity of a FOSS Community'

rohini — 2015-09-27T11:51:50Z

Rohini Lakshané attended “Open Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Our Digital Culture” in Bangalore on August 13, 2015. Major takeaways from the event are documented in this post.

Speakers: Prof. Eben Moglen, Keith Bergelt, and Mishi Choudhary; Panel discussion moderator: Venkatesh Hariharan. See the event page here. The organizers republished Rohini's report on their website.

Prof. Eben Moglen on FOSS and entrepreneurship

The culture of business in the 21^st century needs open source software or free software because there is one Internet governed by one set of rules, protocols and APIs that make it possible for us to interact with each another. The Internet made everybody interdependent on everybody else. Startup culture needs free and open source software (FOSS) because startups are an insurgency, a guerrilla activity in business. The incumbents in a capitalistic world dislikes competition and detests that existing resources, such as FOSS, enable insurgents to circumvent some of the steep curve that they had to climb in order to become incumbents.
Hardware is developing in ways that make the idea of proprietary development of software obsolete. There is no large producer of proprietary software that isn't also dependent on FOSS. Microsoft Cloud is based on deployments that do not use Windows but are based on FOSS. The era of Android as a semi-closed, semi-proprietary form of FOSS is over. Big and small companies around the world are exploiting the open source nature of Android.
Free software is a renewable resource not a commodity. Management is needed to avoid over-consumption or destruction of the FOSS ecosystem. Software is to the 21^st century economic life what coal, steel, and rare earth metals were at the end of the previous century.
FOSS turned out to be about developing human brains. It turned out to be about using human intelligence in software better. Earlier universities, engineering colleges and research institutions were the greatest manufacturers and users of FOSS. Now businesses of all sizes are.
When Richard Stallman and Prof. Eben Moglen set out to make GPL free, they initiated a large public discussion process, the primary goal of which was to ensure that individual developers have as much right to talk and to be heard as loudly as the largest firms in the world. At the end of the negotiation process, 35 or 36 of the largest patent holders in the IT industry accepted the basic agreement to be a part of the commons. --- Incumbents like people to pay for a seat at the table. Paying to have an opinion is a pretty serious part of the landscape of the patent system.

Prof. Eben Moglen on Digital India

Every e-governance project that the Indian government buys should use FOSS. The very nature of the way the citizens and governments interact can come to be mediated by software that people can read, understand, modify, and improve. An enormous ecosystem will come up -- a kind of public–private partnership (PPP) in the improvement of governance and government services, which is far more useful than most other forms of PPP conceptualised in the developed world in the 20^th century.
Everybody has a stake in the success of this policy. Several corporations are working against this policy as they once stated that they do not need FOSS.
The biggest market for both making and consuming software in the world is in India, because the science done here will dominate global software making, which in turn will define how the Internet works, which in turn will define society. One can't develop the largest society on earth by reinventing the wheel. The government is going to understand that only the sharing of knowledge and the sharing of forms of inventing would enable the largest society in the world to develop itself freely and take its place in the forefront of digital humanity.
If every state government's data centre across India is going to be turned into a cloud, one state might have VMWare, another might have AWS, and so on, it would be disastrous. To prevent this, all e-governance activities of every state government and federal agency in India could be conducted in one, big, homogeneous Indian cloud. This would enable utility computing across the country for all citizens, which would also make room for citizen computing to happen. When one moves towards architectures of omnipresent utility computing with large amounts of memory flatly available to everybody, one is going to be describing a national computing environment for a billion people. We can't even begin to model it until we start accomplishing it.
Prof. Eben Moglen's ambition is that there comes a time not very long from now when basic data science is taught in Indian secondary schools. The software is free and all the big data sets are public. A nation of a 100 million data scientists rules the world.

Keith Bergelt on the Open Invention Network

Over the past 10 years, Open Invention Network (OIN) has emerged as the largest patent non-aggression community in the history of technology. It has around 1,700 participants and is adding almost 2 participants every day. In the last quarter, OIN had approximately 200 licensees.
There is now a cultural transformation where companies are recognising that where OIN members collaborate, they shouldn't use patents to stop or slow down progress. Where members compete, they choose to invent while utilising defensive patents publications. What we are doing is a patent collaboration and a technical collaboration that exists in major projects around the world.
OIN has been making a major effort since January 2015 to spend more time in India and China to be able to ensure that the technological might and expertise represented in the two countries can be a part of the global community, and that global projects can start here. “We can expect to leverage the expertise of the community to be able to drive innovation from here [India and China]. It's not about IBM investing a billion dollars a year since 1999 and having some birthright to driving the open source initiatives around the world or about Google or Red Hat or anyone else. You have the ability to impact major changes and we want to be able to support you in the name of freedom of action as participants.”

Panel Discussion

Patent Wars and Innovation

In the past 5 to 7 years, patent wars in the handset segment of the information technology (IT) market have wasted tens of billions of dollars on litigation, and on raising the price of patent armaments. This patent litigation was purely an economic loss to the IT industry and it contributed nothing. If the patent system strangles invention, non-profit groups, non-commercial bodies, free software makers, and start-ups cannot invent freely.
Defensive patent publications, such as those made by IBM, lead to the gross underestimation of the inventive power and output of the company. People are struggling to find something to evaluate the productive output of an entity – startup, micro-industry or macro-industry. Patents are being used inappropriately and it's part of the corruption of the patent system. Any venture capitalist (VC) who believes that either the innovative capacities or the potential success factors of a start-up are tied to its patents should know that there are only a minuscule number of cases where patents are the differentiator. The differentiators required in order to sustain business are how smart the people are, how quickly they innovate, and how quickly they are able to adapt to complex situations. We see a trend in the US of not equating patents with innovation. The core-developer and hacker communities are largely anti-patent.
However, the flip side is that if the FOSS communities do not patent defensively, i.e., acquire and publish patents for their inventions in order to prevent others from getting patents in one jurisdiction or another, patent trolls will eventually encroach on the communities' inventive output. The only people making money out of this whole process are lawyers. It is slowing down the uptake of technology by creating fears and doubts in the system.
FOSS communities didn't qualify everything produced in the 23 years of (Linus') Linux, which would have let the service serve as stable prior art, preventing other people from filing patents. We can debate what is patentable subject matter in general or whether software should be patentable, but in the meantime if we can be proactive and file everything that we have in defensive publications and make it accessible to the patent and trademark offices here and around the world, we will have far fewer patents. We need to be activists in making sure that people can't file patents that are representative of the creativity of a community.
The Chinese government has instituted a programme designed to produce defensive publications in order to capture all the inventiveness across their industries, to be able to ensure that the quality of what ultimately gets patented is at least as high.
The US has a massive repository called ip.com, which is with every patent examiner of the USPTO.
India does not grant software patents as per section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, but that doesn't mean that no software patents are being granted. One of the empirical studies conducted by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) in India shows that 98.3% of the [telecom and computing technology] patents granted till 2013 went to multinational corporations. Almost none of the assignees are Indian.
In the context of the ongoing patent infringement law suits filed in the Delhi High Court by Ericsson [link]: The Delhi High Court has had a reputation of being very pro-intellectual property from the beginning.
Also, there is pressure from trade organisations. In August 2015, Ericsson along with ASSOCHAM invited the Director General of the Competition Commission of India to present a paper about why patents are good. It is essential to determine how the rules of conflict of interest apply here. This is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry would do. The only bodies who would object are Doctors Without Borders (MSF) or some local organisations who realise that high priced patented drugs is not what India needs and that we do not need to have the same IP policy as the US or Japan. We only need a different policy.
The Special 301 Report of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is a big sham, and it suggests that India doesn't have strict enforcement of IP law. India does, unlike China.
Accenture has been granted a software patent in India. The patent is about an expert present in a remote location transferring knowledge to somebody who is listening in another location. Universities offering MOOCs, BPOs, and many other services would fall under such a patent. SFLC spent four years trying to fight this patent. The first defence of Accenture's battery of lawyers was that they won't use the patent.
Patents of very low quality are being bought at very high prices. The tax system or the subsidy system for innovation regards all patents as equal. This is a pricing failure and that should be corrected by other forms of intervention. The pendulum has already begun to swing the other way. Alice Corp was the third consecutive and unanimous ruling by the US Supreme Court that abstract ideas are not patentable. Patent applications pertaining to business methods and algorithms are increasingly being rejected by the USPTO after the ruling.

Prof. Eben Moglen on Facebook:

Facebook is a badly designed technology because there is one Man in the Middle who keeps all the logs. The privacy problem with Facebook is not just about what people post. It's about surveillance and data mining of web reading behaviour. It is a social danger that ought not to exist. I have said since 2010 is that we can't forbid it; let's replace it. It means bringing the web back as a writeable medium for people in an easy way. What I see as next-generation architecture could just as well be described as Tim Burners Lee's previous generation architecture.

You have to be able to trust the Internet. If you can't, you are going to be living in the shadow of govt surveillance, corporate surveillance, the fear of identity theft, and so on. We need to be able to explain to people what kind of software they can trust and what kind they can't. Distributed social networking will happen; it's not that difficult a problem.

An example of federated networking is Freedombox, a cheap hardware doing router jobs using free software in ways that encourage privacy. The pilot project for Freedombox has been deployed in little villages in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These routers don't deliver logs to a thug in a hoodie in Menlo Park.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/we-need-to-proactively-ensure-that-people-cant-file-representatives-of-the-creativity-of-a-foss-community

Not many contributors for Kannada-centric Wiki page

pavanaja — 2015-09-13T05:42:46Z

Wikipedia, which has over 60,000 contributing editors in India, has only 33 Kannadigas contributing to the Kannada section, said Pavanaja U B, programme manager, The Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru.

The article was published in the Times of India (Mangaluru edition) on July 5, 2015.

At the inaugural of the two-day workshop on 'Kannada Wikipedia' organized for students by the department of Kannada at St Aloysius College on Saturday, he said, "Wikipedia, which has over three crore articles, has 18 lakh editors spread across the world. While there are 33 editors for Kannada, only eight are involved actively," he said, adding that Wikipedia at present has about 20,500 articles in Kannada.

On the objectives of the workshop, Pavanaja said, "We have plans to train 25 Kannada students from St Aloysius College in uploading and updating Kannada articles in Wikipedia. Those 25 students will train 500 more Kannada students in the college and thereby increase the number of articles uploaded to Kannada Wikipedia. It will be a part of their academic assignment."

Pavanaja told students to cross-check each article before uploading to Wikipedia. "Students should adopt a research methodology to prepare articles for Wikipedia. One must study the subject in detail and then upload it to Wikipedia. It does not require scholarly knowledge," he added.

Wikipedia, which is a collaborative encyclopedia, has 23 Indian languages including Kannada and Tulu, he said. "Though Tulu articles were being published from 2007, there were only 135 articles uploaded to Wikipedia. Later, after 2013, many volunteered to upload articles and at present there are more than 800 articles in it. We have plans to increase the number of Tulu articles," he added.

"It is very easy for one to become a Wikipedia editor. Those who want to become the Kannada Wikipedia editor may create a login after opening kn.wikipedia.org and go through the tutorial files. Writing suitable articles for Wikipedia will neither fetch you money, nor name in it. It is selfless social service and necessary for the protection of language," Pavanaja said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-times-of-india-july-5-2015-not-many-contributors-for-kannada-centric-wiki-page

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Coverage in Udayavani)

pavanaja — 2015-09-13T06:17:49Z

As part of its ongoing partnership with St Aloysius College Mangaluru, CIS-A2K co-organized a workshop with the Kannada wikipedia community on Kannada Wikipedia. Udayavani covered this in their edition on July 5.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-4-2015-coverage-in-udayavani

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Coverage in Prajavani)

pavanaja — 2016-06-18T18:14:22Z

As part of its ongoing partnership with St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru, CIS-A2K along with the Wikipedia community in Karnataka organized a workshop on Kannada Wikipedia. Prajavani reported this in their edition published on July 5, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-july-5-2015-coverage-in-prajavani