Centre for Internet and Society

Very Big Brother

sunil — 2014-04-14T11:39:09Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, the organization I work for, currently serves on a committee established by the Government of India's Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology in January 2013. The committee has been charged with preparing a report on the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill.

The article was originally published in GeneWatch (January - April 2014) issue.

Why should an organization that focuses on the Internet be invited to such a committee? There are some obvious reasons related to data protection and big data. CIS had previously served on the Justice AP Shah committee that was tasked by the Planning Commission to make recommendations on the draft Privacy Bill in 2012. There are also some less obvious connections, such as academic research into cyborgs wherein the distinction between human and machine/technology is blurred; where an insulin pump makes one realize that the Internet of Things could include the Internet of Body Parts. But for this note I will focus on biometrics - quantifiable data related to individual human characteristics - and their gate-keeping function on the Internet.

The bouquet of biometric options available to technologists is steadily expanding - fingerprint, palm print, face recognition, DNA, iris, retina, scent, typing rhythm, gait, and voice. Biometrics could be used as authentication or identification to ensure security and privacy. However, biometrics are different from other types of authentication and identification factors in three important ways that have implications for human rights in information societies and the Internet.

Firstly, biometrics allow for non-consensual authentication and identification. Newer, more advanced and more expensive biometric technologies usually violate human rights more extensively and intensively than older, more rudimentary and inexpensive biometrics. For example, it is possible to remotely harvest iris information when a person is wide awake without even being aware that their identification or authentication factors have been compromised. It isn't difficult to imagine ways to harvest someone's fingerprints and palm prints without their knowledge, and you cannot prevent a security camera from capturing your gait. You could use specialized software like Tor to surf the World Wide Web anonymously and cover your digital tracks, but it is much harder to leave no trail of DNA material in the real world.

Secondly, biometrics rely on probabilistic matching rather than discrete matching - unlike, for example, a password that you use on a social media platform. In the 2007 draft of India's current Human DNA Profiling Bill, the preamble said "the Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) analysis of body substances is a powerful technology that makes it possible to determine whether the source of origin of one body substance is identical to that of another, and further to establish the biological relationship, if any, between two individuals, living or dead, without any doubt." This extract from the bill was quoted in an ongoing court case to use tampered chain of custody for DNA as the means to seek exoneration of the accused. And the scientists on the committee insist that the DNA Data Bank Manager "...shall communicate, for the purposes of the investigation or prosecution in a criminal offence, the following information to a court, tribunal, law enforcement agency ... as to whether the DNA profile received is already contained in the Data Bank" - in other words, a "yes" or "no" answer. This is indeed odd for those who come from the world of Internet policy - especially when one DNA lab worker confidentially shared that after a DNA profile was generated the "standard operating procedure" included checking it against the DNA profile of the lab worker to ensure that there was no contamination during the process of generating the profile. This would not be necessary for older forms of biometrics such as the process of developing a photograph. In other words, chain of custody issues with every generation of biometric technology are getting more and more complex. In the developing world, the disillusioned want to believe that "technology is the solution." The fallibility of technology must determine its evidentiary status.

Finally, biometrics are only machine-scrutable. This means machines and not human beings will determine whether you are guilty or innocent; whether you should get subsidized medicine, grain, or fuel; whether you can connect to the Internet via mobile phone, cybercafe or broadband. DNA evidence is not directly observable by judges and therefore the technology and equipment have to be made increasingly transparent so that ordinary citizens as well as the scientific community can audit their effectiveness. In 2009, the Second District Court of Appeal and Circuit Court in Florida upheld a 2005 ruling requiring CMI Inc, the manufacturer of Intoxilyzer 5000, to release source code, failing which evidence from the breathalyzer would be rendered inadmissible in more than 100 drunk driving cases. If the transparency of machines is important when prosecuting misdemeanors then surely this is something we must advocate for when culpability for serious crimes is determined through DNA evidence and other types of biometric technologies. This could be accomplished by the triad of mandates for free/open source software, open standards and open hardware. This is not necessary for all DNA technology and equipment that is used in the market, but only for a small sub-set of these technologies that impinge on our rights as human beings via law enforcement and the judicial system.

It has been nine years since India started the process of drafting this bill. We hope that the delays will only result in a robust law that upholds human rights, justice and scientific progress.

Sunil Abraham is Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, based in Bangalore, India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/council-for-responsible-genetics-april-2014-sunil-abraham-very-big-brother

TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs

sunil — 2013-01-21T03:09:56Z

For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a toilet, and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Sunil Abraham's guest column was published in the Tribune on January 20, 2013.

Many in traditional media, especially television, look at social media with a mixture of envy and trepidation. They have been at the receiving end of various unsavoury characters online and consequently support regulation of social media. A common question asked by television anchors is "shouldn't they be subject to the same regulation as us?" This is because they employ the 'principle of equivalence', according to which speech that is illegal on broadcast media should also be illegal on social media and vice versa. According to this principle, criticising a bandh on national TV or in a newspaper op-ed or on social media should not result in jail time and, conversely, publishing obscene content, in either new or old media, should render you a guest of the state.

Given that Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, places more draconian and arguably unconstitutional limits on free speech when compared to the regulation of traditional and broadcast media, those in favour of civil liberties may be tempted to agree with the 'principle of equivalence' since that will mean a great improvement from status quo. However, we must remember that this compromise goes too far since potential for harm through social media is usually very limited when compared to traditional media, especially when it comes to hate speech, defamation and infringement of privacy. A Facebook update or 'like' or a tweet from an ordinary citizen usually passes completely unnoticed. On rare occasion, an expression on social media originating from an ordinary citizen goes viral and then the potential for harm increases dramatically. But since this is the fringe case we cannot design policy based on it. On the other hand, public persons (those occupying public office and those in public life), including television journalists, usually have tens and hundreds of thousands friends and followers on these social networks and, therefore, can more consistently cause harm through their speech online. For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a public or residential toilet and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Ideally speech regulation should address the asymmetries in the global attention economy by constantly examining the potential for harm. This applies to both 'speech about' public persons and also 'speech by' them. Since 'speech about' public persons is necessary for transparent and accountable governance and public discourse, such speech must be regulated less than 'speech about' ordinary citizens. Let us understand this using two examples: One, a bunch of school kids referring to a classmate as an idiot on a social network is bullying, but citizens using the very same term to criticise a minister or television anchor must be permitted. Two, an ordinary citizen should be allowed to photograph or video-record the acts of a film or sports star at a public location and upload it to a social network, but this exception to the right of privacy based on public interest will not imply that the same ordinary citizen can publish photographs or videos of other ordinary citizens. Public scrutiny and criticism is part of the price to be paid for occupying public office or public life. If speech regulation is configured to prevent damage to the fragile egos of public persons, then it would have a chilling effect on many types of speech that are critical in a democracy and an open society.

When it comes to 'speech by' those in public office or in public life - given the greater potential for harm - they should be held more liable for their actions online. For example, an ordinary citizen with less than 100 followers causes very limited harm to the reputation of a particular person through a defamatory tweet. However, if the very same tweet is retweeted by a television anchor with millions of followers, there can be more severe damage to that particular person's reputation.

Many in television also wish to put an end to anonymous and pseudonymous speech online. They would readily agree with Nandan Nilekani's vision of tagging all - visits to the cyber cafe, purchases of broadband connections and SIM cards and, therefore, all activities from social media accounts with the UID number. I have been following coverage of the Aadhaar project for the past three years. Often I see a 'senior official from the UIDAI' make a controversial point. If anonymous speech is critical to protect India's identity project then surely it is an important form of speech. But, unlike the print media, which more regularly uses anonymous sources for their stories, television doesn't see clearly the connection between anonymous speech and free media. This is because many of the trolls that harass them online often hide behind pseudonymous identities. Television forgets that anonymous speech is at the very foundation of our democracy, i.e., the electoral ballot.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sunday-tribune-january-20-2013-sunil-abraham-tv-vs-social-media

That’s the unkindest cut, Mr Sibal

sunil — 2011-12-12T04:59:00Z

There’s Kolaveri-di on the Internet over Kapil Sibal’s diktat to social media sites to prescreen users’ posts. That diktat goes far beyond the restrictions placed on our freedom of expression by the IT Act. But, says Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, India is not going to be silenced online.

Thanks to leaked reports about unpublicised meetings that communications minister Kapil Sibal had with social media operators – or Internet intermediaries, to use legalese — such as Facebook, Google and Indiatimes.com, censorship policy in India has gained public attention, and caused massive outrage.

According to The New York Times India Ink reportage, quoting unnamed sources from the Internet intermediaries, Mr Sibal demanded proactive and pre-emptive screening of posts that people make on social media sites, ostensibly to filter out or remove “offensive” content and hate speech. In a television interview, however, the minister denied he wanted to censor what Indians thought and shared with others online.

One is tempted to believe him. He was, after all, the amicus for the landmark People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) wiretapping judgment of 1996, which is pivotal to protecting our civil liberties when using communication technology in India.

Last week, though, Mr Sibal came out in public with his demands, saying that there was a lot of content that risked hurting the sensibilities of people and could lead to violence. “It was brought to my notice some of the images and content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google are extremely offensive to the religious sentiments of people ...”We will not allow Indian sentiments and religious sentiments of large sections of the community to be hurt,” he said.

There was even a threat of state action if Internet companies did not comply with demands to screen content before it was posted online.

The NYT blogpost said, however, quoting executives from the Internet companies Mr Sibal had reportedly met, that the minister showed them a Facebook page that maligned Congress president Sonia Gandhi and told them, “This is unacceptable.”

Google responded to Mr Sibal by releasing its Transparency Report, saying that out of 358 items that it had been requested to remove between January and June 2011, only eight requests pertained to hate speech, while as many as 255 complaints were against “government criticism”.

Indian netizens raged against Mr Sibal, and very quickly #IdiotKapil Sibal was ‘trending’ on Twitter, with thousands posting comments against attempts to ‘censor’ Internet content. Much has changed, in Mr Sibal’s reckoning, between 1996 and 2011.

So, what’s all the fuss over ‘pre-screening’ and what’s at stake here? Critics of Mr Sibal say, our freedom of speech and expression is under threat. They see a pattern in the way the government has sought to impose rules and restrictions on Internet and telecommunications players, with demands on BlackBerry-maker RIM to give it access to its users’ email and messenger content, on telecom players to install electronic surveillance equipment and let the government eavesdrop as it sees fit, and on the likes of Google and Yahoo to part with email content and users’ details.

It all started with the amendments to the Information Tech-nology Act 2000 in 2008. Together, they constitute damaging consequences for citizens, including the creation of a multi-tier blanket surveillance regime, inappropriate security recommendations, and undermining freedom of speech and expression.

The amendments passed in 2008 — without any discussion in Parliament – did solve some existing policy concerns, but simultaneously introduced new ones. For instance, Section 66, introduced during this amendment, criminalises sending offensive messages through any ICT-based communication service.

Offensive messages are described as “grossly offensive, menacing character..... or causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.” These terms are not defined in the IT Act or in any other existing law, rules or case-law, except for a couple of exceptions such as what constitutes “criminal intimidation”. These limits on the freedom of expression go well beyond Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which only permits “reasonable restrictions...in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”

If Mr Sibal himself were to don his lawyer’s coat again and launch a legal challenge to Section 66, in all likelihood, courts in India would strike it down as unconstitutional.

Section 79, which was amended, brought into being an intermediary liability regime. This was in part precipitated by the arrest of Avnish Bajaj, the former CEO of bazee.com in December 2004 for the infamous Delhi Public School MMS clip which was being sold on his e-commerce platform. Policy-makers were, however, convinced to follow international best practices and grant intermediaries immunity under certain conditions.

Just as the postal department is not considered liable for the content of letters or telecom operators liable for the content of phone conversations, Internet intermediaries, too, were to be considered “dumb pipes” or “common carriers” of content produced and distributed by users. Intermediaries therefore earned immunity from legal action so long as they acted upon take-down notices, or written requests for deletion of illegal content.

Section 79 was further clarified in April this year when the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules were notified. Stakeholders from the technology industry, media and civil society had sent feedback to the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in February, but DIT choose to ignore the feedback and finalised rules with serious flaws in them. For one, a standardised “Terms of Service” that focused on limits on free expression had to be implemented by all intermediaries – forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.

Content that was 'harmful to minors' was not permissible regardless of the target market of the website. All intermediaries were supposed to act upon take-down notices within 36 hours, something that a Google may be able to do, but an average blogger could not.

Two, the vague terms introduced in Section 66A were left undefined. Intermediaries were asked to sit on judgment on the question of whether an article, image or video was causing 'inconvenience'.

Three, all principles of natural justice were ignored – the person responsible for posting the content would not be informed, s/he would not be given an opportunity to file a counter-notice to challenge the intermediary’s decision in court.

Four, the rules left it open for economically or politically motivated actors to seriously damage opponents online using fraudulent take-down notices, instead of treating abuse of the take-down notice system as an offence.

How the take-down system terrorises free expression on the Internet was illustrated when the Centre for Internet and Society, where this author works, undertook a research project. A pro-bono independent researcher who led the exercise sent fraudulent take-down notices to seven Internet companies in India. These included some of the largest and most popular Indian and foreign search engines, news portals and social media platforms.

Although they all employ the most competent lawyers in the country, six of the seven intermediaries over-complied, confirming our worst fears. In one case, a news portal deleted not just the specific comment that was mentioned in the take-down notice but 14 other comments as well. Most importantly, it must be pointed out, the comment identified in the take-down notice was itself an excellent piece of writing that could not be construed as “offensive” by any stretch!

In the single exception to the rule, one e-commerce portal refused to act upon a take-down notice trying to prevent the sale of diapers on the grounds that it was “harmful to minors”, rightly dismissing the notice as frivolous. But that exception simply proved a rule: Private intermediaries use their best lawyers to protect their commercial interests, but are highly risk-averse and do not value freedom of expression, unless it affects their bottomline.

Proactive and pre-emptive screening of social media content, as Mr Sibal has demanded, will only further compromise online civil liberties in what’s already a dismal situation. In short, we move from a post-facto to a pre-emptive censorship regime.

In fact, given the magnitude of the task of pre-screening in a nation with a 100 million Internet users and growing, such an intense censorship regime will mean not only that what Indian citizens say or post will be censored by private companies, but those private companies will, in turn, use machines to screen what humans are saying and doing! After all, otherwise, companies would require armies of human censors to screen the millions of posts that are made on Twitter and Facebook every minute.

But the Supreme Court has held that even the executive arm of government cannot engage in censorship prior to publication, let alone ordering private companies to do so. In any case, it’s a policy that’s bound to fail, for both technical reasons and for its failure to take into account human motivations.

Machines, as we know, continue to be poor judges of the nuances of human expression and will likely cause massive damage to the idea of public debate. Humans, on the other hand, will begin to circumvent machine filters – for example, content labelled as PRON instead of PORN will go through.

Draconian crackdown on certain types of fringe content is likely to have the counterproductive result of the general society developing an unhealthy obsession for exactly such content. Despite the comprehensive censorship controls in Saudi Arabia, for instance, pornography consumption is rampant, usually accessed via pirated satellite TV and circulated using personal computing devices and mobile phones.

But all is not lost yet, perhaps. Faced with the barrage of criticism, Mr Sibal has now called for public consultations on the issue of pre-screening content. There’s hope yet for freedom of speech and expression in India. Thanks to the Internet, a throwback to 1975 simply does not look possible.

Sunil Abraham is executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He wrote this article in the Deccan Chronicle on December 11, 2011. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/unkindest-cut-mr-sibal

CIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017

sunil — 2016-04-29T09:36:45Z

One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalyzing the growth of the free and open knowledge movement in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008. Since September 2012, we at CIS-A2K, have been actively involved in growing the movement in India through (i) a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for the period September 2012 - June 2014, (ii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2014 - June 2015 and (iii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2015 - June 2016. Based on the productive experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed this work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.

This was originally published on Meta-wiki on April 2, 2016.

We have revised the work plan template taking into account the changed proposal plan sent out by WMF and in light of the feedback that we have received from FDC assessment during last proposal application. The FDC feedback is taken into account at the level of design, RoI and ensuring quality for all our activities.

CIS-A2K responses towards Indic communities concerns

During the last plan period CIS-A2K received the following complaints, suggestions, and feedback. We have attempted to address the concerns under redesigned CIS-A2K 2.0. This table was first prepared during our progress report for the current grant and A2K would like to acknowledge the learnings derived out of the suggestions and feedback it received during the last plan. Please see the table here.

Background to CIS-A2K Program

CIS-A2K is working with the Indic Wikimedia communities since December 2008, when Jimbo Wales came to India and visited Bangalore. In mid-2012 CIS-A2K received a financial grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and since then it has been actively involved in growing the Wikimedia and free knowledge movement in India. Following a grant received from WMF for the period September 2012 to June 2014, CIS-A2K received FDC Grant for the periods July 2014 to June 2015 and July 2015 to June 2016. Based on the 41-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has prepared this year's work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.

Objective

CIS-A2K is committed to improve Wikimedia movement in India by supporting Indic Wikimedia communities and working on Wikimedia projects and collaborating with FOSS and other like minded movement partners. It also strives to catalyse the growth of open and free knowledge movement in South Asia and especially in India. Our main objectives are:

Bringing content under Creative Commons and similar free licenses;
Supporting and empowering Indic Wikimedia communities;
Building and maintaining institutional partnerships in order to support the open knowledge movement and creation of open knowledge resources;
Planning and executing Wikimedia projects with wider community participations and effective consultation;
Fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem;
Building sustainable communities and grooming potential leaders to represent the communities and projects globally.

Context

CIS-A2K has focussed on creating sustainable programmes and capacity development for communities in the last few years. CIS-A2K intends to continue its work during the proposed grant period and would continue to focus on the following Indian language Wikimedia projects: Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, Telugu (Focus Language Areas, FLA). In order to achieve higher RoI, A2K will be including Tulu in its language plan from this plan period.

CIS-A2K will continue to provide general support and service to all other Indian language Wikimedia communities for all Wikimedia projects as necessary and as requested by the communities or individuals from the community through its request page and needs assessment workshops.

Community strengthening initiatives will be prioritised in order to address the poor participation of Wikimedians from Indian sub continent in particular and global south in general. CIS-A2K has rolled out initiatives such as Train the Trainer and MediaWiki training, focused edit-a-thons and GLAM activities.

CIS-A2K and Indian language Wikimedia communities would greatly benefit from collaborating with these initiatives and CIS-A2K during this grant period would attempt to bring these communities closer with a series of interactions, hack-a-thons and training sessions.

Our institutional partnerships have played a very important role in content donation, generation of content, attracting new readers and editors and collaborating opportunities with existing community members. They have provided much needed press coverage towards Indian language Wikimedia projects. The institution partnerships and WEP have been redesigned as per community suggestions.

Methodology

This work plan has been prepared based on an extensive engagement with various Wikimedia movement participants and enthusiasts in India. These include:

Wikimedia community members across all Indic communities: We have talked to a large number of Indic Wikimedia community members and specially community members of our focused language areas;
Institutional Partners of CIS-A2K: We have taken feedback and suggestions from our institutional partners regarding the challenges of conducting WEP;
Like-minded advocates of free and open knowledge;
Surveys and Interviews.

Performance against plans and projected targets

Overall

Kannada

Konkani

Marathi

Odia

Telugu

Progress against goals set

Language Area Work Plans

CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts across four focus language areas Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu during the previous work plans. CIS-A2K proposed and initiated Marathi as a focus language project during the last proposal plan. As A2K's strategy of working with FLA has resulted in community building and sustainable outreach efforts, we intend to work with the nascent Tulu community towards making Tulu Wikipedia live.

The Tulu Wikipedia plan is a 'minimal cost program' and is not budgeted same as the other FLA. A2K has been able to build a strong community in Mangalore for the Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects. Tulu community draws its editor base and institutional support from Mangalore, hence A2K's plans towards Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects can also have the added dimension of Tulu Wikipedia incubation activities.

Detailed work-plan for each of these language areas may be seen here (in alphabetical order):

Woman's day editathon at Christ University

Some of the key factors that determined the July 2016-June 2017 work plan:

Development of Focus Language Area Plan: A2K's strategy of building a plan along with the consultation of the community and further customised as per the feedback received by communities and FDC Staff have resulted well across five languages. CIS-A2K is pleased to inform that during July 2015-June 2016 it engaged with all the five focus language area plans as it has been able to recruit program officers and program associates for the vacant positions. It is important to note that while we are engaging with Tulu Wikipedia community with intentions of making Tulu Wikipedia live, it is also a 'minimal cost' program. It helps A2K in acheiving higher RoI for monetary resources and optimisation of staff and volunteer expertise.
A2K 2.0 as a response to FDC and Indic Wikimedians' Feedback: As a learning derived out of FDC, WMF Board and Indic Wikimedians suggestions, CIS-A2K has revised its program structure and composition of work. Please find details of revised divisional of responsibilities of A2K team.
Partnership and networking with institutions and groups: CIS-A2K has had the privilege of partnering with educational institutions and developmental organisations. These partnerships and collaborations not only resulted in significant quality-content contributions, but also lead to the diversification and expansion of that particular language Wikimedia community. In order to strengthen the communities, increase participation and conduct GLAM activities and attract content donation A2K would look out for possible institutional partnerships.
Providing sustainability and developing leadership skills: A2K has always worked towards enabling Indian Language Wikimedia communities to achieve sustainability and visibility amongst the global communities. We have been greatly privilege to work with the Focus Language Communities and would like to pass on our learning through collaborations with other language communities, while exiting few of our current FLA programs. Through our skill building initiatives such as Train-the-Trainer, Media Wiki Training and Train-a-Wikipedian A2K has also been able to support growth of a new community of volunteers to support the existing community.

Community Strengthening Initiatives

CIS-A2K started two community strengthening initiatives— Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Training to grow and strengthen the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated communities, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The earlier iteration of these two programs played an important role in connecting the Indian language Wikimedia communities and fostering multi-lingual projects. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to undertake these two successful community strengthening initiatives. In mid-March 2016, CIS-A2K conducted a 2-day-long nationwide Wikipedia Education Program review workshop that brought students and faculty members from institutions that are running WEP in partnership with CIS-A2K and several important topics such as structural challenges such as academic schedule, institutional interest, faculty buy-in and more importantly response by the students were discussed. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to conduct such a workshop.

Creating Movement Resources

CIS-A2K has been creating resources to help Indic Wikimedia communities. All the resources are created after assessing the communities' need assessment and close interactions with many of the active community members.

CIS-A2K proposed to create the following resources (this also include printed resources):

Wikipedia editing tutorials
PEG and IEG application handbooks;
Handbook on how apply for various WMF scholarships;
Handbook on best practices for Wiki-events, workshops, meetup, outreach and other programs;
FAQ for content donors –give this job to a law school intern. No need of this handbook to be translated to Indian languages.
Bookmarks creation to increase awareness about Indian Wikimedia Projects;

General Support and Service to the Movement

CIS-A2K regularly supports Indic-language Wikimedia communities to conduct workshops, edit-a-thons and events to improve their projects. All these requests are placed at CIS-A2K request page and fulfilled after extensive community discussion and needs assessment.

Currently CIS-A2K is working on a program named Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) to identify enthusiastic Indic Wikipedians and train and groom them to develop their editing skills. We'll continue empowering Indic Wikimedia community members through this program.

Learning and Evaluation

Following the Global metrics and discussions some members of the Wikimedia community, the A2K program had put together some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work during the last year. We have included some more metrics for evaluation this year.

Evaluation tools

Participation

Number of active editors involved
Number of newly registered users
Number of individuals involved

Content

Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia article pages
Number of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects
Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects

Reports

CIS-A2K will undertake monthly and annually review of our work using the above evaluation tools. CIS-A2K report activities and progress to Wikimedia foundation in monthly meetings.^[1] CIS-A2K team will also report the successes and learnings to the Wikimedia India & the Global Community. CIS-A2K team will actively review progress of each language area plan in collaboration with the respective Wikimedia community. Based on this feedback we will undertake mid-course corrections, should there be a need. To summarize following reports will be published in the year of 2016 - 2017:

Progress report (for the current grant)
Impact Report (July 2016 - June 2017)
Monthly report to Wikimedia foundation;
Monthly Newsletters
Annual report to CIS

Monthly Review and Learning Sessions

Last year we wrote about conducting monthly review and learning sessions. Currently CIS-A2K is conducting monthly learning sessions to critically reflect on the successes and failures of our work internally. The learnings are shared with Wikimedia Foundation for their feedback and suggestion. We'll continue conducting monthly reviews and learnings and progress will be shared with Wikimedia Foundation. We will try to share the same the Wikimedia India members.

Budget

Please find link to CIS-A2K program budget for proposed grant period July 2016-June 2017 here

Feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here.
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.

Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at tanveer@cis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please write to us and we can set up a telephone/Skype call.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-work-plan-july-2016-june-2017

India's Contribution to Internet Governance Debates

sunil — 2018-08-16T13:32:54Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/indias-contribution-to-internet-governance-debates

Facebook Shares 10 Key Facts about Free Basics. Here's What's Wrong with All 10 of Them.

sunil — 2015-12-25T14:59:10Z

Shweta Sengar of Catch News spoke to Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics". Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'.

Facebook has rebranded internet.org as Free Basics. After suffering from several harsh blows from the net neutrality activists in India, the social media behemoth is positioning a movement in order to capture user attention.

Apart from a mammoth two page advertisement on Free Basics on 23 December in a leading English daily, we spotted a numerous hoardings across the capital.

Unlike Facebook, Wikipedia has a rather upfront approach for raising funds. You must have noticed a pop-up as you open Wikipedia when they are in need of funds. What Facebook has done is branded Free Basics as 'free' as the basic needs of life.

The newspaper advertisement by Facebook was aimed at clearing all the doubts about Free Basics. The 10 facts highlighted a connected India and urging users to take the "first step towards digital equality."

In an interview with Catch, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society, shared his thoughts on the controversial subject. Abraham countered each of Facebook's ten arguments. Take a look:

01 Free basics is open to any carriers. Any mobile operator can join us in connecting India.

Sunil Abraham: Free Basics was initially exclusive to only one telecom operator in most markets that it was available in.

The non-exclusivity was introduced only after activists in India complained. But now the arrangement is exclusive to Free Basics as a walled garden provider. But discrimination harms remain until other Internet services can also have what Facebook has from telecom operators ie. free access to their destinations.

02 We do not charge anyone anything for Free Basics. Period.

SA: As Bruce Schneier says "surveillance is the business model of the Internet". Free basics users are subject to an additional layer of surveillance ie. the data retention by the Facebook proxy server. Just as Facebook cannot say that they are ignoring Data Protection law because Facebook is a free product - they cannot say that Free Basics can violate network neutrality law because it is a free service. For ex. Flipkart should get Flipkart Basic on all Indian ISPs and Telcos.

03 We do not pay for the data consumed in Free Basics. Operators participate because the program has proven to bring more people online. Free Basics has brought new people onto mobile networks on average over 50% faster since launching the service.

SA: Facebook has been quoting statistics as evidence to influence the policy formulation process. But we need the absolute numbers and we also need them to be independently verifiable. At the very least we need the means to cross verify these numbers with numbers that telcos and ISPs routinely submit to TRAI.

Theoretical harms must be addressed through net neutrality regulation. For example, you don't have to build a single, centralised database of all Indian citizens to know that it can be compromised - from a security design perspective centralisation is always a bad idea. Gatekeeping powers given to any powerful entity will be compromised. While evidence is useful, regulation can already begin based on well established regulatory principles. After scientific evidence has been made available - the regulation can be tweaked.

04 Any developer or publisher can have their content on Free Basics. There are clear technical specs openly published here ... and we have never rejected an app or publisher who has me these tech specs.

SA: Again this was only done as a retrospective fix after network neutrality activists in India complained about exclusive arrangements. For example, the music streaming service Hungama is not a low-bandwidth destination but since it was included the technical specifications only mentions large images and video files. Many of the other sites are indistinguishable from their web equivalents clearly indicating that this was just an afterthought. At the moment Free Basics has become controversial so most developers and publishers are not approaching them so there is no way for us to verify Facebook's claim.

05 Nearly 800 developers in India have signed their support for Free Basics.

SA: I guess these are software developers working in the services industry who don't see themselves as potential competition to Facebook or any of the services within Free Basics. Also since Facebook as been completely disingenuous when it comes to soliciting support for their campaigns it is very hard to believe these claims. It has tried to change the meaning of the phrase "net neutrality" and has framed the debate in an inaccurate manner - therefore I could quite confidently say that these developers must have been fooled into supporting Free Basics.

06 It is not a walled garden: In India, 40% of people who come online through Free Basics are paying for data and accessing the full internet within the first 30 days. In the same time period, 8 times more people are paying versus staying on just

SA: Again, no absolute numbers and also no granularity in the data that makes it impossible for anyone to verify these numbers. Also there is no way to compare these numbers to access options that are respectful of network neutrality such as equal rating. If the numbers are roughly the same for equal rating and zero-rating then there is no strong case to be made for zero-rating.

07 Free Basics is growing and popular in 36 other countries, which have welcomed the program with open arms and seen the enormous benefits it has brought.

SA: Free Basics was one of the most controversial topics at the last Internet Governance Forum. A gratis service is definitely going to be popular but that does not mean forbearance is the only option for the regulator. In countries with strong civil society and/or a strong regulator, Free Basics has ran into trouble. Facebook has been able to launch Free Basics only in jurisdictions where regulators are still undecided about net neutrality. India and Brazil are the last battle grounds for net neutrality and that is why Facebook is spending advertising dollar and using it's infrastructure to win the global south.

08 In a recent representative poll, 86% of Indians supported Free Basics by Facebook, and the idea that everyone deserves access to free basic internet services.

SA: This is the poll which was framed in alarmist language where Indian were asked to choose between perpetuating or bridging the digital divide. This is a false choice that Facebook is perpetuating - with forward-looking positive Network Neutrality rules as advocated by Dr. Chris Marsden it should be possible to bridge digital divide without incurring any free speech, competition, innovation and diversity harms.

09 In the past several days, 3.2 million people have petitioned the TRAI in support of Free Basics.

SA: Obviously - since Free Basics is better than nothing. But the real choice should have been - are you a) against network neutrality ie. would you like to see Facebook play gatekeeper on the Internet OR b) for network neutrality ie. would you like to see Free Basics forced to comply with network neutrality rules and expand access without harms to consumers and innovators.

10 There are no ads in the version of Facebook on Free Basics. Facebook produces no revenue. We are doing this to connect India, and the benefits to do are clear.

SA: As someone who has watched the Internet economy since the first dot com boom - it is absolutely clear that consumer acquisition is as important as revenues. They are doing it to connect people to Facebook and as a result some people will also connect to the Internet. But India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet, and therefore Facebook is manipulating the discourse through it's dominance of the networked public sphere.

Bravo to TRAI and network neutrality activists for taking Facebook on.

Originally published by Catch News, on December 24, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-shares-10-key-facts-about-free-basics-heres-whats-wrong-with-all-10-of-them

The Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality

sunil — 2015-12-25T14:58:30Z

The argument against net neutrality in India is simple. Regulation cannot be based on dogma – evidence of harm must be provided before you can advocate for rules for ISPs and telecom operators.

The article was published in FirstPost on December 24, 2015.

But net neutrality regardless of your preferred definition is a very complex regulatory question and there is no global or even national consensus on what counts as relevant evidence. To demonstrate the chain of causality between network neutrality violations and a variety of potential harms - expertise in a wide variety of fields such as economics, competition law, telecom policy, spectrum allocation, communications engineering and traffic management is required. Even with a very large research budget and a multidisciplinary team it would be impossible to predict with confidence what the impact of a particular regulatory option will be on the digital divide or innovation. And therefore the advocates of forbearance say that the Indian telecom regulator — Trai — should not regulate unprecedented technical and business model innovations like Facebook's Free Basics since we don't understand them.

Till recently I agreed with this empirical line of argument. But increasingly I am less convinced that scientific experiment and evidence is the only basis for regulation. Perhaps there is a small but necessary role for principles or ideology. Like the subtitle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, we need to ask: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand. Let us take another area of technological regulation – cyber security. Do we really need to build a centralised database containing the passwords of all netizens and perform scientific experiments on it to establish that it can be compromised? A 100 percent centralised system has a single point of failure and therefore from a security perspective centralisation is almost always a bad idea. How are we so sure that such a system will be compromised at some date? To quote Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Decentralisation eliminates the possibility of a single point of failure thereby growing resilience. The Internet is perhaps the most famous example. It is not necessarily true that all decentralized systems are more secure than all centralised system of a decentralized network but it is usually the case. In other words, the principle of decentralisation in cyber security does not require repeated experimental confirmation across
markets and technologies.

To complicate matters, the most optimal solutions developed using economics and engineering may not be acceptable to most stakeholders. Professor Vishal Misra has provided a Shapley Value solution using cooperative game theory in the multi-sided market to determine how surplus should be divided between three types of ISPs [eyeball, transit and content] and Internet companies using transparent paid transit arrangements. But a migration from the current opaque arrangement to the Misra solution may never happen because Internet companies will resist such proposals and are increasingly getting into access provision themselves through projects like Google Fibre and Loom. Walter Brown from South African Communications Forum proposes that billing by minutes for phone calls and billing by message for SMSes should be prohibited because on 4G networks voice and text messages are carried as data and price is the best signal to consumers to ensure optimum use of network resources. This according to Walter Brown will eliminate the incentive for telcos to throttle or block or charge differently for VOIP traffic. Again this solution will not be adopted by any regulator because regulators prefer incremental changes with the least amount of disruption.

So given that we only have numbers that we can't trust - what should be some of the principles that form the bedrock of our net neutrality policy? To begin with there is the obvious principle of non-discrimination. The premise is simple – anyone who has gate-keeping powers might abuse it. Therefore we need to eliminate the possibility through regulation. Non-exclusivity is the result of non-discrimination and transparency is its precondition. That can also be considered as a principle and now we have three core principles to work with. Maybe that is sufficient since we should keep principles to the bare minimum to keep regulation and compliance with regulation simple. Some net
neutrality experts have also identified fairness and proportionality as additional principles. How do we settle this? Through transparent and participatory policy development as has been the case so far. Once we have principles articulated in law - how can we apply them to a specific case such as Facebook's Free Basics? Through the office of the appropriate regulator. As Chris Marsden advocates, net neutrality regulations should ideally be positive and forward looking. Positive in the sense that there should be more positive obligations and incentives than prohibitions and punitive measures. Forward looking in the sense that that the regulations should not retard or block technological and business model innovations. For example zero-rated walled gardens could be regulated by requiring that promoters such as Facebook also provide 50Mb of data per day to all users of Free Basics and also by requiring that Reliance provides the very same free service to other parties that want to compete with Facebook with similar offerings. Alternatively, users of Free Basics should get access to the whole Internet every other hour. All these proposal ensure that Facebook and it business partners have a incentive to innovate but at the same time ensures that resultant harms are mitigated.

Just to be absolutely clear, my defense of principle based regulation does not mean that I see no role for evidence and research. As regulation gets under way – further regulation or forbearance should be informed by evidence. But lack of evidence of harm is not an excuse for regulatory forbearance. India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet – and Facebook is sure giving it its very best shot. Fortunately for us Trai has acted and acted appropriately by issuing a temporary prohibition till regulation has been finalised. Like the US, coming up with stable regulation may take 10 years and we cannot let Facebook shape the market till then.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-free-basics-debate-trai-has-a-point-in-imposing-temporary-ban-on-net-neutrality

Free Basics: Negating net parity

sunil — 2016-01-03T05:58:00Z

Researchers funded by Facebook were apparently told by 92 per cent of Indians they surveyed from large cities, with Internet connection and college degree, that the Internet “is a human right and that Free Basics can help bring Internet to all of India.” What a strange way to frame the question given that the Internet is not a human right in most jurisdictions.

The article was published in the Deccan Herald on January 3, 2016.

Free Basics is gratis service offered by Facebook in partnership with telcos in 37 countries. It is a mobile app that features less than a 100 of the 1 billion odd websites that are currently available on the WWW which in turn is only a sub-set of the Internet. Free Basics violates Net Neutrality because it introduces an unnecessary gatekeeper who gets to decide on “who is in” and “who is out”. Services like Free Basics could permanently alienate the poor from the full choice of the Internet because it creates price discrimination hurdles that discourage those who want to leave the walled garden.

Inika Charles and Arhant Madhyala, two interns at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), surveyed 1/100th of the Facebook sample, that is, 30 persons with the very same question at a café near our office in Bengaluru. Seventy per cent agreed with Facebook that the Internet was a human right but only 26 per cent thought Free Basics would achieve universal connectivity. My real point here is that numbers don’t matter. At least not in the typical way they do. Facebook dismissed Amba Kak’s independent, unfunded, qualitative research in Delhi, in their second public rebuttal, saying the sample size was only 20.

That was truly ironical. The whole point of her research was the importance of small numbers. Kak says, “For some, it was the idea of an ‘emergency’ which made all-access plans valuable.” A respondent stated: “But maybe once or twice a month, I need some information which only Google can give me... like the other day my sister needed to know results to her entrance exams.” If you consider that too mundane, take a moment to picture yourself stranded in the recent Chennai flood. The statistical rarity of a Black Swan does not reduce its importance. A more neutral network is usually a more resilient network. When we do have our next national disaster, do we want to be one of the few countries on the planet who, thanks to our flawed regulation, have ended up with a splinternet?

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman R S Sharma rightly expressed some scepticism around numbers when he said “the consultation paper is not an opinion poll.” He elaborated: “The issue here is some sites are being offered to one person free of cost while another is paying for it. Is this a good thing and can operators have such powers?” Had he instead asked “Is this the best option?” my answer would be “no”. Given the way he has formulated the question, our answer is a lawyerly “it depends”. The CIS believes that differential pricing should be prohibited. However, it can be allowed under certain exceptional standards when it is done in a manner that can be justified by the regulator against four axes of sometimes orthogonal policy objectives. They are increased access, enhanced competition, increased user choice and contribution to openness. For example, a permanent ban on Free Basics makes sense in the Netherlands but regulation may be sufficient for India.

Gatekeeping powers

To the second and more important part to Trai chairman’s second question on gatekeeping powers of operators, our answer is a simple “no”. But then, do we have any evidence that gatekeeping powers have been abused to the detriment of consumer and public interest? No. What do we do when we cannot, like Russell’s chicken, use induction to explain our future? Prof Simon Wren-Lew says, “If Bertrand Russell’s chicken had been an economist ...(it would have)... asked a crucial additional question: Why is the farmer doing this? What is in it for him?” There were five serious problems with Free Basics that Facebook has at least partially fixed, thanks mostly to criticism from consumers in India and Brazil. One, exclusivity with access provider; two, exclusivity with a set of web services; three, lack of transparency regarding retention of personal information; four, misrepresentation through the name of the service, Internet.org and five, lack of support for encrypted traffic. But how do we know these problems will stay fixed? Emerging markets guru Jan Chipchase tweeted asking “Do you trust Facebook? Today? Tomorrow? When its share price is under pressure and it wants to wring more $$$ from the platform?”

Zero. Facebook pays telecom operators zero. The operators pay Facebook zero. The consumers pay zero. Why do we need to regulate philanthropy? Because these freebies are not purely the fruit of private capital. They are only possible thanks to an artificial state-supported oligopoly dependent on public resources like spectrum and wires (over and under public property). Therefore, these oligopolies much serve the public interest and also ensure that users are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion.

Also provision of a free service should not allow powerful corporations to escape regulation–in jurisdictions like Brazil it is clear that Facebook has to comply with consumer protection law even if users are not paying for the service. Given that big data is the new oil, Facebook could pay the access provider in advertisements or manipulation of public discourse or by tweaking software defaults such as autoplay for videos which could increase bills of paying consumers quite dramatically.

India needs a Net Neutrality regime that allows for business models and technological innovation as long as they don’t discriminate between users and competitors. The Trai should begin regulation based on principles as it has rightly done with the pre-emptive temporary ban. But there is a need to bring “numbers we can trust” to the regulatory debate. We as citizens need to establish a peer-to-peer Internet monitoring infrastructure across mobile and fixed lines in India that we can use to crowd source data.

(The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He says CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deccan-herald-january-3-2016-sunil-abraham-free-basics-negating-net-parity

Patented Games

sunil — 2012-03-08T12:14:22Z

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. Sunil Abraham's column was published in the Economic Times on 8 March 2012.

Much ink has been spilt celebrating the contributions of both, but if we were to judge them by utilising evidence from the market, their technologies are used by a rather thin section of the pyramid.

For this writer, however, the real heroes are entrepreneurs from China and Taiwan who make technology that is used by millions of Indians and other consumers across the globe. Sometimes it comes with domestic branding and with all the right peripherals - for example, in India, the Popkorn, which costs only Rs 6,699. It features support for two SIM cards, a receiver for analogue terrestrial television, a receiver for FM radio, a 3.2-megapixel camera, boom-box style internal speakers and, most impressively, a pica projector. It ships with a tripod stand, external speakers, a torch and a laser pointer. It is a classroom in a box. At other times, it comes as a Shanzhai clone of a branded product - for example, the Blackcherry, at one-sixth the price-point with twice the number of cameras as the Blackberry. Some Shanzhai phones support four SIM cards and ship with a spare battery.

Dual- and quad-SIM support is critical in developing countries, especially Africa, where regulation has failed to rationalise interconnection costs. Most of the global south is yet to harvest the digital dividend, so TV reception is very useful indeed. And the additional battery is invaluable for rural entrepreneurs who are not sure whether their next halt will sync with the local load-shedding schedule.

The same with the focus on audio capabilities, reflecting the communal usage patterns. Unlike many expensive big-brand phones that require purchase of additional software, these phones often have in-built support for a wide variety of proprietary and open file formats.

These products are unavailable in the US and Europe because they would be sued out of the market by rights-holders or snuffed out by enforcement activities. David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, says "smartphones might involve as many as 2,50,000 (largely questionable) patent claims". But there are three important differences for the Indian consumer. One, many of these patents are registered in the US, Europe and Japan and, therefore, prevent others from securing those patents in other jurisdictions. But it does not prevent Indian or Chinese entrepreneurs from using the patents. Two, unlike the US patent law, the Indian Patent Act does not consider "mathematical or a business method or computer program per se or algorithms" as inventions. And three, Indian courts, unlike their US and European counterparts, are less likely to grant injunctions preventing sale or use of any device.

Patent pools are a century-old policy tool for reducing royalties and uncertainty for manufacturers and consumers. In 1917, the US government forced aircraft patent-holders, including the famous Wright Brothers, into a patent pool that allowed 60 firms to produce planes at reduced royalty costs without worrying about litigation. Since then, the US government has issued thousands of compulsory licences in many different domains. Patent pools do exist in some areas of mobile technologies such as GSM and video file formats, but more patent pools are needed.

The Chinese government has used standards policy in the past to reduce outgoing royalties on information and communication technologies. They promoted or mandated indigenous standards either as a negotiating tactic with rights-holders or to benefit from cross-licensing of domestic IP. Some standards include TD-SCDMA, as an alternative to Qualcomm's CDMA, EVD as an alternative to the DVD standard, and CBHD as an alternative to Sony's Blu-ray. The potential savings were quite significant. In the words of Ma Jun, Deutsche Bank's chief China economist, "There is almost no profit for Chinese DVD makers as they have to pay about $7 in licensing fees to foreign patent holders per DVD player, which are sold at around $20 only - both at home and abroad."

In addition to patent and standards policy, royalty caps have been used to ensure access to innovative technologies. Till the end of 2009, the Indian government had imposed a royalty cap of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. If a company wanted to pay higher royalties, permission had to be secured from an inter-ministerial Project Approval Board. Between 1991 and 2009, only 8,062 approvals were granted, indicating our government was keen to reduce outgoing royalties. Policymakers could reconsider reintroducing such royalty caps for devices that cost less than $200.

(The author is with the Centre for Internet and Society)

Read the original published in the Economic Times

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/patented-games

Open Access Day

sunil — 2011-04-05T04:45:17Z

October 14, 2008 will be the world’s first Open Access Day. The founding partners for this Day are SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science.

The Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and the Cente for Internet and Society, Bangalore, request your presence at the celebrations of the first Open Access Day. Speaker include Prof. Andrew Lynn, Department of Bio-informatics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society.

Venue: Tagore Hall, Dayar-i-Mir Taqi Mir, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Agenda

About Open Access Day

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/open-access-day

About Open Access Day

sunil — 2008-09-21T14:43:16Z

Open Access Day will help to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access, including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Open Access^¹ is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

Open Access is the principle that publicly funded research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it’s gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers put their weight behind it.

The Open Access philosophy was firmly articulated in 2002, when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was introduced. It quickly took root in the scientific and medical communities because it offered an alternative route to research literature that was frequently closed off behind costly subscription barriers.

Today, the OAIster search engine provides access to 17,799,314 Open Access records from 1015 contributors. According to the Directory of Open Access Journals – India publishes 105 Open Access journals. Both INSA and IASc have made their journals open access journals. Indian Institute of Science has an EPrints repository and it has over 11,000 papers and this year, the Institute's centenary year, the number is expected to cross 23,000. NIT, Rourkela, has mandated open access to all faculty research papers. There are about thirty OA institutional repositories in India today. The IITs and IISc have formed a consortium and are making their class lectures open access under a project called NPTEL. These lectures are available in web, video and YouTube formats.

About CCMG-JMI

The Centre seeks to enhance the integration and development of interdisciplinary research into the media in India and South Asia. To this end, various programmes envisaged at CCMG will contribute in the following manner:

Methodologically, work at the Centre will examine and seek to develop new approaches both, quantitative and qualitative. This being a recurrent motif across all thematic rubrics pursued.
Archiving the measurement and analysis of media production, content and reception takes place in many organisations, but very little of such data is available to researchers, or is analysed comparatively. To address this void, the Centre aims to create an archive of media research data of value to researchers across South Asia.
Comparative perspectives across disciplines, mediascapes and regions are of utmost importance to the centre’s body of objectives. Comparative analyses will require reconciling data based on differing calibration approaches rooted in, often, contesting intellectual traditions and policy foundations.
Networking will be structured to aid the regular association of media scholars and policy analysts from varied, contiguous disciplines. Equally, the Centre will act as a focal point for dialogues between social scientists, civil society actors and media professionals who rarely are able to share a platform.

1This section and the next is adapted from the content available at http://www.openaccessday.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/about-open-access-day

Agenda

sunil — 2008-10-13T12:25:59Z

The Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, jointly organise the first Open Access Day on the 14th of October 2008 at Tagore Hall, Dayar-i-Mir Taqi Mir, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Agenda

Time	Session
1400 – 1415	Welcome and Introduction: Prof. Biswajit Das, Director, Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia
1415 – 1535	Chair: Prof. Arif Ali, Head Dept. of Bio-Technology, Jamia Milia Islamia Panelists: Mr. Zakir Thomas, Project Director - Open Source Drug Discovery, and Dr. Anshu Bhardwaj, Scientist, CSIR, New Delhi. Dr. Andrew Lynn, Professor, Department of Bio-informatics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society
1535 – 1600	Question and Answer Session Open Discussion
1600 - 1615	Vote of thanks and closure by Sunil Abraham, Director – Policy, Centre for Internet and Society.
	End with Tea/Coffee

Contact Details

New Delhi	Bangalore
Vibodh Parthasarathi Reader/Associate Professor Centre for Culture, Media and Governance Nelson Mandela House, Mujib Bagh Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110 025 P.: +91 11 26933810/26933842 M: +91 9873458688 E: ccmgjmi AT gmail.com W: http://jmi.nic.in/ccm	Sunil Abraham Director - Policy Centre for Internet and Society No. D2, 3rd Floor, Sheriff Chambers 14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560 052 P: +91 80 4092 6283 F: +91 80 4114 8130 M: +91 9611100817 E: sunil AT cis-india.org W: www.cis-india.org

Map

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/agenda

Open Content and Open Access

sunil — 2009-10-08T14:54:39Z

Open Content (of which Open Access can be thought of as a subcategory) is that content which is freely available on the Internet with or without rights to modify or re-use it. Open content can take many manifestations from openly-licensed materials (Creative Commons, etc.), open access to scholarly literature (scientific, legal, etc.), open educational resources, to open access to the law (particularly legislations and judgments). We at CIS believe that sharing of knowledge and culture is only human.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access

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

sunil — 2011-08-23T03:05:56Z

Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, authored a response to the draft Open Standards Policy document published by the National Informatics Centre, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

The National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has recently published a Draft Policy on Open Standards for eGovernance. Members of the public have been invited to provide feedback to the document. The last date for feedback is 21st November 2008.

The Centre for Internet and Society has prepared a draft response to the draft policy. This response letter only deals with the policy document from the perspective of the global FLOSS movement. This is not meant to be comprehensive feedback to the document itself.

Institutional Co-signatories

Richard Stallman, Founder, Free Software Foundation, USA
Mishi Choudhary, Partner, Software Freedom Law Centre, USA
Dr. Alvin Marcelo, Director for Southeast Asia, International Open Source Network, the Philippines
Lawrence Liang, Founder, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
Dr. G. Nagarjuna, Chaiman, Free Software Foundation of India, Mumbai, India
Vinay Sreenivasa, Member, IT for Change, Bangalore, India

Individual Co-signatories

Shahid Akhtar, Founder, International Open Source Network, Canada
Denis Jaromil Rojo, Developer, Dyne, Netherlands
Raj Mathur, Consultant, Kandalaya, New Delhi, India
Marek Tuszynski, Founder, Tactical Technology Collective, United Kingdom

Text

Dear Sir or Madam,

The government had done a commendable job of releasing a progressive and forward-looking policy on the usage of open standards in e-governance. Globally the European Union's Electronic Interoperability Framework (EIF) guidelines (version 2 of which is currently in the draft stage) is considered to be the gold standard as far as open standard policy is concerned. The draft National Policy on Open Standards meets all of the EIF's four open standard requirements. However, there is still some room for improvement as discussed below.

While the document talks of the standard being royalty free (4.1 and 5.1.1) and without any patent-related encumbrance (4.1), it limits those requirements "for the life time of the standard" (5.1.1), which seems a bit ambiguous and is not defined in the appendix either. It would be preferable to make it royalty-free for the lifetime of the patents (if any) as open archival material shouldn't one day (after the end of "life time of the standard", and before the expiry of the patents) suddenly be forced to become paid archives. It would be desirable to make declarations of patent non-enforcement irrevocable (as the EU EIF does), by incorporating a wording such as: "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis, without any patent-related encumbrance".

There should also be a separate provision in the "policy statement on open standards adoption in e-governance" section of the document making explicit that there can be no restraint on use or implementation of the standard (as has been stated in the "guiding principles" section).

Perhaps when talking of specification documents (5.1.5) the words "any restrictions" could be amended to include a few examples of what the term "any restrictions" would include. The document could make explicit that it must be permissible for all to copy, distribute and use the specifications freely, without any cost or legal barriers.

Sometimes private companies can interfere with the standardisation process, the document could perhaps be more explicit regarding remedial measures that could be undertaken in the event – for example use of competition law, as in the case of the EU EIF which states: "Practices distorting the definition and evolution of open standards must be addressed immediately to protect the integrity of the standardisation process."

As it stands, the draft document addresses many notions of openness (freely accessible, at zero cost, non-discriminatory, extensible, and without any legal hindrances, thus preventing vendor lock-in), and there is much to applaud in it. It has a clear implementation mechanism, with a laudable aim of establishing a monitoring agency and an Open Source Solutions Laboratory. It is applicable not only to future e-governance initiatives, but to existing ones as well. Furthermore, it also has an in-built review mechanism, which is crucial given the rate of change of technologies and consequently of the requirements of the government. Thus, the draft policy document very clearly encourages competition and innovation in the software industry and promotes the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and industry. As researchers from UNU MERIT have pointed out, even a nominal fee for usage of a standard can lead to exclusion of open source software implementations, leading to less competition in the software industry. Thus, all in all this draft document represents a commendable effort by the Indian government towards a sustainable and robust e-governance structure based on open standards. However, a few small amendments as suggested in this letter would make it an even greater guarantor of openness.

Yours sincerely,
Sunil Abraham
Director (Policy)
Centre for Internet and Society

Please download the draft response in the format you prefer.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response

Open Standards

sunil — 2010-01-11T10:52:24Z

The Centre for Internet and Society promotes Open Standards, i.e., standards that are technically and legally free to study, free to use, developed and managed in an open manner, with a complete implementation available to all. Open standards help all -- government and citizens, industry and consumers -- by allowing greater interoperability and choice (since they are necessary for free and open source software), greater competition, reduction in costs, and greater long-term reliability. As part of our work on Open Standards, we have been providing the comments to the Indian government's Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, and have been working as a member of the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards at the UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forums.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards