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Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as Amended in 2010
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-privacy
<b>In this post the author examines the issue of privacy in light of the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as amended by the Copyright Amendment Bill in 2010. Four key questions are examined in detail and the author gives suitable recommendations for each of the questions that arise.</b>
<p>India's Copyright Act was established in 1857 and was most recently amended in 2010. Although India at present is not a member of WIPO, the provisions in the proposed Bill will work to make the Act WIPO compliant. When looking at privacy in the context of copyright, four key questions arise:</p>
<h2>How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian Law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?</h2>
<p>Technologies such as digital rights management technologies were developed to be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. DRM technologies pose as a privacy threat, because in their ability to monitor what is happening to a copyrighted work, they are also able to collect personal information and send it back to a host without knowledge of the user. The host is then able to use that data for marketing or commercial purposes. In the Copyright Act, 1957 there are no current provisions against DRM circumvention. In the proposed Copyright Bill 2010 there are two proposed provisions to prevent anti circumvention of DMR technologies, and one provision that clarifies what is a DMR technology. </p>
<h3>Proposed Legislation</h3>
<p><em>Section 2 (xa)</em>: Defines Rights Management information. <br /><em>Section 65A</em> : Protection of Technological Measures - Any person who knowingly makes or has in his possession any plate for the purpose of making infringing copies of any work in which copyright subsists shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years. The section includes that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure, shall maintain a complete record of such other persons including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him. <br />Section 65B: Protection of Rights Management Information – Any person who removes or distributes, copies or broadcasts any rights management information without authority shall be by punishable with imprisonment. </p>
<h3>Recommendation</h3>
<p>We find that in this provision the privacy of an individual is brought into question, because there are no safeguards against the commercialization of information, and no formal process of redress if an individual discovers that his information is being used without his consent/prior knowledge. We would recommend that it be clearly articulated in the provision that the collection and commercialization of information and personal data is prohibited by DRM technologies and host companies, and a method of redress be put in place. </p>
<h2>Under the present copyright does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?</h2>
<p>Because DRM technologies often employ the use of spy-ware, it is important that an individual has the ability to know if spy-ware is being used on their computer systems. Currently reverse engineering is permitted under provision 52 (ac). The amended version of provision 52 is less clear on if reverse engineering would be allowed. </p>
<h3>Current Legislation</h3>
<p><em>Provision 52 (ac)</em>: Certain acts not to be in infringement of copyright include the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programs in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any elements of the program while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer program was supplied. The following acts shall not constitute in infringement of copyright, namely:</p>
<h3>Proposed</h3>
<p>The proposed amendment reads:</p>
<p class="discreet"> 52 (1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyrights, namely: </p>
<p class="discreet">(i) (a) a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work not being a computer program for the purposes of:</p>
<p class="discreet">(ii) private use, including research</p>
<p class="discreet">(iii) Criticism or review, whether of that work or of any other work.</p>
<p>The exclusion of computer program in the proposed bill makes it unclear under what circumstances reverse engineering would be allowed.</p>
<h3>Recommendation</h3>
<p>We would recommend that for clarity purposes a specific clause be added to the act that details under what circumstances a person is allowed to reverse engineer a product for protection of their own privacy. </p>
<h2>How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy? <br /></h2>
<p>In India under the current Copyright Act, 1957 there are no provisions for the benefit of disabled persons, thus currently permission from copyright holders needs to be exclusively sought every time the visually challenged person requires access. Under the Constitution of India and the Berne Convention, India has committed to enshrining the rights of the disabled. </p>
<h3>Proposed Legislation</h3>
<p>The proposed amendment of the Act will grant compulsory license in respect of publication of any copyrighted works not covered by the exception under section 52 (1) (zb).</p>
<p>The Bill also proposes a board that would establish the credentials of the applicant and satisfy itself that the application has been made in good faith. This compromises the anonymity that most individuals enjoy when a disabled person tries to access a digital library.</p>
<h3>Recommendation<br /></h3>
<p>We recommend that the proposed Bill limits the authentication process a disabled person must go through when accessing digital libraries, etc, and the extent to which records are to be kept of transaction This will serve to protect the anonymity and privacy of disabled persons.</p>
<h2>What is On the horizon?</h2>
<p>As copyright and IP is a constantly evolving issue, countries are consistently amending and changing their laws. With the flow of peoples across borders increasing, Indians will be affected by different international policies that could pose to infringe upon their privacy, for example, cross border checks or three strike regimes. </p>
<h3>Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement</h3>
<p>ACTA is a proposed legislation with the objective to combat counterfeiting and piracy. Partners in the negotiations include the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland. The treaty will oblige each Contracting Party to adopt, in accordance with its legal system, the measures necessary to ensure the application of the treaty. Though ACTA has not been enacted, many worry that ACTA would facilitate privacy violations by trademark and copyright holders against private citizens suspected of infringement activities without any sort of legal due process. The Act would allow for random searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or ripped music and movies. </p>
<h3>Recommendation</h3>
<p>We find that copyright infringement does not appear to justify a three strike regime or cross border searches. ACTA and other international treaties raise the question that if India became compliant with certain international standards, the standards would be too stringent without safeguards, and pose as a risk to a person’s privacy.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-privacy'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-privacy</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2011-08-23T03:25:02ZBlog EntryPrivacy and the Indian Copyright Act
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-copyright-act
<b>India's Copyright Act was established in 1957, and is in the process of being placed before the Parliament in 2010. The provisions in the proposed Bill will work to make the Act WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) compliant. When looking at privacy in the context of copyright four key questions arise, says Elonnai Hickock as she analyses privacy in the context of the Indian Copyright Act. </b>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Technologies such as digital rights management technologies were developed to be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to control the mode of use of certain digital devices and contents. DRM technologies pose as a privacy threat, because in their ability to monitor what is happening to a copyrighted work, they are also able to collect personal information and send it back to a host without knowledge of the user. The host is then able to use that data for marketing or commercial purposes. In the Copyright Act, 1957 there are no current provisions against DRM circumvention. In the proposed Copyright Bill 2010 there are two proposed provisions: to prevent anti circumvention of DRM technologies and one provision that clarifies what is a DRM technology.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Proposed Legislation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Section 2 (xa)</b>: Defines Rights Management Information – it is important to note that within the definition of RMI the provision specifically excludes any device or procedure intended to identify the user from the definition.<br /><br /><b>Section 65A (1)</b> : Protection of Technological Measures - Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine includes that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure, shall maintain a complete record of such other persons including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him.<br /><br /><b>Section 65B</b>: Protection of Rights Management Information – Any person who removes, or distributes, copies, or broadcasts any rights management information without authority shall be by punishable with imprisonment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Recommendation</i>: We find, not just exclusively to the Copyright Act, but that in all Indian legislation the privacy of an individual is brought into question, because there are no safeguards against the commercialization of information, and no formal process of redress if an individual discovers that his information is being used without his consent/prior knowledge. We would recommend that (perhaps appropriately in legislation on data protection) a provision be included to clearly articulate that the collection and commercialization of information and personal data is prohibited by DRM technologies and host companies, and a method of redress be put in place.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Under the copyright, does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Because DRM technologies have the ability to collect user information, which could potentially be done through the use of spyware, it is important that an individual has the ability to know if and when their information is being collected. To do this an individual can discover the technological principles of a device, object, or system through a process known as reverse engineering. Currently reverse engineering is permitted under provision 52 (ac). It is further supported by provision 65A (2) (f).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Current Legislation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Provision 52 (ac): Certain acts not to be in infringement of copyright include: the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programs in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any elements of the program while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer program was supplied. The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely:<br />65A (2) (f): Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from, doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user.<br /><br /><i>Recommendation</i>: We have no recommendation, but see this as a positive provision.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India under the current Copyright Act, 1957 there are no provisions for the benefit of disabled persons, thus currently permission from copyright holders needs to be exclusively sought every time the visually challenged person requires access. Under the Constitution of India and the Bernes Convention, India has committed to enshrining the rights of the disabled.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Proposed Legislation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Section 31B: will grant compulsory license in respect of publication of any copyrighted works not covered by the exception under section 52 (1) (zb). For this a registered intermediary organization that is recognized under The Persons with Disability Act shall apply to the Copyright Board for approval. The board will evaluate the applicant and application, and grant permission if it sees fit. The intermediary will then be responsible for monitoring the usage of the copyrighted work to ensure that copyright law is not violated.<br /><br /><i>Recommendation</i>: Though currently the Indian legislation does not threaten the privacy of the disabled, we find it concerning that under the WIPO copyright treaty – the anonymity of the disabled would be compromised.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">What is On the Horizon?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As copyright and IP is a constantly evolving issue, countries are consistently amending and changing their laws. With the flow of peoples across borders increasing, Indians will be affected by different international policies that could pose to infringe upon their privacy, for example cross-border checks or three strike regimes, which will punish a person if caught infringing copyright three times. For example: France has proposed cutting off Internet to those caught infringing on copyright three times.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ACTA is a proposed legislation. Its objective is to combat counterfeiting and piracy. Partners in the negotiations include: The United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland. The treaty will oblige each contracting party to adopt, in accordance with its legal system, the measures necessary to ensure the application of the treaty. Though ACTA has not been enacted, many worry that ACTA would facilitate privacy violations by trademark and copyright holders against private citizens suspected of infringement activities without any sort of legal due process. The Act could allow for random searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or ripped music and movies.<br /><i><br />Recommendation</i>: We find that copyright infringement does not appear to justify cross border searches or other forms of regulating. ACTA and other international treaties raise the question that if India became compliant with certain international standards, would the standards would be too stringent without safeguards, and pose as a risk to a person’s privacy.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-copyright-act'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-copyright-act</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet GovernanceCopyright2013-08-06T13:37:27ZBlog EntryPrimer on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/primer-on-tvi
<b>In this primer, Pranesh Prakash and Puneeth Nagaraj explain what effects a WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired can have and who's opposing it.</b>
<h2>A Primer on the provisions of the TVI and ongoing negotiations</h2>
<p>The Treaty on Limitations and Exceptions for Visually Impaired Persons/Persons with Print Disabilities (“TVI” for short) is a landmark international instrument in recognizing the crucial link between copyright limitation and greater access to visually impaired persons / persons with print disabilities (“VIPs” for short). Below is a summary of the provisions of the Treaty and the benefit it will bring to VIPs, and the kinds of speed-bumps that rich countries are trying to place to make this treaty ineffective for the blind, the majority of whom live in poor countries.</p>
<h2>1. Exceptions in Domestic Copyright Law</h2>
<p>Currently, in most countries, only the owner of copyright to a particular book has the right to convert it into an “accessible format” (e.g. Braille, audio book, DAISY book, etc.). This treaty aims to create an exception to this rule by allowing print disabled persons, their representatives and non-profit ‘authorized entities’ the ability to convert books for the benefit of VIPs without seeking permission. The treaty would leave it up to each country whether their law will require such conversions to be paid or not since there is no uniformity on this question among countries that have national exceptions.</p>
<p>Opposition: The United States, European Union, France, Australia, Canada, and the publishing lobby have asked for multiple conditions for creation of accessible formats. They wish to confine this exception to non-profits, prevent translations, and ensure that books that are “commercially available” can be excluded, and require that countries who wish to use this exception have to comply with an onerous test called the “three step test”. Internationally, rights holders have zero formalities for gaining copyright (which, by international treaty, does not even have to be registered). But the rights holders want to ensure as many bureaucratic hurdles are put to exceptions as possible.</p>
<h2>2. Cross-border Transfer of Accessible Works</h2>
<p>One of the main purpose main purpose of the TVI is to increase the cross-boundary exchange of copyrighted works in accessible formats. According to the World Health Organisation, 87% of the visually impaired live in underdeveloped countries. Bangladesh and Swaziland, for instance, spend very little money on converting books, while in the USA, millions of dollars are spent both by the government and by charities. If this treaty is passed the way the World Blind Union and other pro-disability NGOs are asking, a blind girl from Bangladesh would be able register with a US-based site like Bookshare.org, after proving she’s blind, and just download the book she needs in a format that is accessible to her.</p>
<p>Opposition: The European Union and United States want make this non-mandatory. They also wish to restrict the ability of the Bangladeshi blind girl from accessing these books by allowing trade only between non-profit ‘authorized entities’. Unfortunately, many developing world countries (like Swaziland) don’t have any authorized entities to speak of, leaving blind people there stranded. For a treaty to be effective, individuals must be granted the right to import books as well.
The European Union also wishes for a ‘commercial availability’ clause, meaning that if a book is ‘commercially available’ in the receiving country, then the authorized entity can’t export. In Europe itself there are almost no countries (with the UK being an exception) that have such a requirement when it comes to domestic conversions, but the EU still wants to ensure that as a requirement for poor countries. It is very difficult for an authorized entity located in the USA to determine in each and every case whether an accessible format of the book is ‘commercially available’ in the hundreds of countries they will receive requests from. Importantly, even a book priced exorbitantly or available only for those with expensive iPads may be considered ‘commercially available’, even if it is practically out of reach of the blind in the receiving country. This clause must go if the treaty is to be meaningful.</p>
<h2>3. Digital locks</h2>
<p>If digital locks (often called “Digital Rights/Restrictions Management” or DRMs) are used, then technologically, the blind can be restricted from enjoying a work which they have a legal right to access. For instance, Amazon has limited — at the behest of the Authors’ Guild of America — the ability of blind people to get their Kindle e-book readers to read aloud a book, and did so using digital locks. The TVI proposes that countries be required to ensure that the blind have effective access to books, even if they have digital locks.</p>
<p>Opposition: The United States and the publishing lobby is the biggest opponent of this provision. They have a system under which the blind are not required to automatically be granted the right to ‘circumvent’ the digital lock to make a book accessible even if they have bought an e-book, but have to granted permission to do so every three years by the government. The most recent three-yearly review found that the blind groups did not make out a strong enough case to justify granting them an exception, but thankfully this determination was overruled by the US Librarian of Congress. Thus the TVI must ensure that publishers cannot technologically impose restrictions on a book for the blind that they can’t do legally.</p>
<h2>4. Translation</h2>
<p>Another hot-button issue is the right to translation. Given that the biggest exporters of books, due to their colonial legacy, are USA, UK, France, and Spain, it is imperative that the blind in developing countries have access to these books in languages that they can understand. Very unfortunately, most of these languages are not profitable-enough markets for publishers to publish accessible translated books. Given this, it is necessary for charities to be able to make translations of accessible works specifically for the blind.</p>
<p><em>Opposition</em>: The European Union and the publishing lobby is strongly opposing this, claiming that this will result in the blind having better access than the sighted. This is a false claim. A sighted student might have access to a translated book (made without an exception), but the blind student might not. For this
has no merit as it ignores the social consequences of disability. This provision will merely bring the visually impaired to the same level as the rest of the population and not give them some illusory advantage.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/primer-on-tvi'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/primer-on-tvi</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshCopyrightAccessibilityAccess to KnowledgeWIPO2013-06-25T08:47:18ZBlog EntryPreventive Detention for Copyright Violation: Karnataka Amends the 'Goondas' Act
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/spicy-ip-nehaa-chaudhari-august-13-2014-preventive-detention-for-copyright-violation
<b>Last week, the Government of Karnataka amended the Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum Gamblers Act, 1985 (“the Karnataka Goondas Act”). The Karnataka Goondas Act would now also apply to offences under the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 and the Information Technology Act, 2000. This article presents an overview on the various provisions of this law and discusses the potential impact of the amendment.</b>
<p>The<i> </i>blog post by Nehaa Chaudhari was first <a class="external-link" href="http://spicyip.com/2014/08/guest-post-karnatakas-goondas-act-an-examination.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guest-post-karnatakas-goondas-act-an-examination">published on SpicyIP</a> on August 13, 2014.</p>
<hr />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Goondas and Goondas Acts</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Now used in ‘Indian English’ to mean a ‘<a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/goonda">hired thug or bully</a>’, <i>goonda/gunda</i> seems to have Hindi/Urdu <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/goondas">origins</a>. Incidentally, <i>thug</i> itself has Hindi <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thug">origins</a>, with its meaning encompassing a range of criminals from robbers to murderers to gangs of criminals, or <i>anti-social elements</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 1923, the <a href="http://www.lawsofindia.org/pdf/west_bengal/1923/1923WB1.pdf">Goondas Act</a> (India’s first) was enacted in Bengal. As per the Act, a <i>goonda</i><i> </i>residing within, habitually frequenting or visiting <i>Culcutta</i> either by herself/himself or as part of a gang, <i>committing/has committed/assisting in the commission of/is about to commit</i> a non-bailable offence against person or property, or the offence of criminal intimidation or causing breach of peace was liable for action under this legislation. Similar laws were soon enacted across the country, including the Central Provinces and Berar Goondas Act, 1946 of Madhya Pradesh, (later struck down as unconstitutional in <a href="http://indiankanoon.org/doc/882909/"><i>State of Madhya Pradesh </i>v.<i> Baldeo Prasa</i>d</a>), the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970 (see: an illustrative decision); the Rajasthan Control of Goondas Act, 1975 (see: <a href="http://indiankanoon.org/docfragment/510607/?formInput=goonda%20act%20doctypes:rajasthan">an illustrative decision</a>); The Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum-Grabbers and Video Pirates Act, 1982 (legislation prior to the 2004 amendment available here), and the Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum-Grabbers Act, 1985, which was amended a few weeks ago.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While these legislations are broadly similar in their object – that of curtailing the criminal activities of ‘<i>goondas’</i> with provisions for removal as well as preventive detention, there is a variation in scope of the legislation. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu having extended the application of their respective Goondas Acts to a larger number of activities, including video piracy – which is the focus of this post.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The Karnataka Goondas Act: What Remains and What has Changed</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Scope and Definition</b><br />Enacted in 1985 to curb activities of “anti-social” elements, which have frequently disturbed the “even tempo of life” especially in “urban areas”, the Karnataka Goondas Act extended to ‘bootleggers, drug offenders, gamblers, goondas, immoral traffic offenders and slum grabbers’. Amongst others, <span>the 2014 amendment, which comes into effect “at once”, extends the scope of this legislation to “video or audio pirates” and “digital offenders”.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>As per the new amendment, Section 2(iv) of the Act first refers to a “digital offender” as ‘<i>when he is engaged, or is making preparations for engaging, in any of his activities as a digital offender, which affect adversely or are likely to affect adversely the maintenance of public order.</i><i> </i>An Explanation to Section 2 under Clause (f) specifies that a “digital offender” is <i>any person who knowingly or deliberately violates for commercial purposes any copyright law in relation to any book, music, film, software, artistic or scientific work and also includes any person who illegally enters through the identity of another user and illegally uses any computer or digital network for pecuniary gain for himself or for any other person or commits any of the offences specified under section 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75</i><i> </i>of the <a href="http://www.dot.gov.in/sites/default/files/itbill2000_0.pdf">Information Technology Act, 2000</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These mentioned sections (67-75 of the IT Act), refer to a variety of measures which penalize refusal to decrypt information, publication of obscene information, access or attempts to access a ‘protected’ computer or network, misrepresentation, and breach of confidentiality and privacy, as well as prescription of penalties for some offences. (See more <a href="http://www.vakilno1.com/bareacts/informationtechnologyact/informationtechnologyact.html#67_Publishing_of_information_which_is_obscene_in_electronic_form" target="_blank">here</a>)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The requirement that the action be committed for a “commercial purpose” has been eliminated in those instances where the offence is a violation of any of the listed sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000</span>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A “video or audio pirate” as defined under amended Section 2(xiii) is <i>when he is engaged or is making preparations for engaging in any of his activities as a video or audio pirate habitually for commercial gain, which affect adversely, or are likely to affect adversely the maintenance of public order.</i><i> </i>The Explanation to Section 2 under amended Clause (o) states that a “video or audio pirate” <i>means a person who commits or attempts to commit or abets the commission of offences of infringement of copyright habitually for commercial gain, in relation to a cinematograph film or a record embodying any part of the soundtrack associated with the film, punishable under the Copyright Act, 1957.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Explanation to amended Section 2 lays down the conditions in which<i> <i>public order shall be deemed to have been affected adversely or shall be deemed likely to be affected adversely,</i><i> </i>viz. that <i>if any of the activities of any of the persons referred to in this clause directly or indirectly, is causing or is calculated to cause any harm, danger or alarm, or a feeling of insecurity, among the general public or any section thereof or grave or widespread danger to life or public health.</i></i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Preventive Detention Orders</b><br />The amendment now means the State Government accordingly has the power to detain audio and video pirates and digital offenders, to prevent them from acting in a manner “prejudicial” to public order. In the first instance, such an order may not be for more than three months, it may be extended to a period of twelve months (Section 13), three months at a time, passed for the commission or the suspicion of commission of various offences, including copyright infringement, which under the Copyright Act, 1957 can only be determined by a court of law and is subject to subsequent appeals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The 2014 amendment also modifies Section 17, by virtue of which no order of detention can be made under the National Security Act, 1980 against any of the persons named under the Karnataka Goondas Act, including audio or video pirates or digital offenders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Section 8 requires grounds of detention to be disclosed to the detainees within five days of their detention, but not when it might not be in the public interest to do so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Anomalies</b><br />This recent amendment to the Karnataka Goondas Act has resulted in anomalies. There are probably more; but two come to mind straight away.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><i>First</i>- preventive detention under the Karnataka Goondas Act means that the person arrested need not be produced before a magistrate immediately- there is a significantly long review process and detention may continue for a period of one year.</span></span> This is for offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000, under which persons arrested have to be produced before a magistrate. This is also for offences under the Copyright Act, 1957, under which a person may be arrested only when found guilty of an offence by the court, whereas the Karnataka Goondas Act allows arrest on mere suspicion. Further, persons detained under this legislation cannot secure bail.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><i>Second-</i><i> </i>the amendments to the Karnataka Goondas Act negate the exceptions laid out under the Copyright Act, 1957</span>.</span> While a reading of the Karnataka Goondas Act suggests that copyright infringement for commercial purposes falls under the purview of the legislation (and therefore non -commercial uses are excluded), however, under its provisions, persons may be detained (preventively) on mere suspicion as well. <span><span>Therefore, even if a person were to be performing an activity permitted under the Copyright Act, 1957 (for instance, converting a coyrighted work into a machine readable format for the benefit of persons with disabilities), this person could be preventively detained</span></span> on the suspicion of engaging in this activity for commercial purposes.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Constitutional Validity</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Legislative Competence</b><br />The legislative competence of the Karnataka Government in amending the Karnataka Goondas Act to apply to audio and video pirates as well as to digital offenders is moot. <span><span><i>Prima facie,</i><i> </i>these amendments seem to be unconstitutional</span>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Article 246 read with List I (Union List) of the <a href="http://lawmin.nic.in/olwing/coi/coi-english/Const.Pock2Pg.Rom8Fsss%2835%29.pdf">Seventh Schedule</a> of the Constitution of India specifies those subjects on which the Centre has the authority to make laws. Offences related to and committed by “video or audio pirates” or “digital offenders” as explained under the Karnataka Goondas Act are subjects on which the Centre has the authority to make laws, by virtue of the provisions relating to <i>posts and telegraphs; telephones, wireless, broadcasting and other like forms of communication</i> (Entry 31 of List I) and <i>patents, inventions and designs; copyright; trade-marks and merchandise marks and merchandise marks</i> (Entry 49 of List I).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Article 246 read with List II (State List) of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India specifies those subjects on which the States have the authority to make laws. Seemingly, the Government of Karnataka may have chosen to make laws relating to “video or audio pirates” and “digital offenders” Entry I of List II, i.e., <i>public order</i>. It is my submission, however, that these offences would not fall under an understanding of “public order” and this amendment would still remain unconstitutional.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Freedom of Speech</b><br />Gautam Bhatia’s <a href="http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Goondagiri-Of-The-Goonda-Act/291593">article in the Outlook</a> (with a <a href="http://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/karnatakas-amendments-to-the-goonda-act-violate-article-191a/">slightly modified version on his blog</a>) make out the case against the recent amendments to the Karnataka Goondas Act violating Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. Bhatia argues that preventive detention under this legislation would be “prior restraint”, where government action prevents expression before it can take place, which is unconstitutional in most cases. He also argues that in order for free speech to be restricted on the grounds of “public order” under Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India, the State is required to meet a high threshold, which the Karnataka Goondas Act does not meet.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Closing Comments</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The idea of introducing provisions to deal with online piracy and other ‘digital offences’ under the Goondas Act is not a new one. Mridula Chari <a href="http://scroll.in/article/673042/Why-many-states-are-using-the-1923-Goondas-Act-to-curb-digital-piracy">writes</a> that Tamil Nadu introduced such amendments to its Goondas Act in 2004 and Maharashtra in 2009, with Andhra Pradesh toying with the idea in 2010. She also writes that the Bengali and Punjabi music industries are making demands of their respective governments to introduce their own versions of the Goondas Acts and insert similar provisions. The Economic Times <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-07-30/news/52237723_1_goonda-act-offences-offenders">report</a> on these recent amendments to the Karnataka Goondas Act also seems to suggest that these changes have been introduced for the protection of business interests. In contrast, in a <a href="http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/we-the-goondas/articleshow/39564603.cms">detailed report</a>, the Bangalore Mirror provides various illustrations of seemingly innocuous actions which may attract a draconian legislation, ranging from forwarding a song to a friend on WhatsApp to posting comments on social media sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The prospect of the protection of business interests with draconian legislations which are prima facie unconstitutional, aside from being ridiculous is deeply concerning. Widening the scope of these legislations to areas on which they have no constitutional authority to legislate, and introducing provisions with grave ramifications on fundamental rights, states in their continued and extended use of the Goondas Act are engaging in callous ill thought out actions with a deep disregard for their implications.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nehaa is a Nalsar Law graduate. She works on intellectual property/openness law and policy at the Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi. <i>[Note: Due to the examination of definitions in the Act, this post is considerably longer than our standard post. Though the whole post is recommended, readers in a hurry could skip directly to headings titled "Anomalies", "Constitutional Validity" and "Closing comments" for the juicy bits.]</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/spicy-ip-nehaa-chaudhari-august-13-2014-preventive-detention-for-copyright-violation'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/spicy-ip-nehaa-chaudhari-august-13-2014-preventive-detention-for-copyright-violation</a>
</p>
No publishernehaaCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2014-08-13T12:46:51ZBlog EntryPranesh Prakash: Influencing India's IP Laws
https://cis-india.org/news/forbes-india-february-15-2014-samar-srivastava-pranesh-prakash-influencing-indias-ip-laws
<b>Pranesh Prakash believes intellectual property laws need to evolve and change with time.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Samar Srivastava's article was <a class="external-link" href="http://forbesindia.com/article/30-under-30/pranesh-prakash-influencing-indias-ip-laws/37177/1">published in Forbes India Magazine</a> on February 15, 2014.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At an age where his contemporaries are still junior litigators and aspiring lawyers, Pranesh Prakash, 28, is already a recognisable name in the filed of legal activism.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 2013 he worked with the World Intellectual Property Organization to draft a treaty for the blind. It provides for an exception to copyright laws so that books can be converted into accessible formats for the blind and visually impaired, and exchanged across borders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Prakash the treaty capped a signal achievement in intellectual property and copyright—an area he has been working in since graduating from the National Law School, Bangalore. In his closing speech at the diplomatic conference at Marrakesh, Morocco, Prakash said: “When copyright doesn’t serve public welfare, states must intervene... Importantly, markets alone cannot be relied upon to achieve a just allocation of informational resources, as we have seen clearly from the book famine that the blind are experiencing.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash’s work on intellectual property has brought him recognition through affiliations: He is an Access to Knowledge Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. In 2012, he was selected as an Internet Freedom Fellow by the US State Department.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I was always interested in doing public interest work,” says Prakash. An internship with activist lawyer Rajeev Dhawan cemented his desire. Prakash is now prominent in a line of thinkers working in the area of freedom of expression, internet governance and intellectual property.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is clear that existing laws in these areas are inadequate and a new jurisprudential setup needs to evolve. For example, the same standards often apply to print and internet media; they fail to recognise that, say, tweets have a different impact than newspapers headlines.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash’s criticism of governments blocking websites stood out, but his recommendations were not accepted. He proposed that all intermediaries, like the ISP and the domain host, not be bunched, and separate standards be imposed on them, based on their editorial role in content creation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“What distinguishes his work is the impact it has on the public at large,” says Gautam John, head, Karnataka Learning Partnership at the Akshara Foundation. “His work in the area is cutting edge. There is no one doing that work.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Then there is his work with Section 66A of the IT Act. Under the section, anyone who sends false, offensive or inappropriate content by a computer or communication device can be punished with three years of imprisonment. This section has been misused by the police. Prakash has long argued that the law must be more specific in what it defines as offensive, and that the government needs to engage more with civil society and industry to end the antagonistic and selective manner in which the law is imposed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Efforts of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, where Prakash is policy director, have resulted in rules being amended. Now, only officers of the rank of DCP and above can make an arrest. CIS, set up in 2008, has also made representations on the copyright law to Parliamentary Standing Committees.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prakash’s activism has had another significant effect on intellectual property in India. By a 2008 Bill, the government had tried to privatise publicly-funded intellectual property. Prakash was part of a sustained campaign against the Bill, and in 2011 it was shelved.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/forbes-india-february-15-2014-samar-srivastava-pranesh-prakash-influencing-indias-ip-laws'>https://cis-india.org/news/forbes-india-february-15-2014-samar-srivastava-pranesh-prakash-influencing-indias-ip-laws</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2014-02-25T06:20:31ZNews ItemPlagiarism is rampant in Indian food writing – but finally, bloggers have a way to fight it
https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/scroll-july-4-2017-chanpreet-khurana-plagiarism-is-rampant-in-indian-food-writing-but-finally-bloggers-have-a-way-to-fight-it
<b>“We have been cheated,” declared the headline of the blog post making the rounds of social media on April 25.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blogpost by Chanpreet Khurana was published by <a class="external-link" href="https://scroll.in/magazine/837273/plagiarism-is-rampant-in-indian-food-writing-but-finally-bloggers-have-a-way-to-fight-it">Scroll.in</a> on July 4, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The post, written by Rajkumar Saxena, former head of Mumbai’s Institute of Hotel Management, alleged that passages from his 1997 book on Awadhi cuisine, <i>Dastarkhwan-e-Awadh</i>,<i> </i>had been plagiarised by Sunil Soni, a veteran chef, in his new book titled <i>Jashn-e-Oudh: Romance of the Cuisine</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog’s text, like the headline, dripped with hurt and contempt: “Here is a case of… a learned, literate person who has no qualms about unhesitatingly lifting word-by-word the explanations, recipes etc. from [a] book authored by us and claiming it to be his original work…” Images from the two books were embedded to support the allegation. “We need to name and shame such so-called experts through social media. We seek your support…”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The support came almost immediately.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Celebrity chef Ranveer Brar, who had written the foreword for Soni’s book, <a class="link-external" href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1411953382194704&id=545723678817683&p=0&_ft_=top_level_post_id.1411953382194704%3Atl_objid.1411953382194704%3Athid.545723678817683" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">announced on Facebook</a> that he wanted the author to remove it. Outrage also erupted on the wall of Food Bloggers’ Hall of Shame, a closed Facebook group of 421 members dedicated to fighting plagiarism in food writing and photography in India. “How can people even think that they can get away with such a shameless act of plagiarising?” wrote Anushruti RK.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was an organic reaction. By blogging about his grievance, Saxena had tapped into the one space that Indian food writers are increasingly using today to redress the alleged plagiarism in food writing – social media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“As a community, we are now discovering an average of one or two plagiarist websites/aggregators every week,” said Rhea Mitra-Dalal, the administrator of the Food Bloggers’ Hall of Shame, which shares dos and don’ts with members to protect their work. “We’ve had several run-ins with celebrity chefs, big food brands, restaurants, and food businesses, especially on their social media pages, where we have found plagiarised images. Public outcry on those pages has usually worked and we have got the plagiarised content down, but these are episodic and the basic mind-set hasn’t changed: it is fine to plagiarise, just apologise and take it down when caught.”</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block" style="text-align: justify; ">Cease and desist</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Saxena’s blog post was a last resort. He says he had first noticed the alleged plagiarism – “42 recipes, 24 explanatory notes and 12 chapter notes,” according to him – in <i>Jashn-e-Oudh</i> in January, and had informed his publisher HarperCollins India. HarperCollins responded by sending a cease-and-desist notice to Soni, copying his publisher Shubhi Publications, and set three demands: remove the offending material from <i>Jashn-e-Oudh</i>, acknowledge the copyright of the authors of <i>Dastarkhwan-e-Awadh</i>, and pay Rs 5 lakh.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Soni and Sanjay Arya of Shubhi Publications claim they never received this notice.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On April 10, Saxena says he got an email from HarperCollins telling him it will not be pursuing the matter further because “currently HCI has put on hold all litigations due to some business-related issues”. “The copyright is definitely in your favour,” declared the email. “You are free to litigate this matter and file a suit for injunction. As far as shaming the authors/publisher on social media is concerned, as a publisher, we cannot opine on that. It is your personal decision...”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So, a fortnight later, Saxena did just that: he took his complaint to the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Around the same time, he and his co-author Sangeeta Bhatnagar sent a legal notice, through their lawyer, to Soni to cease and desist from further publication and distribution of <i>Jashn-e-Oudh</i>, and demanded Rs 15 lakh in compensation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This time, they got a seven-page response from Soni’s lawyer.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While denying the accusation of plagiarism, the response from Soni’s lawyer said, “Your clients are liable to show their copyright in the alleged infringed work of our client as no copyright can be claimed in the traditional recipes and their preparation as same will be similar across the globe to get the same taste.” It added that no copyright can be claimed on the subject of Awadhi recipes since it is “a common topic and known and available to the general public at large. All the recipes mentioned in the alleged publication are known in the market”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Soni also denied the allegation when contacted for comment by <i>Scroll.in</i>.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block" style="text-align: justify; ">Looking West</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The reply from Soni’s lawyer makes some sound legal points, all of which, according to food bloggers, are reasons why food plagiarism is so hard to prove: a recipe that is a list of ingredients cannot be copyrighted. Nor can a traditional cooking method be seen as the property of any author. Reproducing these, therefore, is not plagiarism.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, substantial literary and artistic expressions are copyrightable, according to the US Copyright Office, and reproducing these is unlawful. Another suspect action is when a chef’s work is tweaked by changing just one or two ingredients. In 2012, the Food Network in the US cancelled chef Anne Thornton’s TV show <i>Dessert First</i>, because some of her recipes were only mildly different from those created by superchefs like Martha Stewart.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Bloggers like Mitra Dalal lean on these definitions to call their content original. “Most of us have unique styles of writing, and we often include anecdotes and other content to our posts,” she said. “So copy-pastes can often be quite correctly identified.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another useful metric, according to Mitra Dalal, are rules set in more mature markets where bloggers have already fought, and won, battles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“There are international guidelines for this,” she explained. “Loosely put, if every third word is different, the text cannot be deemed plagiarised. Also, you cannot say that an ingredient list is plagiarised.”</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block" style="text-align: justify; ">Small wins</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mitra Dalal and other food bloggers often fight their battles outside the court of law, which is good and bad. On the plus side, it’s faster and easier for them to control the context – but on the minus side, the wins are relatively small.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In July last year, for instance, 20 food bloggers alleged that the recipe aggregating app The Frying Pan had <a class="link-external" href="https://factordaily.com/bloggers-vs-frying-pan-copyright-content-aggregation/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">plagiarised</a> their work. They lawyered up, and got ready for a legal battle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The Frying Pan had published our recipes and photographs without proper attribution, and without our consent,” said Deeba Rajpal, one of the 20 complainants. “We were advised that if we sought compensation, it would be a long haul. So, we only asked The Frying Pan to take our content down and never to use our work again without permission.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The case didn’t go to court. The lawyers met and reached an agreement, according to Rajpal. “The app took our content down. The case never had a proper conclusion – it fizzled out.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Except on social media, where the Food Bloggers’ Hall of Shame kept the pressure up, slamming The Frying Pan – hard.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block" style="text-align: justify; ">Can Google help?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Proving plagiarism in food writing is difficult at any rate, but there are factors that complicate the matter in India, according to Sunil Abraham of The Centre for Internet and Society.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The copyright law here, he says, has inbuilt exceptions and limitations that protect the rights of stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, content creators, consumers, the public who may not pay for the content, and the government.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many times, copyright holders in India have conceded or withdrawn legal cases because of limitations to the copyright law or the doctrine of fair use, which states that “brief excerpts of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted verbatim”. Just in February, a handful of publishers took back a lawsuit against a photocopier shop in Delhi University that had been selling study packs with materials reproduced from the publishers’ books.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abraham said that often there is an economic incentive for plagiarising – take that away, and you fix half the problem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For bloggers, a major source of income is Google AdSense, a popular <a class="link-external" href="http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/adsense.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">program</a> that allows website publishers to display ads on their pages and “earn money when visitors view or click the ads”. The problem is: if the advertiser cares only about page views and not the origin of the content, there is no incentive against plagiarism.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For checking online copyright infringement, Abraham says, the onus should be on multinationals like Google, which host a large number of blogs and web versions of media articles. “Google is constantly indexing the internet,” he said in a phone interview from Bengaluru, so Google knows when a write-up or a photo has been published before.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To be fair, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Google does entertain requests to remove online posts where a complainant can show copyright infringement. It’s a recourse that Mitra Dalal and some members of her Facebook group have found useful. But Abraham says this is less effective than if Google created hurdles to publishing content it deems plagiarised.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block" style="text-align: justify; ">Need for reforms</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Where does all this leave Saxena? It’s hard to tell.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Social media has generated awareness about his case, and Saxena has filed a complaint with the Delhi Police under Section 63 of the Indian Copyright Act. He plans to follow it up with a legal case. One thing that has certainly resulted from the episode is the food writing community’s intensified demand for clarity in laws to protect intellectual property.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As Saee Koranne-Khandekar, who blogs at <a class="link-external" href="http://www.myjhola.in/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">myjhola.in</a>, wrote on Food Bloggers’ Hall of Shame: “What’s amazing is that the original work [by Saxena and Bhatnagar] has gone through three successful editions, is published by a major player, and is written by two prominent names in the industry. One would think theft of content would occur in the case of less lesser known works, but this is pure guts! I hope at least this incident marks the immediate need for reform in our laws.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/scroll-july-4-2017-chanpreet-khurana-plagiarism-is-rampant-in-indian-food-writing-but-finally-bloggers-have-a-way-to-fight-it'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/scroll-july-4-2017-chanpreet-khurana-plagiarism-is-rampant-in-indian-food-writing-but-finally-bloggers-have-a-way-to-fight-it</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPlagiarismCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2017-07-06T15:53:46ZNews ItemPirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia
<b>This article attempts to rescue not by denying the charges of plagiarism, but by charting an alternative trajectory of plagiarism so that each successive instance does not amplify our sense of embarrassment and crisis in the academy. The article by Prashant Iyengar was published in the Economic & Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, Vol XLVI No 9.</b>
<p>"Copying one book is plagiarism; copying several is research." Unknown <a href="#1">1</a></p>
<p>Someone must have slandered Indian academia, for, without having done anything new or different, allegations of plagiarism have suddenly been tumbling out of India’s ‘top’ universities in these past few years.</p>
<p>In October 2002, a group of physicists from Stanford University, including three Nobel laureates, addressed a letter to the (then) President Abdul Kalam complaining of plagiarism by the Vice Chancellor of Kumaon University.<a href="#2">2</a> In January 2006, a professor from IIM Bangalore was dismissed for plagiarism.<a href="#3">3</a> In February 2008, a professor from the Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupathi was accused of having plagiarized up to 70 papers between 2004 and 2007.<a href="#4">4</a> In October 2010, IIT Kharagpur was forced to set up a committee to investigate allegations of plagiarism by one of its professors and three doctoral candidates.<a href="#5">5</a></p>
<p>And so on. It seems Benjamin Franklin’s adage about originality being “the art of concealing your sources” thrives today in Indian academia. Something is rotten in the State of academic research. Evidently, we even know exactly what it is: Some years ago, the Association of Indian Universities invited students to a research contest. The pamphlet advertising the contest contained a remarkably prolix account of the causes of the general decline in academic research:</p>
<p>Of late, <b>research has become a subservient component in the university</b> functioning. It is <b>not considered a lucrative career option</b>. Apart from this, <b>resource constraints, lack of commitment, lack of proper encouragement</b>, etc., are the impediments that are affecting the quality of research in our institutions of higher education. Another important factor for the deterioration of the quality of research is the <b>absence of adequate training and other capacity building</b> endeavour in our system, which has <b>restricted students’ creativity only to rote memory</b>. <a href="#6">6</a> (emphasis mine)</p>
<p>Similarly, we are periodically reminded, as in this instance, by the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation that “India lacks quality academic organisations and research and development institutions that breed inventions in technology. This is the major reason behind India's failure in breaking new ground in inventions and innovations.”<a href="#7">7</a> Other news reports bemoan the fact that “Indian patent filings lag behind global average" with the total “number of filings by residents being just three per million people in its population, compared with the world average of 250”<a href="#8">8</a></p>
<p>Accounts such as these, which abound in the press and journals, typically trace a “decline” hypothesis according to which the quality of academic research in India, once rigorous and upright, has fallen precipitously in recent times. Poor quality of academic research is then portrayed as a function of the impoverishment of the academy itself. Concealed within this auto-critique is an envy of putatively ideal systems in other countries which exhibit values that are an inversion of those identified as ours: i.e. they privilege research, are well-resourced, file the statistically approved average number of patents, allow students’ creativity free rein, and do not restrict their creativity only to rote memory. Lurking underneath these criticisms is also the anxiety that the arrival of the internet has, far from invigorating indigenous research in India, facilitated plagiarism on a wider scale than previously imaginable. What do we make of all this self-slander?</p>
<p>In this essay I will attempt to rescue Indian academic research, not by denying the charges of plagiarism, but by charting an alternative trajectory of plagiarism so that each successive instance does not amplify our sense of embarrassment and crisis in the academy.</p>
<p>I begin by drawing on my own prior study on student research in law universities in India<a href="#9">9</a> to provide a rough account of how law students approach research. However inappropriate, I use some of my observations in the course of that study as a microcosmic model for how research is conducted by students across the country today.</p>
<p>Next, I will attempt to show how the charge of plagiarism only acquires its pungency after the installation of a particularly western ‘Romantic’ conception of creativity that is hinged on the ‘genius’ figure. My point here is not one of cultural difference – we may or may not have conflicting traditions of (literary) creativity in India - but of heterogeneity of possible standpoints from which creativity can be judged, which have been deprecated or forgotten since this modern conception took root. While this idea is itself not ‘original’, having been made by numerous authors on whose work I draw upon here<a href="#10">10</a> , I am interested here in how it can inform our reaction to quotidian reports of plagiarism in the contemporary. Specifically, I think our understanding of 'originality-as-genius’ is a relatively recent historical product, and is definitely not the 'natural' or universal parameter by which literature and arts have been judged. I would assert that contemporary practices on the Internet restore us to (or renew the salience of) some of these pre-modern practices of authorship where originality in its Cartesian sense may not necessarily be determinative of value.</p>
<p>I would however hasten to add that this does not lead us inexorably to the conclusion that our traditional understanding of plagiarism has to abandoned. In the case of academic writing, 'Romantic' standards of originality have been rigorously upheld and policed by the spectral might of the University. Here, the ritual demonstration of cartesian orginality is not only a condition of success, but a minimum qualification for survival and advancement in this domain. With the stakes being so high, the temptation to pass off others' works as one's own is great, in contrast to the risks of being caught. This does not mean that everyone resorts to it, only that there are structural factors in the academy that make practices of plagiarism more 'rational' than, perhaps, in other domains<a href="#11">11</a> .</p>
<p>To begin, then with my conclusions, I think that dulling the keenness of ‘cartesian originality’ in the University could be an important component in the serious task of educational reform. Equally, I aim, in this article to rehabilitate the term plagiarism so as to diminish the sense of embarrassment that seems to come naturally to us when we speak of Indian research.</p>
<h3>Student ‘research’ in Law Schools in India</h3>
<p>The content and observations in this section draw from a study that I had conducted in 2006 on student research in national law universities in India. During the study I had interviewed 40 students and eleven faculty members across three National Law Universities. <a href="#12">12</a> I will focus here on the themes from those surveys that directly address the issue of research and plagiarism.</p>
<p>By way of background, in a typical national law university following a semester model, a student must submit up to 5 research papers (of lengths varying from 20 to 50 pages) a semester – or ten papers a year. In the duration of her five year legal education, a student from a national law university in India would have submitted anywhere between 48 (NALSAR) to 70 (NLIU Jodhpur) research papers of varying lengths. Given an average class-size of 80, and 5 batches in every university, a guesstimate indicates an average output of about 4000 papers of varying quality from every national law university annually. The table below contains a rough back-of-envelope enumeration of the research output of five national law universities in India, drawn from respective university prospectuses and websites.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td><b>NALSAR</b></td>
<td><b>NLSIU</b></td>
<td><b>NLIU</b></td>
<td><b>NLU</b></td>
<td><b>GNLU</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Intake</td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>160</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Max Strength</td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>800</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Academic Unit</td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
<td><b>Trisemester</b></td>
<td><b>Trisemester</b></td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Law Courses</td>
<td><b>40</b></td>
<td><b>51</b></td>
<td><b>48</b></td>
<td><b>54</b></td>
<td><b>51</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Non-Law Courses</td>
<td><b>10</b></td>
<td><b>10</b></td>
<td><b>26</b></td>
<td><b>8</b></td>
<td><b>9</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Number of research papers<br />per student through the <br />duration of the 5 year course</td>
<td><b>18</b></td>
<td><b>50-60</b></td>
<td><b>65-74</b></td>
<td><b>55-62</b></td>
<td><b>55-60</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Max number of research <br />papers per semester / trisemester</td>
<td><b>1900</b></td>
<td><b>1400</b></td>
<td><b>2000</b></td>
<td><b>2200</b></td>
<td><b>4000</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Number of student<br />research papers per year<br />(approx)</td>
<td><b>3800</b></td>
<td><b>4200</b></td>
<td><b>6000</b></td>
<td><b>4400</b></td>
<td><b>8000</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>By any estimate, this volume of research is staggering and should ordinarily be a cause for pride. However law universities are also beset with the same anxieties of poor research ‘quality’ and plagiarism that characterize the broader academy. While my previous study contains a fuller discussion on the causes of poor legal research at these universities, I would like, here, to only reproduce some of my survey conclusions from that study that would feed the discussion for the later sections of this paper.</p>
<ul>
<li>From my surveys it appeared that both students and faculty shared a sense that the research burden on students in these universities was excessive and too onerous to facilitate high quality research.</li>
<li>Students respond to the high research load by budgeting their efforts – working more intensely on some research assignments while neglecting others. This accorded with the responses from faculty members who reported an extremely low number of high quality research papers turned in. Responses from faculty indicate that a high percentage of papers received fall under a median category between ‘high quality’ and ‘abjectly low quality’ – i.e. there are a large number of papers which, while offering a cogent account of the topic do not add any insight of their own.</li>
<li>Both students and faculty reported generally, the existence of a high degree of plagiarism (defined as the inclusion of extrinsic material without attributing sources) sourced both from amongst their peers as well as from extrinsic sources. Although most students (78%) claimed never to have directly copied from other students’ papers, many (67%) admitted to having shared their papers with other students either for ‘reference’, or more commonly, for adaptation/reuse in their assignments. The responses to whether they had any reservations against the practice were diverse with more students in favour of the practice of plagiarism (47%) than against (30%). Without admitting to participating it in themselves, 60% of respondents characterised the prevalence of ‘copy/paste’ plagiarism in research on their campus as ‘Rampant’ or ‘High’. Many reasons were forthcoming for the prevalence of this practice among which the more frequently stated included: ‘High work pressure’, ‘lack of time’ ‘lack of incentive to do high quality research’, ‘lack of emphasis by evaluators on high quality academic work’, ‘pointlessness of repeating identical research from scratch’. Other less common reasons offered were ‘emphasis on sheer volume to the neglect of quality of analysis’ and ‘disingenuousness of topics’ and ‘Laziness’.</li>
<li>Over half the students surveyed had never published their research in journals. This despite the fact that 75% of respondents reported that at least 1 of their research papers was either publishable immediately or with modifications. More than half the respondents reported upwards of three papers that they themselves regarded as ‘publishable’.</li>
<li>One of the common reasons that the faculty identified for the incidence of plagiarism was that students had begun to stereotype teachers who were unlikely to check or be able to check for plagiarism and would submit entirely plagiarised papers to them. Other reasons included the difficulty of checking the huge number of papers they received individually for plagiarism and also the fact that students had an unreasonably high workload coupled with the lack of enough incentive to do thorough research. <br /><br />“Intuition” and “checking the number of sources” was still the common mode of detecting plagiarism although some faculty made creative use of the internet – particularly Google.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Faculty was asked if a paper that appeared plagiarized to a high degree, but also indicated that the student had put in an intelligent compilation of materials, would be acceptable by them. The response to this was largely affirmative with some faculty members saying that most papers would correspond to that category and this standard was imperative for a majority of students to pass! Most faculty required that the source material at least be acknowledged.</li>
<li>With regard to their research sources, there was a clear bias in favour of online sources almost to the exclusion of other sources. One respondent even rated online sources as being “more important than libraries”, and even claimed that she always began her legal research on the internet.</li>
</ul>
<p>It is evident then from the foregoing account that the law universities are poor representatives of ‘original’ scholarship. The career of students through the law school seems to be marked by a blithe collaboration with faculty in which a Nelson’s eye is turned to their less-obvious plagiarisms. Although it is possible to adopt a high moralistic tone and condemn these practices, in the remainder of this paper I would like to marshal resources that would lend some dignity to them. In the section that follows, I will argue firstly, that there are rival conceptions of originality which privilege the recombination of existing information, rather than being fixated on ivory-towered ex nihilo originality.<br />Under this conception, even the pastiche works by lazy law students emerge as eminently ‘original’. Secondly, I argue that slavish imitation is never always only that, and have long been recognized as an integral aspect of the creative process itself.</p>
<h3>‘Originality’ is only a special effect of reception</h3>
<p>In his fascinating book Original Copy, Robert Macfarlane draws on George Steiner’s vocabulary to contrast two different narratives of literary creation – The first, creatio, espouses “a hallowed vision of creation as generation” which “connotes some brief, noumenal moment of afflatus or inspiration’ during which the author composes her work.</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>..the creative urge is dramatized as pulsing deep within the fastness of the individual self, and the solitary writer is seen to conjure ideas into the influence proofed chamber of his or her imagination. <a href="#13">13</a></div>
</blockquote>
<p>By contrast, the second conception of literary creativity, inventio, which is commonly found both in literary postmodernism and Augustan aesthetics, conceives of “creation as rearrangement” and “refuse[s] to believe in the possibility of creation out of nothing, or in the uninfluenced literary work”.<a href="#14">14</a> Instead this view “privileges the act of making out of extant material”. According to these “recombinative theories”, the creating mind is conceived</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>“as a lumber-room in which are stored innumerable verbal odds and ends. The supposedly ‘original’ writer in fact works with ‘inherited lexical, grammatical, and semantic counters, combining and recombining them into expressive executive sequences’. <a href="#15">15</a></div>
</blockquote>
<p>As an instance of this latter view, Macfarlane cites the example of Derrida who coined the term itérabilité to describe “the semantic drift which inevitably occurs between consecutive uses of the same text”. Derived from a combination of the Latin verb iterare (meaning ‘to repeat’) and the Sanskrit word itara (meaning ‘other’), the word “valuably emphasizes ‘the logic which links repetition to alterity’. For Derrida, the repetition of a text inescapably involves its alteration: you can never step twice in the same poem, paragraph, or word.”</p>
<p>I find this latter conception, especially Derrida’s concept of itérabilité to be a valuable tool with which to think through the practices of the law students I interviewed. While being derived from a plurality of (frequently unacknowledged sources), their papers were never mere ‘slavish’ repetitions, but always contained an element of alterity.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, the networked information age that we inhabit both facilitates and preempts the flourishing of ‘recombinative creativity’. On the one hand, the abundance of informational resources that the internet puts at a researcher’s disposal, as well as the ease of word-processing makes it easy to rapidly refashion materials into a pastiche of one’s own. On the other hand, the illusion of novelty that such work may produce is capable of being dispelled equally swiftly, and more efficiently than ever before through the use of special applications designed to detect plagiarism. If, as MacFarlane suggests, originality is not “an indwelling quality of writerly production, but instead a function of readerly perception, or more precisely readerly ignorance (the failure to discern a writer’s sources)”, then the emergence of the internet has nearly made this form of originality impossible, by making this reader ignorance extremely evanescent (lasting only until the reader’s next Google search). The ability of students to pass off plagiarised material as their own will hinge increasingly on their ability to alter it unrecognizably, at which point the output is no longer a mere slavish imitation, but something new altogether – ‘quality research’.</p>
<div>
<p>In an essay on pre-print culture<a href="#16">16</a> , Lawrence Liang demonstrates that the notion that prior to print technology, the task of writing was reduced to that of slavish copying by scribes is false. As Liang notes, the real story is slightly more complicated.</p>
</div>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>
<div>Acting as annotators, compilers, and correctors, medieval bookowners and scribes actively shaped the texts they read. For instance, they might choose to leave out some of the Canterbury Tales, or contribute one of their own. They might correct Chaucer’s versification every now and then. They might produce whole new drafts of Chaucer by combining one or more of his published versions with others.<a href="#17">17</a></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>With the arrival of print technology, however, a fundamental transformation occurs in the way the activities of writing and reading. Liang quotes an extended passage from Rebecca Lynn’s study of reading and writing practices in medieval England<a href="#18">18</a> that captures this change:</p>
</div>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>
<div>
<div>the benefits readers derived from the press, in terms of better access to authorized texts, were countered by a profound loss of opportunity for inventive forms of reception. They were free to take with the texts they recopied. Manuscript culture encouraged readers to edit or adapt freely any text they wrote out, or to re-shape the texts they read with annotations that would take the same form as the scribe's initial work on the manuscript. <i>The assumption that texts are mutable and available for adaptation by anyone is the basis, not only for this quotidian functioning of the average reader, but also for the composition of the great canonical works of the period</i>.<a href="#19">19</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>Is it possible, in the light of this insight about the creative element of copying in pre-print days, to revise our pathological accounts of contemporary plagiarism? <a href="#20">20</a> Can we view plagiarism not as an offence against the ‘author’ity of knowledge, but in a sense as a reversion to a more primordial tradition in which the availability of a text presumes and is premised upon its availability for adaptation. As described previously, responses from interviews with faculty indicates a grudging tolerance of plagiarism in student research.</p>
<p>This tolerance, stemming from an acknowledgement that even acts of compilation are not wholly without a creative element, seems to restore us to such an understanding of ‘creative’ reading akin to what has been described above.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>Few years ago, a famous author of textbooks on Intellectual Property law in India was discovered to have plagiarised close to two hundred pages of his new book on the Right to Information. The pages had been lifted verbatim from the manuscript sent by a famous law professor to the same publisher. When the matter came to light, the first author pleaded ignorance. After an ugly out-of-court tussle between the professor and the publisher (who happen to be one of India’s more powerful legal-publishing houses), a compromise was reached wherein the professor’s book would be published with a note inserted stating that 200 of his pages had been included in the other ‘author’s’ book.</p>
<p>I conclude this essay with this piece of copyright ‘gossip’ in order to highlight a couple of ironies that it animates. The first is, of course, the delicious irony that a famous author, of IP books no less, would stoop to such lows. (Could academic writing in any discipline be above suspicion now that academic writing in IP, that guardian discipline of genius ‘originality’, has proven susceptible to plagiarism?) The second irony is that this person’s reputation as the ‘author’ of a book, and of a genre of books survives despite the fact that he may not have penned even a single word of his book – which prompts us to ponder what function the author truly serves here. Lastly, I find the fact curious that both books continue to be displayed – and sold - in various legal bookstores, frequently side-by- side. The ‘fact’ of the plagiarism seems not to have significantly impacted sales of either author’s tome.</p>
<p>Tempting as it may be, one must resist treating this example as either exceptional or paradigmatic. Publishers in India in many cases do lead authors by their nose, and this is particularly so in the case of text-book publishing. However, this does not mean that original – in the Cartesian sense - academic writing does not continue to be produced in India. I feel this instance points us to the limits of the argument I have made in the preceding section. As well as it may be to celebrate ‘recombinative’ accounts of creativity in students, wholesale plagiarism with impunity by big name authors backed by large publishing houses cannot be easy to endure. In our acceptance of a combinatorial ‘inventio’ theory of creativity, it would be unwise too hastily to jettison the more austere creatio theory. As Macfarlane points out, popular attitudes to originality and plagiarism have moved between the two narratives of originality in a dialectical fashion so that they can best be thought of as “enmeshed .., or existing in a kind of helical wrap: each requiring the other for its support, counter-definition, and continued existence. Neither ever obliterates the other.”<a href="#21">21</a></p>
<p>However they may have been produced, we regard our ‘works’ not merely as our property but also relationally through ethics of propriety. In other words, what we write is our “own” not in the way that our shoe is our own, but in the sense that our friends are our own. Plagiarism in this context most closely approaches its original Latin roots – plaga: to convert a freeman into a slave22. – as the unjust enslavement or capture of our work by someone else.<br />What role has the internet played in this crisis of plagiarism? Despite the inherent promiscuity of the medium, I think that the arrival of the internet has not actually changed our practices in relation to plagiarism. So the fact that I may blithely pirate movies and music on the internet does not mean, automatically, that I adopt 'piracy' as my research methodology for academic writing. Our choices remain as they were – to acknowledge or not, with the latter being increasingly more risky in an age when exposure is only a google search away.</p>
<p>Finally, how does all of this relate to the question I posed at the start viz: what do we make of this self-slander? I think it will not do to simply declare ourselves innocent of the charge of plagiarism. (As Josef K’s prison chaplain says, that is what the guilty usually do.) But equally we must be careful, to continue with a Kafkaesque metaphor, not to see the gallows being constructed in the distance and hang ourselves on the presumption they are being erected solely for us. Kafka alone, of course, does not supply good grist for policy decisions. A possible way forward would be to import the cinematic notion of plagiarism into academic writing: Not all that is unacknowledged is unoriginal (as my <br />example from student research at law universities shows), but this does not extend to a license to appropriate all as one's own (the example of the famous IP author who plagiarised 200 pages from a professor). The former is a function of the dominant, awkward alien aesthetic imposed by the University, which requires academic writing to be dully impersonal and abstract. Finding it too taxing, most students resort to a clumsy pastiche rather than, for instance, shifting to a more narrative style which they may be more comfortable with. The internet allows their pastiche to be more colorful than before.</p>
<p>The latter is plainly an ethical failing by someone who believes they can get away with impunity. The internet does not impact them in any way except that their 'crime' once discovered circulates endlessly on the internet (As this IP author discovered to his dismay).</p>
<p>In deciding what is to be done, however, I would advise our policy makers to make haste, only slowly.</p>
</div>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<div>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1">Lindey, A., 1952. <i>Plagiarism and originality</i>, Harper., New York, P.2</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="2">Chu, S. et al., 2002. Letter from the group of Professors of Physics of Stanford University to the President of India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/publications/PDFfiles/india.pdf">http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/publications/PDFfiles/india.pdf</a> [Accessed December 22, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="3">Seethalakshmi, S., 2006. IIM-B prof held violating copyright. The Times of India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2006-01-05/bangalore/27803993_1_iim-b-p-g-apte-copyright-violation">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/IIM-B-prof-held-violatingcopyright/ articleshow/1359149.cms?curpg=2</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="4">Tewari, M., 2008. Indian professor guilty of plagiarism. DNA India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_indian-professor-guilty-of-plagiarism_1152417">http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_indian-professor-guilty-of-plagiarism_1152417</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="5">Singh, K., 2010. IIT-K sets up panel to probe plagiarism charges. Indian Express. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/iitk-sets-up-panel-to-probe-plagiarism-charges/695196/">http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/iitk-sets-up-panel-to-probe-plagiarism-charges/695196/</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="6">"Anveshan: Student Research Convention." Association of Indian Universities. Apr 2008. Research Division. 30 Apr 2008 <http://www.aiuweb.org/Research/research.asp>.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="7">Josy Joseph , ‘India lacks R&D base, laments DRDO chief ‘, (2000), [Internet], Available from: <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/11josy1.htm">http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/11josy1.htm</a>> [Accessed 21 April 2008]</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="8">‘Indian patent filings lag behind global average’, [Internet], Available from: <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4075557/Indian-patent-filings-lag-behind-global-average">http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702703</a>> [Accessed 21 April 2008]</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="9">Iyengar, P., 2008. Open Information Policy for Student Research in Law Universities. SSRN eLibrary. <br />Available at:</a><a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1555689"> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1555689</a> [Accessed December 24, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="10">See for instance, Rose, M., 1993. <i>Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright</i>, Cambridge, Mass: <br />Harvard University Press. Woodmansee, M., 1984. The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal<br />Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author'. <i>Eighteenth-Century Studies</i>, 17(4), 425-448.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="11">For instance, the charge of plagiarism in the domain of cinema seems to have a significantly diluted charge. Bollywood has been accused frequently of aping Hollywood, although this does not stand in the way of it immense popularity and renown. Ramesh Sippy's Sholay is regarded as having been influenced by John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven, itself being similarly 'influenced' by Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. On the modern definition of originality which requires us all to be 'perfectly uninfluenced', this qualifies as plagiarism. This definition however did not stand in the way of Sholay becoming an iconic film for Indian cinema.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="12">Respectively The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS).Although this sample is not sufficiently representative to make statistically kosher extrapolations – indeed, I make no such claim - I think the responses I received affirmed certain interesting observable trends about student research, that would seem commonsensical to anyone who teaches in India. To that extent, I think this data yields some interesting starting points for the theme of the current paper.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="13">Macfarlane, R., 2007. Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.2</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="14">Ibid, p.4</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="15">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="16">Liang, L., 2009. A Brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century. In N. Rajan, ed. <i>The Digitized Imagination</i>. Routledge India, pp. 15-36.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="17">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="18">Schoff, R.L., 2004. Freedom from the Press: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval England. Harvard University. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3516592">http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3516592</a>. cited in Liang, L., 2009. A Brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century. In N. Rajan, ed. The Digitized Imagination. Routledge India, pp. 15-36.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="19">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="20">For instance the ‘epidemic of plagiarism’ language typified in this BBC article Precey, Matt. “Study shows 'plagiarism epidemic'.” BBC 17 Jan 2008. 13 May 2008 <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/7194850.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7194850.stm</a>>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="21">Supra n. 12, at p. 17</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="22">See Voltaire, 1824. <i>A philosophical dictionary: from the French</i>, J. and H. L. Hunt. (Accessed from Google Books)</a></p>
</div>
<h2><span class="Apple-style-span">Also see these:</span></h2>
<div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/15759.pdf">Economic and Political WEEKLY</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://originalfakes.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/epw-article-on-plagiarism/">Originalfakes</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1775582">Social Science Research Network</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia</a>
</p>
No publisherprashantIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2014-05-29T05:55:27ZBlog EntryPervasive Technologies Project Presentations at the 4th Global Congress, 2015
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-project-presentations-at-the-4th-global-congress-2015
<b>These are the presentations made by the members of the PT Project team at the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, 2015 at National Law University, New Delhi.</b>
<ul>
<li><b>Nehaa Chaudhari: <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-curious-case-of-the-cci-competition-law-and-sep-regulation-in-india" class="internal-link">The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India</a></b></li>
<li><b>Amba Uttara Kak and Maggie Huang: <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/rethinking-music-copyright-management-in-the-age-of-digital-distribution-business-models-licensing-practices-and-copyright-institutions-in-india" class="internal-link">Rethinking Music Copyright Management in the Age of Digital Distribution: Business Models, Licensing Practices and Copyright Institutions in India</a></b></li>
<li><b>Rohini Lakshané</b>:<b> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-landscaping-in-the-sub-100-mobile-device-market-in-india" class="internal-link">Patent Landscaping in the sub-$100 Mobile Device Market in India</a></b></li>
<li><b>Anubha Sinha: <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-in-mobile-applications-development" class="internal-link">IP in Mobile Applications Development in India</a><br /></b></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-project-presentations-at-the-4th-global-congress-2015'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-technologies-project-presentations-at-the-4th-global-congress-2015</a>
</p>
No publishernehaaCopyrightAccess to KnowledgePervasive Technologies2016-01-21T16:33:41ZBlog EntryOpen Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr
<b>Due to the Holy See’s demonstrated pro-access position to medicines and published materials for persons with disabilities, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) requested for His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, to also consider copyrights, patents or IPR more generally, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at WIPO. We strongly encourage other organizations and civil society groups to modify this letter, as needed, and to contact the Holy See Mission to the United Nations (and WIPO) in Geneva in order to help us prompt His Excellency to contribute to the international dialogue on IPR.</b>
<hr />
<p>You may view the original letter sent by CIS <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-original-open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr" class="internal-link">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio<br />Holy See Mission to the United Nations in Geneva<br />P.O. Box 28<br />1292 Chambésy<br />Geneva, Switzerland<br />mission.holy-see@ties.itu.int<br />+41 22 758 98 20</p>
<p><strong>Friday, January 24, 2014<br /><br /></strong></p>
<p align="justify">Your Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi,</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Subject: Call for the Holy See’s comment on Intellectual Property Rights</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="justify">On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, India, I, Samantha Cassar, write to Your Excellency’s opinion on copyrights, patents and intellectual property rights.</p>
<p align="justify">We are a not-for-profit, non-governmental research organization that works on addressing policy issues related to access to knowledge and intellectual property law reform (http://cis-india.org/a2k), and accessibility for persons with disabilities (http://cis-india.org/accessibility) among other areas related to internet and information and communication technologies.</p>
<p align="justify">CIS is an accredited organization with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a regular participant at the meetings of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR), the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), as well as the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property.</p>
<p align="justify">At the outset, we commend Your Excellency for signing the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. As one of the contributors to this treaty, we appreciate the concern of the Holy See for those who are marginalised within our information society by their disabilities.</p>
<p align="justify">As Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director from CIS noted at Marrakesh during the adoption of this treaty, “When copyright doesn't serve public welfare, states must intervene, and the law must change to promote human rights, the freedom of expression and to receive and impart information, and to protect authors and consumers.” We are happy to see this being done through a treaty as such.</p>
<p align="justify">Also said by Your Excellency, within the Holy See’s statement at the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), “Among the most damaging concessions developing countries make in regional and bilateral agreements are those enhancing the monopolies on life-saving medicines, which reduce access and affordability and those that provide excessive legal rights to foreign investors, limiting the policy space for nations to promote sustainable and inclusive development.”</p>
<p align="justify">Given the Holy See’s demonstrated standpoint on the accessing of medicines and published works, we at the Centre for Internet and Society would like to request Your Excellency to also consider <strong>copyrights, patents or more generally, intellectual property rights (IPR)</strong>, as Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.</p>
<p align="justify">On behalf of CIS, I am honoured to be writing to Your Excellency and for this request to be considered. Due to the ability of copyright and other forms of IPR to obstruct the access of one’s own human rights and even the sustainable development of one’s country, we feel this area must be crucially considered within an international dialogue—not only from a place of political strategy but also from principles of mercy and compassion.</p>
<p align="justify">With meetings approaching for both <strong>WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents</strong> (January 27-31, 2014) and <strong>WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property</strong> (May 19-23, 2014), we are very excited at the possibility of the Holy See enriching this discussion, and hope for such a contribution to take place when the international community is listening—at these meetings, or in any other form.<br /><br /></p>
<p>With Every Best Wish,<br />Sincerely Yours,</p>
<p><br />Samantha Cassar<br /><br />Programme Associate<br />The Centre for Internet & Society</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr</a>
</p>
No publishersamanthaAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightPublic AccountabilityIntellectual Property RightsOpen Content2014-01-31T07:14:07ZBlog EntryOf Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/jesters-clowns-pranksters
<b>The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant Shah in this peer reviewed essay published in the Journal of Moving Images, Number 8, December 2009.</b>
<div>
<p>The idea of the single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube. The recent state of controversies around YouTube, has foregrounded the question of authorship in collaborative conditions. Questions of who owns the particular videos and what is the role that the large communities of authorship play have not been resolved as the debaters have concentrated only on single videos and singular notions of authorship, dismissing the (this paper proposes) collaborators as jesters, clowns and pranksters, without recognizing their contribution to the videos.</p>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p>I shall begin by misquoting and possibly violating copyright regimes by invoking Dostoyevsky, to say that all dissimilar technologies are the same in their own way, but all similar technologies are uniquely different. Every technological innovation, but particularly innovations affecting authorship and the role of the author, brings with it a new set of anxieties and concerns. David Stewart, in his engrossing book on the history of technology and communication, for example, talks about how in the early years of postal service there were debates around who was the author of the mail that was being delivered. Through a particularly fascinating case that looked at a Lord in London holding the post office responsible for some objectionable mail delivered to his daughter, Stewart traces the origins of techno-neutrality and regulation to look upon technology as merely a bearer of knowledge – in this case, the mail – and the original author, this primordial figure that sits and writes or shoots or sings, as the only person upon whom the responsibility and hence also the credit can be placed.</p>
<p>Mark Joffe, in his movie The Man Who Sued God, introduces us to the case of Steve Myers, an ex-lawyer in Australia, who sues God because his boat is struck by lightning and his insurance company refuses to pay, claiming it to be an act of God. By claiming to be God’s representatives on Earth, the Christian churches and the Jewish synagogues are held to be the liable party, putting them in the difficult position of either having to pay out large sums of money, or prove that God does not exist. But more than anything else, it is the attribution of responsibility to one particular, identifiable entity that lies at the centre of the movie. Even in the pre-Internet world, one of the biggest sources of anxieties has been determining authorship and putting into place a knowledge apparatus that reinforces the need for such a condition. The question of authorship, while it surfaces in a number of contexts – copyright infringements, intellectual property right regimes, plagiarism, crediting and referencing industries, etc – is perhaps most interestingly manifest on video sharing social networking sites like YouTube and Myspace.</p>
<p>Rather than addressing what constitutes digital cinema or the future of celluloid, I would instead like to locate the emergence of the idea of authorship, through a historical examination of an ‘old media’. I will be looking at the early history of the book and the print revolution to argue that the condition of authorship that one presumes for the book, and subsequently, through a different trajectory, for cinema, is not something that was inherent to it; and in fact the early history of the book is filled with conflicts around the question of how you could attribute the book as an artefact to one individual author. By examining the conditions that enabled the establishment of the book as a stable object that can be linked to the author, I hope to return us to a different way of thinking about Youtube videos and the debates on authorship that surround it.</p>
<h3>YouTube and the question of authorship</h3>
<p>The world of YouTube stakeholders can roughly be divided into two camps: People who swear by it and people who swear at it. The camp has arisen mainly because of differences of opinions on who owns a YouTube video and the content therein. The critics of YouTube – largely recording companies and movie studios and distributors – argue that platforms like YouTube are killing their businesses, emptying their coffers, and are a direct threat to the sacred cow of all cultural productions – the livelihood and the integrity of the creative artist. They make claims that a site like YouTube infringes the copyright regimes because videos get published by somebody who has ripped it from another source, and often does no crediting. Also, that the sales of the music or the movies or television serials go down because of such activities.</p>
<p>One of the most recent infamous example that can be cited is the case of the Let’s Go Crazy Dancing video case, were the world literally went crazy. In early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz’s 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy.” <a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a> Lenz wanted her mother to see the film so she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. They watched the video scores of times. It was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video, readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch.</p>
<p>Sometime over the next four months, however, someone from Universal Music Group also watched Holden dance. Universal manages the copyrights of Prince. It fired off a letter to YouTube demanding that it remove the unauthorized “performance” of Prince’s music. YouTube, to avoid liability itself, complied. YouTube sent Lenz a notice that it was removing her video. She wondered, “Why?” What had she done wrong? Her questions reached the Electronic Frontier Foundation and then started the battle, where on Lenz’s behalf, the EFF lawyers sent a ‘counter-notice’ to YouTube, that no rights of Universal were violated by Holden’s dancing video. Lenz as the author of the video was concentrating on her son’s dancing and that the presence of Prince’s song was negligible and definitely fair use. Yet Universal’s lawyers insist to this day that sharing this home movie is wilful copyright infringement under the laws of the United States. On their view of the law, she is liable to a fine of up to $150,000 for sharing 29 seconds of Holden dancing. They specifically state that Lenz is not the ‘original’ artist who made the music and thus she is appropriating authorship and violating the rights of the artist – Prince, to be identified as the creator of the song. The notice also informed her that they were unhappy with the ‘clowning’ around of Prince’s music which might offend his fan-base.</p>
<p>The questions which come to the fore are very obvious and not new to the history of legal debates on cinema: What is the content of the video? Who is the author of the video? Who watches the video? What are the intentions of the video? The supporters of the ‘Free as in Beer’ access movements and also of YouTube clearly point out the farcical condition of this battle. As Lawrence Lessig very eloquently points out in his essay on the ‘Defence of Piracy’.</p>
<p>How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there’s some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music? “Let’s Go Crazy” indeed!<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a></p>
<p>In another instance, which is a competition on YouTube between two videos to reach the coveted “first video to be seen 1 million times” status, brings again these question of the author and the pranksters. Avril Lavigne fans, on the release of her recent Single ‘Girlfriend’, started campaigning to make that video the first to be viewed 1 million times on YouTube. They put it in direct competition with the then most viewed video – ‘History of Dance’ – and started activities that violated the Terms of Service for YouTube. They embedded the videos in many sites and started websites which played the videos automatically. They even created a website which auto reloaded the video every fifteen minutes and encouraged fans to keep the website opened, abusing the power of broad band, while they are browsing, surfing, or even sleeping. The efforts paid off and Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend’, in July 2008, became the first video to be watched 1 million times in the history of YouTube. One would have thought that such publicity is what a distributor’s wet dreams are made of. However, just after the video reached the 1 million mark and entered the heights of popularity, YouTube received a notice from Times Warner, to remove the video because it was a copyright violation. They also demanded that all the other compilations and samplings which included the song be removed from YouTube. The supporters of the move, condemned the Lavigne fans as ‘pranksters’ or ‘jesters’ who were in for the cheap publicity, because they were not really creators of the video or the authors. In a startling Op-Ed titled ‘How Avril Lavigne Killed YouTube’ in the New York Times, a spokesperson for Times Warner suggested.</p>
<p>This is not respectable fan behaviour. A fan is somebody who loves and worships the author and not somebody who pretends to be the author. The avrilelavignebandaid group just turned out to be a group of pirates who passed off Lavigne’s video as their own and went on to promote it, forgetting the fact that they were using a democratic platform like YouTube for activities which can only be called theft!</p>
<p>Predictably, the debate on the question of authorship takes place in a rather somber tone, whether it is the zealous claims of monopoly of production and authorship that the established industries claim for themselves, or the passionate defenses of the YouTubeians. What remains constant through the entire process is the fact that the idea of a singular, identifiable author remains stable and unchallenged. I would like to take a slightly different track here, and try and see how we can think the question of the “production of the author” by revisiting the history of the book and of early print culture, and look at the manner in which the idea of the author emerges.</p>
<p>There is often an unstated assumption about the book as authored by a single person and authorship is spoken of in a value-neutral and ahistorical manner. It would be useful to situate the condition of authorship within a historical moment, where authorship is not seen to be an apriori condition but a constructed one, and one whose history is located in specific technological changes. The technology of print and paper brought about a set of questions around the question of authorship, and in the same way, the domain of Internet video sharing and collaborative authorship raises a set of questions and concerns.</p>
<h3>The construction of author/ity</h3>
<p>In many ways, the debate on authorship and knowledge is similar to the older debate in philosophy between body and self. Critics of self, such as Foucault, demonstrate that the notion of the self has often stemmed from very particular experiences in the Christian West, which were then posited as universal experiences. However, doing away with the notion of the self does not do away with the question of the body. In fact, Foucault goes on to explore the technologies of the self and how it informs our understanding of the body. In a similar vein, while the proponents of the Web 2.0 revolution (sometimes unknown to themselves, echoing debates that happened in print about a 100 years ago) announce either the death of the author or the availability of open licensing, fail to recognize that the question of authorship (and hence authority) are rooted both in particular practices as well as in technological forms. Hence the debates take familiar shapes: author versus pirate, digital versus celluloid, collaborative versus single author, etc.</p>
<p>It is especially when posing the question of authorship in absolute terms that the cultural producers/consumers on YouTube get reduced to pranksters, jesters or clowns. The debate also excludes the temporal framework of the debate and forget that the Internet is still a work in progress. Even though an Internet year is akin to seven pre-digital years, and time is now experienced in accelerated modes, it is necessary to realize that the domain of collaborative online sharing and production of videos is a relatively new one.</p>
<p>It may be more useful to think of the post-celluloid world as an extremely ambiguous and fluid period, undoubtedly marked by immense possibilities, but we have not reached any settled phase yet. So if we are to make comparisons, then it is more useful to compare the contemporary period with another moment in history, and the emergence of a cultural form other than cinema, which was marked by an equal fluidity. It is here that I go to the early history of print culture or ‘print in the making’<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a> and the conflicts over the question of authorship, to demonstrate that the condition of authorship question is an important one, but it is not a question that is unique to YouTube or the Internet. And an examination of the conditions under which authorship came to be established may help us get over our anxieties about authorship, and better understand it with certain lightness – through pranks, jests and clowning around.</p>
<h3>What’s in a name? – The author and the book</h3>
<p>For us to understand the idea of print in the making, we need to understand some of the practices that preceded the idea of print. They also enable us to understand the specific nature of the disputes around the question of authorship, and more importantly rethink disputes over authorship as productive disputes. Lawrence Liang in his ‘A brief history of the Internet in 13th and 14th Century’ takes up the example of Chaucer, the father of English poetry. He demonstrates, through different readings, “how the structure and the form of the Canterbury Tales reflects, interestingly, the question of approaches to the idea of authorship as well as the conditions of the production of the Canterbury Tales itself.” Liang looks at the manuscript cultures and the ways in which authorship and rights were understood.</p>
<p>Borrowing from Mark Rose, Liang shows how, in the Middle Ages, the owner of a manuscript was understood to possess the right to grant permission to copy it, and this was a right that could be exploited, as it was, for example, by those monasteries that regularly charged a fee for permission to copy one of their books. This was somewhat similar to copyright royalty with the crucial difference that the book-owner’s property was not a right in the text as such but in the manuscript as a physical object made of ink and parchment. The value provided by the monastery and the reason for their charging for their copy fee did not emerge just from the existence of the copy alone, but also from the fact that each monastery also had their unique elements in the form of the annotations, the commentary, corrections, which only the particular monastery’s copy might contain. The very act of copying and possession made you the author of that text and also the owner of the book.<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4]</a> The author was not only the reclusive solitary figure that coins the first word but the various scribes, writers, annotators and litterateurs who offered changes, as well as helped in distribution and copying.<a href="#fn5" name="fr5">[5]</a></p>
<p>So, while the popular account of preprint cultures is of slavish copying by scribes, the story turns out to be slightly more complicated. Acting as annotators, compilers, and correctors, medieval book owners and scribes actively shaped the texts they read. For example, they might choose to leave out some of the Canterbury Tales, or contribute one of their own. They might correct Chaucer’s versification every now and then. They might produce whole new drafts of Chaucer by combining one or more of his published versions with others. And these were all legitimate, acceptable and engaged forms of authorship. While this activity of average or amateur readers differs in scale and quality from Chaucer’s work, it opens us to new questions of the relationship between author, text, and reader in the Middle Ages, and also what it may mean to understand contemporary practices of knowledge and cultural creation.</p>
<p>Scribes and readers responded to Chaucer, Langland, and others, not by slavishly copying, canonizing, or passively receiving their texts, but by reworking them as creative readers. In doing so, they continue and contribute to the great layers of intertextual conversation that made the work of these now canonical authors relevant, interesting, and, fundamentally, possible. Similar debates surround the attribution of authorship to William Shakespeare for his work. Literary historians have periodically made claims that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the then court poet Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Christopher Marlowe, who is considered to be his arch enemy, that Shakespeare’s plays were written by another man named Shakespeare, and not the Shakespeare we think we know. At the basis of these arguments was the idea that the plays were designed not to be written but be performed and that in the lively rendering of the play, between different actors and producers, the original text changed. Interestingly, the Shakespearean technique of ‘asides’ and ‘taking the audience into confidence’ was actually a way of inviting the audience to not only receive the story but to read it differently, and edit it with their response to it.</p>
<p>This invitation was accepted by late Elizabethans who took great pleasure in seeing the same play multiple times to see how it has changed in the performance. Moreover, as multiple copies of the same manuscript started appearing in the living public, along with the actors and the producers, the readers also took great pleasure in creating copies of the takes that drastically cut, expand, edit and otherwise Shakespeare’s plays.<a href="#fn6" name="fr1">[6]</a></p>
<p>This activity goes beyond the mechanics of audience reception and looks at the plays as a collaborative effort which gets glossed over in the making of the authoritative folios which looked upon all such interventions as anomalies to the text. Before the fixity of text, there was a possibility to think of the text not as a finished product but a work in progress that elicits new responses, meanings and forms through its engagement with the audience. Moreover, the audience, in their rights of consumption, also seemed to possess the right to edit, change and circulate the text. They were the original jesters, pranksters and clowns, who, in their playful response to the text, constructed it to respond to their contexts and traditions. This sounds a lot like the debates we are experiencing on YouTube videos where the readers respond in kind to the poetics of reading and composing within which the YouTube videos operate.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>Thus rather than speaking about authorship as something that is intrinsic to either a particular mode of authorship or intrinsic to any technological form, it might be more useful instead to consider the variety of knowledge apparatuses which come into play to establish its authority. In the case for the history of the book, it was clear that the establishment of authorship depended on the arrangements, classifications and kinds of assemblage that make it possible, maintain it as well as critique it. The conventions, for instance, by which the title and author of a work are identified play very specific functions in preparing for knowledge, as do the several kinds of documentation, attribution, citation and copyright.</p>
<p>The preconditions for authorship cannot easily be made into the object that we identify as author. It is a matter of making evident (making known) the structures of authorship which emerge in ways that provide definitive proof of the imperfectability and ambiguity of the authorial position. To speak of the productive nature of conflicts over authorship is then to recognize that any author – either exalted or dismissed - is constructed in a condition of potential collaboration and revision. The question thus centres on how we use the notion of authorship, how we bring it to light and mobilize it today to understand cultural forms differently. The way the authorship debates take place, there is almost a theological devotion to an exalted idea of author, without a consideration of the apparatus that was established to construct that condition.</p>
<p>The point is not to do away with the question of the author or construct another catch-all retainer that accepts all forms of engagement as authorship, but to recognize it not as something that is intrinsic or a given but something that is always transient, and to locate it, in the case of digital cinema, within specific practices and technologies. To return to the question of YouTube videos and the future of celluloid image; we are now faced with new questions about authorship and the very form that the digital cinema embodies: If the image itself is no longer made to bear the burden of meaning and intention, can we locate new forms of authorship – sometimes in incidental intertextuality, sometimes in creating conditions (as is in the case of DVDs or digital video sharing sites) narratives, meanings, interpretations and paraphernalia that simultaneously re-emphasize the sacredness of the image while deconstructing the apparatus that establishes a fixity of authorship over that image? Can we look at not only novel forms of interaction and consumption of the celluloid image but at a playful engagement with the image to create a galaxy of responses – sometimes as reciprocal videos, often through comments, embedding mechanisms, using the video not as an object unto itself but as a form of complex referencing and citation to a larger community of artists and authors?</p>
<p>The future of celluloid, especially if we are locating it in the realm of the Digital Moving Objects of Web 2.0 technologies, is going to have debates which were relevant also to the making of the book. However, this is not to say that the challenges faced and the problematic that emerge are redundant. Indeed, the celluloid frame and its overpowering capacity to incorporate technology, content, response and remixes, to produce the spectacle of watching, posit certain challenges to the Web 2.0 celebrations while simultaneously expanding its own scope of production. YouTube debates around infantile abuse of video/cinema technologies to make dancing babies and furry animals popular need to be read as symptomatic of a much larger question of authorship, authority and the conditions of cultural production rather than signalling the death of celluloid. An escape from the authority question also allows for an escape from the celluloid-digital binary and posits a more fruitful engagement in looking at how celluloid technologies (and the constellation of factors therewith) inform our understanding and analysis of the DMIs that are slowly gaining popularity.</p>
<p>This research was originally published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.jmionline.org/jmi8_4.htm">Journal of Moving Images</a>.</p>
<p>See the research paper in <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.academia.edu/NishantShah/Papers">Academia.edu</a>.</p>
<hr />
</div>
<h3>References</h3>
<div>
<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>].Holden Lenz’s YouTube debut, that probably made him the most popular baby on the Internet is still available for viewing at <<a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/internet-governance/Holden%20Lenz%E2%80%99s%20YouTube%20debut,%20that%20probably%20made%20him%20the%20most%20popular%20baby%20on%20the%20Internet%20is%20still%20available%20for%20viewing%20at%20%3Chttp:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ%3E%20retrieved%2012:14%20a.m.%2022nd%20January%202010." class="external-link">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ</a>> retrieved 12:14 a.m. 22nd January 2010.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>].The essay is available for open access at <<a class="external-link" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html</a>></p>
<p>[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>].I am grateful to Lawrence Liang for this methodological framework where he looks at the emergence of Wikipedia and the pre-print cultures, to look at the similarities and differences between the two. “A Brief History of the Internet in the 13th and 14th Century”. Forthcoming 2010.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>].See Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading. 1990. New York: Penguin Books.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr5" name="fn5">5</a>].Daniel Wolf, in Reading History in Early Modern England. 2005. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, explains in great detail how the reader as well as the author were imagined, constructed and recognized in the early days of print.</p>
<p>[<a href="#fr6" name="fn6">6</a>].See Molly Abel Travis’s comprehensive account of the debates in Construction of Readers in the Twentieth Century. 1998. Illinois, Chicago: Southern Illinois University Press.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/jesters-clowns-pranksters'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/jesters-clowns-pranksters</a>
</p>
No publishernishantIntellectual Property RightsCopyright2012-12-14T10:24:05ZBlog EntryNational IPR Policy: Mapping the Stakeholders’ Response
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-mapping-the-stakeholders2019-response
<b>The first draft of the National IPR Policy was released last December. Following that, a plethora of comments and suggestions was submitted to the DIPP on the same. In this post, I will focus on the comments that were available online and analyse the trends that I was able to find in the same and also highlight the many suggestions put forth by the stakeholders.</b>
<p>Nehaa Chaudhari provided inputs and feedback and also edited this post.</p>
<hr />
<h3>I. Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On 24<sup>th</sup> December 2014, the IPR Think Tank constituted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) officially released the <a href="http://dipp.nic.in/English/Schemes/Intellectual_Property_Rights/IPR_Policy_24December2014.pdf">first draft</a> of the National IPR Policy. Following this, in a <a href="http://dipp.nic.in/English/acts_rules/Press_Release/pressRelease_IPR_Policy_30December2014.pdf">press release</a> dated 30<sup>th</sup> December, 2014, the DIPP called for comments and suggestions on the draft from all stakeholders. CIS, through an RTI, asked the DIPP to disclose all the comments received by it. However, the DIPP’s reply, rather vague, stated that it is not in the position to provide the same. (Further details <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-series-rti-requests-by-cis-to-dipp-dipp-responses">here</a>).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">II. Research Methodology</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this post, I have compiled and compared the various submissions that I was able to find online in a <a href="http://spicyip.com/2015/03/more-submissions-on-the-draft-ip-policy.html">SpicyIP post</a> and will provide an analysis of the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ipr-policy-comments" class="internal-link">spreadsheet</a> that I have created contains a compilation of the many issues that were raised by 15 stakeholders of various affiliations (organisations/scholars/unions). This spreadsheet was put together after reading each submission carefully, and summarizing the same. After dividing the contents of the submissions into the various issues, they were put under certain heads in this sheet. Though there were a few ideas covered by certain submissions that have not been tabulated, all the major and important ones have been covered, in my opinion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the basis of this spreadsheet, the following observations have been made on the feedback of the many stakeholders on the various aspects of the draft.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">III. Stakeholders - A Statistical Analyis</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A total of 15 submissions were taken into consideration for the purpose of this post, and all of them applauded the government for recognizing of the need for a comprehensive policy on IP and the DIPP’s efforts to give the public a chance to play a role in the process of formation of a policy that would affect the country and its economy significantly. However, each submission had its own set of criticisms and suggestions to the various aspects dealt with by the policy. In my analysis there are three broad categories that the stakeholders can be divided into:</p>
<ul>
<li>Research organisations/NGOs.</li>
<li>Industrial representative bodies/Political organisations.</li>
<li>Scholars/Academia. </li>
</ul>
<p>A representation of the stakeholders and the categories that they belong to has been produced below.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Categories</th><th>Stakeholders</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Research organisations/NGOs</td>
<td>Centre for Internet and Society (CIS); Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS); Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC); Centre for Law & Policy Research (CLPR).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Industrial representative bodies/Political organisations</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO); National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); International Trademark Association (INTA); IP Federation – UK; ICC’s Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP); Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM); American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham – India).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Scholars/Academia</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Centre for Intellectual Property and Technology Law – O.P. Jindal Global University (CIPTEL); S. Ragavan, B. Baker, S. Flynn; Adv. Ravindra Chingale – NLU Delhi; Prof. N.S. Gopalakrishnan & Dr T.G. Agitha – CUSAT.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Flowchart.png" alt="Flowchart" class="image-inline" title="Flowchart" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the comments studied, the largest chunk of stakeholders (46.67%) belonged to the industrial/manufacturing sector, with the other two categories comprising only 26.67% each. This could be attributed to the fact that a country’s IPR policy has a very vital role to play in influencing an industrial firm’s strategy and an unsatisfactory policy could have a serious and adverse effect on the profit-making abilities of an industry.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">IV. IP - Innovation / Growth Nexus</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are a total of 13 themes that have been identified in the spreadsheet, and out of these 13, the one that the largest number of stakeholders has commented on is the question of there being nexus between intellectual property, innovation and growth. Eleven out of the fifteen stakeholders have given their opinion on this issue.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The opinion on this theme is not very uniform. Some organisations are of the opinion that there is a strong correlation between robust IPR protection mechanisms and innovation in a country, and thus there is a resultant benefit to the economy of the country. For example, the IP Federation of UK claimed that with a strong IPR regime, there is a greater inflow of FDI and R&D expenditure in countries, thus benefitting the country’s economy. On the other hand, there are some stakeholders who believe that there is no nexus and that the underlying assumption made by the draft policy is not backed by any research or evidence. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), for example, even cites evidence in its submission to oppose this assumption. The smallest chunk of stakeholders suggests to the Think Tank that in the current draft, there is not enough authority cited by them, and thus, there should be some research that must be done in order to give this assumption some backing. CIPTEL, a research centre based in OP Jindal Global University, stated that there should be a transparent survey conducted on this issue by a neutral agency.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The figure below would give the reader a comparative analysis of the responses from the stakeholders on this particular theme.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_Flowchart.png" alt="Assumption" class="image-inline" title="Assumption" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All the research organisations/NGOs that presented their views on this assumption are in opposition to the same and have proposed to the Think Tank that it should amend the contents of the policy after taking this incorrectly-made assumption out of the mix.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A majority of the industrial bodies have supported the existence of a nexus and have stated that by enforcing stronger IPR protection laws, the innovative/inventive environment of a country develops and this in turn encourages investors, which culminates into a rise in the growth of the economy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Scholars and academia have a difference of opinion amongst themselves and there is no uniform pattern that can be seen in their responses to this issue.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The only political organisation in this analysis, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch opposes the assumption and states that the policy has turned a blind eye to the development of the country and that there is no analysis on whether there is any effect of the proposed strengthening of IP protection on the various sectors of the economy.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">V. International Treaties</h3>
<p>The policy, in its introduction states the following stance on negotiation of international treaties and agreements – “<i>In future negotiations in international forums and with other countries, India shall continue to give precedence to its national development priorities whilst adhering to its international commitments and avoiding TRIPS plus provisions.”</i></p>
<p>On this general theme, 9 out of 15 stakeholders have submitted their comments to the Think Tank. <i> </i>Out of these 9, the category-wise division of the stakeholders is represented by the diagram below.<img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy3_of_Flowchart.png" alt="" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The opinion of the stakeholders on this issue varied and there were broadly 3 kinds of responses that were found in the analysis. More than half of these responses (56%) suggested that all negotiations of treaties must be done transparently, with proper consultation of all stakeholders. CUTS, for example, recommended that to increase the confidence of the people in the country’s IP regime, the negotiations must be done with the opinion of all stakeholders being taken into consideration. They also cautioned the government to make sure that any future agreements do not contain any TRIPS-plus provisions. The second category applauded the policy’s pro-global stance towards IPR developments, and has recommended certain treaties that India must sign in order to strengthen its regime (details in spreadsheet). Only one stakeholder, the National Association of Manufacturers of the USA suggested that India’s stance of avoiding TRIPS-plus agreements is in contravention to its objective of keeping up with global IP developments. This point of view is clearly in favour of the USA as TRIPS-plus provisions have always been more beneficial to developed countries than developing countries like India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thus, it can be said that almost 90% of stakeholders, from across categories, are satisfied with India’s pro-international stance, and only want the government to be cautious and consult the public before signing treaties on IPR.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">VI. Utility Models</h3>
<p>A provision to legalise utility model protection was also a part of the draft policy. Utility models or petty patents are suggested by the policy in order to protect parties like MSMEs and their many innovations which may not satisfy the requirements of regular patent protection and thus losing out from IPR protection, leading to benefits not being reaped properly from these inventions.</p>
<p>This provision was commented on by eight of the 15 stakeholders, making it a little above half of the total. A category-wise division can be found below.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy4_of_Flowchart.png" alt="Utility Models" class="image-inline" title="Utility Models" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The opinion on utility models was majorly negative across categories, with 75% of the stakeholders believing that utility model protection must be given a second thought and many drawbacks were pointed out such as frivolous litigation, uncertainty in the market, and a drop in the quality of innovation registered in the country. A review of how effective utility model laws are in other countries was suggested before making any final decision. Only 2 out of the 8 stakeholders supported the provision for petty patents and stated that this would give a good means of protection to ‘<i>jugaad</i>’ innovations that are very popular in India and thus believed that such laws would help increase the innovation levels in the country.</p>
<h3>VII. Public Funded Research Labs and Universities</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Only four stakeholders had a say on the issue of grants to Government labs and universities, these organisations being Indian research organisations and academia. The opinion varied from party to party and the Centre for Internet and Society argued that if there was a rise in IP protection for government funded research, it would be against the vision of free and open access to research funded by taxpayers’ money.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The other three stakeholders, namely CIPTEL, CUTS and Adv. Ravindra Chingale emphasised on the importance of merit-based funding instead of funding on the basis of whether an organisation is Government-owned or not. Two of these also suggested that there must be a system of contact between industry and academia to incentivise and utilize innovation properly.</p>
<h3>VIII. Limitations and Flexibilities</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A very important aspect of any IPR regime is the presence of limitations, exceptions and flexibilities on the rights protected by IP laws, as it allows for the appropriate amount of information being shared for free or at reasonable costs, for furtherance of public interest.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On this vital issue, most stakeholders had a say and the trends of the feedback on the limitations and flexibilities on IP protection were as expected. There were two broad sets of opinions that could be gathered from the analysis, and while there was a majority (62.5%) of organisations and people who believed that the government must keep up its efforts of providing a good framework for exceptions to IPR protection with measures like compulsory licensing being put in place in order to protect broader interests of the country such as access to reasonably priced medicines and other necessities. The only recommendation that they had was that these measures should be decided after a careful analysis of what the economy really needed in order to develop further.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The opposition, quite understandably came from international industrial bodies representing manufacturers and intellectual property owners who argued that the policy of limitations to IPR protection is discouraging those who want to invest in the country and that it hurts the business of foreign-based companies that operate in India or want to do so in the near future as their intellectual property may not be protected adequately with such a policy in place.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/Flowchart.png" alt="Limitations and Flexibilities" class="image-inline" title="Limitations and Flexibilities" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The figure above clearly points out that none of those against limitations being placed on IP protection had an Indian background and all those in favour of the same were primarily Indian-based organisations and academics, with the exception of the American scholars – S. Ragavan, B. Baker, and S. Flynn.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">IX. Trademarks</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Only a single stakeholder, the International Trademark Association, was interested in the issue of trademarks. This can be attributed to the fact that this is the only association out of all the stakeholders having a direct interest in trademark law and policy. The organisation suggested that there should be a greater amount of clarity in the trademark examination process and also suggested that there should be an increase in the number of examiners to make the process of trademark registration quicker.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">X. Trade Secrets</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In objective 3 of the draft policy, the Think Tank suggests that to strengthen the IP framework of the country, trade secret protection must be introduced as a formal law. India, today, does not have a law to protect sensitive trading information and there needs to be a formalised contract for there to be any relief for leaking of such information.</p>
<p>The stakeholders supporting the enactment of trade secret legislation were interestingly all industrial bodies representing international companies and firms. Only 2 parties expressed their worries about such a law, and argued that there must be more backing to make this recommendation more convincing. A graphical representation of the stakeholders is given below to provide a clearer picture of the responses.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy5_of_Flowchart.png" alt="Trade Secret Protection" class="image-inline" title="Trade Secret Protection" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This chart portrays clearly that international bodies are insistent on the enactment of a trade secret law as this would help incentivise knowledge sharing in the country. In many countries, trade secret protection is formalised legally and these stakeholders argue that for foreign multinationals to feel confident while sharing sensitive information with others in India, the government must follow in the footsteps of such countries and legislate on this matter soon.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">XI. On Specialised Courts</h3>
<p>A common suggestion found across 5 of the 15 stakeholder responses was for the creation of a specialised IP judiciary that would be formed by widening the patent bench that was proposed in the draft policy. Such a court would deal only with issues of intellectual property and would consist of judges having special knowledge in the various branches of IP law.</p>
<h3>XII. Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The draft policy was released almost a year ago, and since then, much discussion has taken place on the same, with many contradictory opinions and suggestions on the various aspects of the policy. It can be observed from this compilation that industrial bodies have been insistent on stronger IP protection and more incentives to multinationals to invest in India in the form of trade secret legislations, keeping limitations such as compulsory licensing to a minimum, et al.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the other hand, a trend could be seen of research organisations and academia having a view that was more in the interest of the public and with the Indian scenario taken into consideration, with the criticism of utility models, TRIPS-plus agreements, and by raising the question of whether the assumption underlying the draft of there being a link between IP protection and a rise in innovation had any basis whatsoever. This post, however, is only a glimpse of the stakeholders’ responses owing to the fact that the DIPP has not officially released the submissions made to it and only the ones that were available online have been taken into consideration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is only a matter of time that the Think Tank releases the final policy and one shall hope that this tedious process of seeking comments and suggestions will bear any fruit with the policy being a balanced one and being aimed ultimately towards the benefit of the country as a whole.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-mapping-the-stakeholders2019-response'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/national-ipr-policy-mapping-the-stakeholders2019-response</a>
</p>
No publisherAkshath MithalIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2015-11-24T15:02:17ZBlog EntryNational IPR Policy Series : Comments on the Proposed Intellectual Property Rights Policy to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-proposed-ip-rights-policy-to-dipp
<b>On 13 November, 2014, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had released a Call for Suggestions for India's proposed National IPR Policy. This is the Centre for Internet and Society's (CIS) submission for the same.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Submitted by CIS with inputs from Pranesh Prakash, Director, Nehaa Chaudhari, Programme Officer, Anubha Sinha, Programme Officer and Amulya P., Intern. <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/comments-on-ip-rights-policy-to-dipp.pdf" class="external-link">Click</a> to view the PDF.</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">I. Preliminary</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I.1. This submission presents comments from the Centre for Internet and Society (<strong>"CIS"</strong>)<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> on the proposed National Intellectual Property Rights Policy <strong>("National IPR policy") </strong>to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. <strong>("DIPP"</strong>).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I.2. CIS commends the DIPP for this initiative, and appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on the National IPR Policy. CIS' comments are as stated hereafter.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">II. Principles</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">II.1.1. The characterization of intellectual property rights may be two- fold- <em>first,</em> at their core, intellectual property rights, are temporary monopolies granted to <em>inter alia,</em> authors and inventors; and <em>second, </em>they are a tool to ensure innovation, social, scientific and cultural progress and further access to knowledge. This dual nature and purpose of intellectual property protection is particularly critical in developing economies such as India. Excessive intellectual property protection could result in stunted innovation and negatively impact various stakeholders. <a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> It is therefore our submission that the development of the IPR Policy be informed by broader principles of fairness and equity, balancing intellectual property protections with limitations and exceptions/user rights such as those for research, education and access to medicines.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">II.1.2. These comments will evaluate the recent developments in the intellectual property regime in India and point out instances for possible reform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">II.1.3. These comments have been divided into five sections, dealing with patents, openness, open access to scholarly works, copyright, and negotiating free trade agreements in that order.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III. <strong>Detailed Comments</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1. <strong>Patents</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.1. <strong>Key Issues Regarding Patents</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.1.1. The key issues involving patents in India include compulsory licensing, uncertainty in software patenting, slow pace of examination of patent applications, <em>inter alia</em>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.1.2. CIS submits that the Indian intellectual property regime contains numerous safeguards to ensure that monopolies of intellectual property are not exercised to the detriment of the public and that the National IPR Policy should continue to reflect these ideals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.2. <strong>Software Patents and Dual Monopoly </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.2.1. Presently, software in India may be copyrighted and computer related inventions are patentable. CIS is of the opinion that this results in an ambiguity that could potentially result in a dual monopoly over the same subject matter. This ambiguity around the legality of software patents and the scope of patents on computer related inventions has existed since the Parliament introduced the term "per se" to section 3(k) through the Patent (Amendment) Act, 2002, persisting despite repeated attempts<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> to bring about clarity in the law (the most recent one being the Draft Guidelines on Computer Related Inventions, released in 2013 by the Indian patent office).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.2.2. CIS believes that software is currently adequately protected under copyright, and does not merit patent protection. The software industry in its infancy grew by leaps and bounds in the absence of patents, and imposing twenty year monopolies is stunting the development of software, especially, in an industry where technology changes every two to five years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.2.3. Therefore, CIS is of the opinion that the National IPR Policy should recognise the danger of software patenting, and encourage the adoption of and development of alternatives to a strict intellectual property regime, for instance, Free/Open Source/Libre Software.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.3. <strong>Compulsory Licensing of Patents</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.3.1. CIS believes that the current regime allowing for compulsory licensing of patents in India helps achieve a balance between the two concerns of rewarding inventions and making them available to the public during times of need, of the rights of the patent holder with his obligations to ensure availability of products at a reasonable price by allowing third parties who do not own the patent to license the use of the patent during the term of protection.<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> CIS believes that such a balance cannot be arrived at merely by market mechanisms. CIS further believes that achieving such a balance is important for a developing country like India as we have special concerns regarding access to healthcare and access to technologies that will protect our national interest.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.3.2. Therefore CIS submits that the National IPR policy should continue to make positive allowances for government involvement in this space, through the compulsory licensing of patents in certain situations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.4. <strong>Alternative Licensing Mechanisms</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.4.1. CIS believes that government participation in the patenting regime ensures that all interests are taken on board and the social costs of patents are kept in mind. CIS is of the opinion that the National IPR policy should be formed after careful consideration of alternative patent licensing mechanisms that could help achieve a balance between the interests of different stakeholders particularly because as a developing economy we have greater needs for access to medicines and technologies to ensure economic development.<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6">[6]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.4.2. On patent pools: In the interests of ensuring development of technology and innovation while balancing the social costs of patents, CIS submits that the National IPR Policy should consider alternative licensing mechanisms such as patent pools which present an efficient legal arrangement to the different problems that arise when companies have complementary intellectual property rights and these rights are essential to new technologies being used and employed<a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7">[7]</a>. Such a licensing could be done with government participation to ensure standard royalty rates and standard agreements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.4.3. On tailoring patent strengths: Our patent system provides for a one size first all approach to patent terms. CIS believes that the National IPR Policy could suggest the adoption of a more studied approach to differential patent strengths that properly balances out the benefits of the innovation against social costs of patents both in the form of monopoly pricing and threats to subsequent pricing is required to ensure that our patent system is fair equitable and in our national interest.<a name="_ftnref8" href="#_ftn8">[8]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.1.4.4. On royalty caps: CIS believes that the National IPR policy could encourage bringing back royalty caps for certain sectors as a means of regulating the market and ensuring that access to technologies is unharmed. CIS believes that this will serve the larger national interest and ensure technological development.<a name="_ftnref9" href="#_ftn9">[9]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.2. <strong>Openness</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.2.1. <strong>Free and Open Source Software</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.2.1.1. Free and Open Source Software ("FOSS") has emerged as a key agent in information technology policy making in India. There has been an increased importance of free and open source software in education, governmental agencies, as recently demonstrated by the Indian Government's decision to shift to open source software, in sync with the Digital India initiative.<a name="_ftnref10" href="#_ftn10">[10]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.2.1.2. CIS believes that the IPR policy should encourage free and open software in education, governmental agencies etc. CIS believes that this shift in open source software is necessary to keep our IPR policy in sync with developments in the digital world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3. <strong>Open Access to Scholarly Works</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1. <strong>Open Access Policies and Scientific and Scholarly Works</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1.1. The benefits of implementing an open access policy with regard to scientific and scholarly works are manifold. Providing open access to scholarly research will ensure percolation of cutting edge research into the society. It has been often argued that restricted access to government funded research is unethical, since scientific research conducted by government agencies is partly, if not entirely, funded by the taxpayers' money.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1.2. <strong>Government Initiatives Towards Open Access</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1.2.1. CIS believes that the steps taken in this regard by the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science to make scientific research publicly available by developing an open access policy are laudable, especially from the view of increasing access to research undertaken at these institutions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1.2.2. There are several other government agencies which have implemented open access policies, namely, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Institute of Mathematical Sciences. CIS believes that this is step in the right direction</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.3.1.2.3. Copyright is the key instrument to effect open access policies. CIS believes that the work should be appropriately copyrighted to allow for free and open access to any interested person.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4. <strong>Copyright</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.1. <strong>Exceptions for Fair Dealings</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.1.1. The 2012, Amendment Act extended fair dealing exceptions in several ways; to sound recordings, videos, to the making of three dimensional works from two dimensional works,<a name="_ftnref11" href="#_ftn11">[11]</a> to storing of electronic copies at non-commercial public libraries, <a name="_ftnref12" href="#_ftn12">[12]</a> to rights of commercial rental.<a name="_ftnref13" href="#_ftn13">[13]</a> While the Act touched upon some of the burning issues with regard to limitations and exceptions to copyright, CIS believes that it did miss out on laying down clear rules for issues like exceptions for educational institutions, libraries and archives which is currently being negotiated at the standing committee of the WIPO as an international instrument,<a name="_ftnref14" href="#_ftn14">[14]</a> parallel importation of books for non-commercial libraries, and extending the current exceptions for education to distance education and digital education. CIS is of the opinion that while this was a step in the right direction the IPR policy should continue the trend of extending exceptions for fair dealing and should encourage forming general guidelines for fair dealings as it would help achieve goals of education and scientific and cultural progress.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.1.2. CIS believes that it would be beneficial if general guidelines for fair dealing were provided for. These guidelines must not take away from existing fair dealing exceptions under the law, but should act as a framework to understand what constitutes fair dealing. CIS submits that this coupled with support for the International Treaty for Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives<a name="_ftnref15" href="#_ftn15">[15]</a> and for International Treaty for Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions <a name="_ftnref16" href="#_ftn16">[16]</a>would help serve national interest as it would help reduce the freezing effect by reducing the costs of using copyrighted work legitimately and ensure social and cultural progress. CIS submits that the National IPR policy should encourage the international instruments aimed at providing for exceptions and limitations for fair dealings.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.2. <strong>Exceptions for Government Produced Works</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.2.1. CIS believes that the current exceptions for use of government produced works are far too limited and taxpayers must be free to use the works that they have paid for.<a name="_ftnref17" href="#_ftn17">[17]</a> CIS submits that the National IPR policy should encourage the broadening of exceptions with regard to government produced works.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.3. <strong>Compulsory Licensing</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.3.1. The Act allowed for compulsory licensing of foreign works<a name="_ftnref18" href="#_ftn18">[18]</a> and put in place statutory licenses for broadcasters<a name="_ftnref19" href="#_ftn19">[19]</a> CIS believes that this was a positive step that will encourage cultural and scientific education in India. CIS submits that compulsory licenses for copyrighted works help achieve goals of education, of scientific and cultural progress. CIS submits that the National IPR policy should encourage compulsory licensing of copyrighted works in certain situations for the promotion of access to knowledge and information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.4. <strong>Protection of Authors/ Performers Rights</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.4.1. The Act allowed for protection of author's rights regarding storing of their work in electronic medium<a name="_ftnref20" href="#_ftn20">[20]</a> and for protection of rights of performers both commercial <a name="_ftnref21" href="#_ftn21">[21]</a> and moral.<a name="_ftnref22" href="#_ftn22">[22]</a> CIS believes that while this is in itself a positive step, there is need to ensure that such moral rights are not abused by authors or rights holders to stop discourse or to stop fair use and adequate measures to ensure the same must be put in place to avoid excessive intellectual property rights. CIS submits that the National IPR policy should discuss limitations to moral rights of authors and performers to make room for fair dealings.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.5. <strong>Users Rights Regarding Cover Versions Of Songs</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.5.1. The Act allows for users to make cover versions of a sound recording required provided they comply with rules regarding notices and royalties. CIS believes that this is potentially problematic as even recording companies have acknowledged that the non-commercial cover versions help in increasing the popularity of the original and therefore help in the growth of the film and music industry and this new law could possibly stop individuals from making such cover versions due to fear of violating the law and therefore harm the film and music industry. Therefore, CIS believes that the National IPR policy should consider measures to provide more rights to the users in order to ensure development of the music and film industry; CIS believes that this is an instance of excessive intellectual property and is harmful to all stakeholders involved.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.6. <strong>Relinquishment of Copyright and Creative Commons</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.6.1. The amended Section 21 of the Act now only requires a simply public notice from the author to relinquish his copyright as opposed to an application to the registrar of copyrights. CIS believes that this is a positive step as now the requirement under the rules can easily be satisfied by using a Creative Commons Zero license.<a name="_ftnref23" href="#_ftn23">[23]</a> CIS submits that the National IPR policy should undertake similar steps to encourage the usage of creative commons licenses and thereby facilitate access to knowledge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.7. <strong>Term of Protection of Copyrights</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.7.1. The Act provided for an extension of term of copyright for photographs to almost double its earlier duration, <a name="_ftnref24" href="#_ftn24">[24]</a> CIS believes that this is possibly harmful as it could lead to copyrighted works not entering the public domain for unnecessarily long periods of time and thereby harm progress in science and culture. In this regard CIS further believes that since the term of protections provided under our copyright law for all works extends beyond our international obligations, The National IPR policy should try to ensure that scientific and cultural development are not hindered by excessive terms of protection that go beyond the minimum owed under our international obligations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.8. <strong>Protection Of Rights Management Information</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.8.1. The amendment Act provided for protection of rights management information (RMI) and provided for both criminal and civil remedies in instances of unauthorised alteration or removal of RMIs.<a name="_ftnref25" href="#_ftn25">[25]</a> CIS believes that these provisions are unnecessary as India does not have obligations to do so under international treaties and there is no actual demand for these rights as it is yet unclear how these rights help authors or performers. CIS submits that these provisions increase the costs for users who want to legitimately break these digital locks to obtain accessible formats for the information and that so long as the rights holder does not have an obligation to ensure that their works are accessible, provisions such as these cripple creativity and stunt industry growth.<a name="_ftnref26" href="#_ftn26">[26]</a> Therefore CIS submits that the National IPR policy should help achieve a balance of concerns of users who want to legitimately break these digital locks on the one hand and the need to prevent digital piracy on the other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.9. <strong>Intermediary Liability</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.9.1. CIS submits that due to the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2011, there is a freezing effect on free speech on the internet as these rules are procedurally flawed and go against the principles of natural justice.<a name="_ftnref27" href="#_ftn27">[27]</a> CIS believes that such a restraint on free speech harms creativity and innovation, to this end CIS submits that the National IPR policy should ensure free speech is not unfairly hindered by rules regarding copyright infringement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.10. <strong>Criminalization of Copyright Infringement</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.10.1. Individual non-commercial infringement of copyright is a crime under Section 63A of the Copyright Act <a name="_ftnref28" href="#_ftn28">[28]</a> and is punishable by imprisonment which can extend to three years or a fine that can extend up to rs. 2,00,000/- CIS believes that this is an instance of excessive intellectual property protection; CIS is of the opinion that the civil remedies available for copyright enforcement are enough for copyright protection and that the criminal remedies under the Copyright Act, 1957 function only to ensure that there are obstacles to free and legitimate use of copyrighted material. CIS believes that such provisions are harmful for innovation within India and impose unnecessary costs on users.<a name="_ftnref29" href="#_ftn29">[29]</a> Therefore CIS believes the National IPR policy should reconsider the question of criminalisation of copyright infringement and should ensure that any penal consequences are proportional to the act committed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.11. <strong>Concluding Remarks on Copyrights</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.4.11.1. In conclusion while India has what some call the most balanced approach to intellectual property law in the world today, <a name="_ftnref30" href="#_ftn30">[30]</a> one that balances both the interests of the author and the copyrights holder as well as the end user and the overall public interest, there is room for improvement as far as adapting to the internet age is concerned, especially considering the easy appeal of forming an intellectual property regime that is excessive and in the end harms all the concerned stakeholders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5. <strong>Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.1. <strong>Need for Transparency Regarding FTA Negotiations</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.1.1. India has lately been negotiating Free Trade Agreements with several developed nations, these are closed door negotiations and the texts of the meetings are not available to the public. CIS believes that these texts should be made available to the public to ensure transparency and to ensure all stakeholders know of any developments, CIS believes that public knowledge of the positions of various actors in any negotiation process will help ensure that such positions are taken keeping in mind the interests of all stakeholders and will ensure that any outcome from such negotiations will be in national interest.<a name="_ftnref31" href="#_ftn31">[31]</a> CIS therefore submits that the National IPR policy should encourage transparency with regards to negotiations for free trade agreements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.2. <strong>FTAs with Developed Nations and TRIPS Plus Standards</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.2.1. Leaked drafts of the European Union- India FTA negotiations have revealed that provisions on intellectual property protection were extensive and affected the pharmaceuticals sector, these provisions, if agreed upon, could go well beyond India's obligations under the WTO and under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. In fact, developed countries including the US <a name="_ftnref32" href="#_ftn32">[32]</a> and EU<a name="_ftnref33" href="#_ftn33">[33]</a> have tried time again and again to encourage developing countries to adopt standards of IP protection in bilateral or regional trade investment agreements that go beyond TRIPS <a name="_ftnref34" href="#_ftn34">[34]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">India has repeatedly indicated to the WTO that it was not willing to commit to an agreement beyond TRIPS.<a name="_ftnref35" href="#_ftn35">[35]</a> These commitments could include data exclusivity protection measures, ever-greening of patents etc. <a name="_ftnref36" href="#_ftn36">[36]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">CIS believes that despite the growing pressure from developed nations regarding various FTAs,<a name="_ftnref37" href="#_ftn37">[37]</a> India must hold its ground and ensure that concerns about India's national interest and the difference in the development levels of the European Union or other developed countries and developing countries like India are kept in mind while negotiating obligations under international agreements. Therefore CIS believes that the National IPR policy should ensure that TRIPS plus standards are not acceptable to India as they will undermine our national interest and hinder development at the national level.<a name="_ftnref38" href="#_ftn38">[38]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.3. <strong>Shift from Multilateral Forums to Bilateral FTA negotiations</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">III.5.3.1. CIS believes that the trend of shift in negotiations from a multilateral forum such as the WIPO or the WTO to a bilateral or a regional forum <a name="_ftnref39" href="#_ftn39">[39]</a> is harmful as certain flexibilities are built into the TRIPS and therefore multilateral negotiations based on TRIPS will help pursue India's interests better. And therefore when possible, India must prefer negotiations at multilateral forums as opposed to bilateral or regional treaties, CIS believes that the National IPR policy should reflect the same preferences. <a name="_ftnref40" href="#_ftn40">[40]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV. <strong>Concluding observations</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.1. On patents, CIS submits that the National IPR policy reconsider software patenting, that encourage open source software, continue and strengthen that compulsory licensing and consider and study alternative licensing mechanisms as means to achieve a balancing of the interests of different stakeholders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.2. On openness, CIS submits that the IPR policy should encourage free and open software in education, governmental agencies etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.3. On open access to scholarly work, CIS commends the work done by government agencies so far and submits that the IPR policy should encourage open access to scholarly works.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.4. On copyright, CIS submits that the IPR policy work toward strengthening and extending fair dealings provisions, supporting international instruments that strengthen fair dealing, encourage compulsory licensing. CIS submits that the IPR policy should work towards ensuring that protections for copyright such as terms of protection, intermediary liability, protection of rights management information, criminalisation of copyright infringement etc., do not harm other legitimate interests of users or unnecessarily restrict free speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.5. On FTAs, CIS submits that the IPR policy encourage transparency with regard to FTA negotiations, ensure that TRIPS plus standards are not accepted as they would harm national interest and to encourage multilateral negotiations over bilateral free trade agreements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.6. CIS welcomes the initiative of the DIPP to form a National IPR policy, CIS believes that it is essential that such an IPR policy avoid excessive intellectual property rights protection and is formed keeping in mind goals of development and national interest.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">IV.7. CIS is thankful to the DIPP for the opportunity to provide comments on the National IPR policy and would be privileged to work with the government on this and other matters in these areas.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<hr />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> <a href="http://www.cis-india.org">www.cis-india.org</a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and Public Interest concluded after the Global Congress on Intellectual property and Public Interest in August 2011 attended by over 180 experts from 32 countries articulate this position perfectly. Available at: <a href="http://infojustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Washington-Declaration.pdf"> http://infojustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Washington-Declaration.pdf </a> (Last Accessed:29/11/14)</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Shashank Singh, Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions: Mapping the Stakeholders' Response, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions"> http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> N.S. Gopalakrishnan, Compulsory License Under Indian Patent Law, MPI Studies on Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Vol.22, 2015, pp.11-42.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> Raadhika Gupta, Compulsory Licensing under TRIPS: How Far it Addresses Public Health Concerns in Developing Nations, Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, Vol.15, September 2010, pp.357-363. Available at: <a href="http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/10211/1/JIPR%2015(5)%20357-363.pdf"> http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/10211/1/JIPR%2015(5)%20357-363.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> Id.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7">[7]</a> Nehaa Chaudhari, Pervasive Technologies: Patent Pools, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools">http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/patent-pools</a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p><a name="_ftn8" href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> One of the measures along which we could have differential patent strengths could be the time for the invention to reach the market, see, Benjamin N Roin, The case for Tailoring Patent Awards Based on the Time-to-Market of Inventions, UCLA Law Review, Vol.61, 2013, Available at: <a href="http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10612849/Case%20for%20Tailoring%20Patent%20Awards%203-15-13.pdf?sequence=1"> http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/10612849/Case%20for%20Tailoring%20Patent%20Awards%203-15-13.pdf?sequence=1 </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<p><a name="_ftn9" href="#_ftnref9">[9]</a> Sunil Abraham, Patented Games, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/patented-games">http://cis-india.org/a2k/patented-games</a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<p><a name="_ftn10" href="#_ftnref10">[10]</a> See Nabi Hasan, Issues and Challenges in Open Source Software Environment with Special Reference to India, Available at: <a href="http://crl.du.ac.in/ical09/papers/index_files/ical-43_144_317_1_RV.pdf"> http://crl.du.ac.in/ical09/papers/index_files/ical-43_144_317_1_RV.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<p><a name="_ftn11" href="#_ftnref11">[11]</a> Section 52(1), the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<p><a name="_ftn12" href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Section 52(1) (n), the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<p><a name="_ftn13" href="#_ftnref13">[13]</a> Zakir Thomas, Overview of Changes to the Indian Copyright Law, Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, Vo.17, July 2012, pp.324-334.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<p><a name="_ftn14" href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> See conclusions of the chair at the 23<sup>rd</sup> session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the WIPO, Available at: <a href="http://www.eifl.net/wipo-sccr23-conclusions">http://www.eifl.net/wipo-sccr23-conclusions</a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<p><a name="_ftn15" href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> For draft proposal of the treaty see IFLA, Treaty proposal on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Available at: <a href="http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_27/sccr_27_2_rev.pdf"> http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_27/sccr_27_2_rev.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
<p><a name="_ftn16" href="#_ftnref16">[16]</a> See The Draft WIPO Treaty on Exceptions and Limitations for the Persons with Disabilities, Educational and Research Institutions, Libraries and Archives, proposal by the African Group (document SCCR/22/12).Available at: <a href="http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_22/sccr_22_12.pdf"> http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_22/sccr_22_12.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
<p><a name="_ftn17" href="#_ftnref17">[17]</a> See Section 52(q) of the Copyright Act, 1957.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn18">
<p><a name="_ftn18" href="#_ftnref18">[18]</a> Section 31 and 31A, the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn19">
<p><a name="_ftn19" href="#_ftnref19">[19]</a> Section 31D, the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn20">
<p><a name="_ftn20" href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> Section 14(1), the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn21">
<p><a name="_ftn21" href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a> Id.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn22">
<p><a name="_ftn22" href="#_ftnref22">[22]</a> Section 38B, the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn23">
<p><a name="_ftn23" href="#_ftnref23">[23]</a> CIS, Comments on Draft Copyright Rules, 2012, available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/feedback-to-draft-copyright-rules-2012">http://cis-india.org/a2k/feedback-to-draft-copyright-rules-2012</a> (Last Accessed: 29/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn24">
<p><a name="_ftn24" href="#_ftnref24">[24]</a> See Pranesh Prakash, Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2012, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-copyright-amendment-bill-2012"> http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-copyright-amendment-bill-2012 </a></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn25">
<p><a name="_ftn25" href="#_ftnref25">[25]</a> Section 65B, The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn26">
<p><a name="_ftn26" href="#_ftnref26">[26]</a> Pranesh Prakash, Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment">http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment</a> (Last Accessed: 29/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn27">
<p><a name="_ftn27" href="#_ftnref27">[27]</a> Rishabh Dara, Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet, 2011, Available at: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/intermediary-liability-in-india.pdf"> http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/intermediary-liability-in-india.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 30/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn28">
<p><a name="_ftn28" href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Section 63A, Copyright Act 1957.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn29">
<p><a name="_ftn29" href="#_ftnref29">[29]</a> See Right to Share: Principles on Freedom of Expression and Copyright in the Digital Age, Article19, Available at: <a href="http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3716/en/">http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3716/en/</a> (Last Accessed: 29/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn30">
<p><a name="_ftn30" href="#_ftnref30">[30]</a> V Premanath, S Sivaram, Intellectual Property Systems in India: Progressing towards Greater Maturity and Diversity, Available at: <a href="http://iimahd.ernet.in/users/anilg/files/Articles/Emerging%20IPR%20Consciousness,%20vikalpa.pdf"> http://iimahd.ernet.in/users/anilg/files/Articles/Emerging%20IPR%20Consciousness,%20vikalpa.pdf </a> (Last Accessed: 29/11/14).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn31">
<p><a name="_ftn31" href="#_ftnref31">[31]</a> Jan Wouters, Idesbald Goddeeries, Bregt Natens etc, Some Critical Issues in the EU -India Free Trade Agreement Negotiation, Working Paper No.102,KU Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, <a href="https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/publications/working_papers/new_series/wp101-110/wp102-wouters-goddeeris-natens.pdf"> https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/publications/working_papers/new_series/wp101-110/wp102-wouters-goddeeris-natens.pdf </a> , February 2013, p.16.</p>
<p>Monika Ermert, Lack of Transparency in EU-India FTA Talks Spurs Requests for Halt, ip-watch, Available at: <a href="http://www.ip-watch.org/2010/09/03/lack-of-transparency-in-eu-india-fta-talks-spurs-requests-for-halt/"> http://www.ip-watch.org/2010/09/03/lack-of-transparency-in-eu-india-fta-talks-spurs-requests-for-halt/ </a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn32">
<p><a name="_ftn32" href="#_ftnref32">[32]</a> The current policy of the US Trade Representative is seen to be reflected in the 2002 Trade Act available here: <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hr3009enr/pdf/BILLS-107hr3009enr.pdf"> http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hr3009enr/pdf/BILLS-107hr3009enr.pdf </a> See HR3009.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn33">
<p><a name="_ftn33" href="#_ftnref33">[33]</a> The current trade strategy for the EU can be found here <a href="http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2014/july/tradoc_152643.pdf">http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2014/july/tradoc_152643.pdf</a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn34">
<p><a name="_ftn34" href="#_ftnref34">[34]</a> Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy, Available at: <a href="http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/pdfs/final_report/ciprfullfinal.pdf"> http://www.iprcommission.org/papers/pdfs/final_report/ciprfullfinal.pdf </a> , p.174.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn35">
<p><a name="_ftn35" href="#_ftnref35">[35]</a> C. Correa, 'Negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement European Union-India: Will India Accept Trips-Plus</p>
<p>Protection?', (2009) Oxfam Deutschland and Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst Analysis,</p>
<p><a href="http://www.oxfam.de/files/20090609_negotiationofafreetradeaggrementeuindia_218kb.pdf"> http://www.oxfam.de/files/20090609_negotiationofafreetradeaggrementeuindia_218kb.pdf </a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn36">
<p><a name="_ftn36" href="#_ftnref36">[36]</a> S. Sharma, 'the EU-India FTA: Critical Considerations in a Time of Crisis', (2009) Centad Working Paper.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn37">
<p><a name="_ftn37" href="#_ftnref37">[37]</a> Asit Ranjan Mishra, India to negotiate FTAs with emerging market nations, Livemint, Available at: <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RlJNxUXovjNVaRzQt9KXmO/India-to-negotiate-FTAs-with-emerging-market-nations.html"> http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RlJNxUXovjNVaRzQt9KXmO/India-to-negotiate-FTAs-with-emerging-market-nations.html </a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn38">
<p><a name="_ftn38" href="#_ftnref38">[38]</a> Sisule F Musungu and Graham Dutfield, Commission Multilateral Agreements and a TRIPS -Plus Word: the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Available at: <a href="http://www.iprsonline.org/ictsd/docs/WIPO_Musungu_Dutfield.pdf">http://www.iprsonline.org/ictsd/docs/WIPO_Musungu_Dutfield.pdf</a>.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn39">
<p><a name="_ftn39" href="#_ftnref39">[39]</a> For Trends, See Beginda Pakpahan, Deadlock in the WTO: What is next? Available at: <a href="http://www.wto.org/english/forums_e/public_forum12_e/art_pf12_e/art19.htm"> http://www.wto.org/english/forums_e/public_forum12_e/art_pf12_e/art19.htm </a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn40">
<p><a name="_ftn40" href="#_ftnref40">[40]</a> See Amit Sengupta, Do not trade away our lives, Vo.9, No.2, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 2012, Available at: <a href="http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/88/1047"> http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/88/1047 </a> .</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-proposed-ip-rights-policy-to-dipp'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-proposed-ip-rights-policy-to-dipp</a>
</p>
No publishernehaaCall for CommentsAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightIntellectual Property RightsPatents2015-04-12T11:39:16ZBlog EntryMHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT Roorkee
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-information-received-from-iit-roorkee
<b>This post provides a factual description about the operation of Ministry of Human Resource Development IPR Chair’s Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach (IPERPO) scheme in IIT Roorkee.</b>
<p>Nehaa Chaudhari provided inputs, analysed, reviewed and edited this blog post.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The author has analysed all the data received under various heads such as income, grants from MHRD, planned and non planned expenditure, nature and frequency of programmes organised and the allocation of funds for the same. Throughout the course of observation and presentation of the analysed data, the author seeks to trace the presence of unjustified underutilisation of funds by the aforementioned university as provided by the MHRD during the period of 2003-2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To collect the information for the given study, an RTI application was filed to the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee on 6/02/2015 by the Centre for Internet and Society. The reply to RTI application was received on 16/02/2015.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These are the documents received by CIS from IIT Roorkee:</p>
<ul>
<li>For RTI Response <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/iit-roorkee-receipt-of-rti" class="internal-link">click here</a> (IIT Roorkee -Receipt of RTI- 20.4.15)</li>
<li>For complete supporting documents <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/iit-roorkee-response-and-report" class="internal-link">click here</a> (IIT Roorkee – Response and Report)</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hereinafter, in order to receive any information about IIT Roorkee’s RTI reply, kindly refer to the above mentioned links.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Following are the queries mentioned in the RTI application along with their replies.</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Reports on the implementation of the IPERPO scheme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the implementation of the MHRD IPR Chair funded under the scheme at IIT Roorkee from 2003-20014<br /></b>Reply: The University documented the minutes of the Departmental Faculty Committee Meeting where proposals for forming Departmental Administrative Committee, syllabus for new institute electives, duties of Departmental Research Committee, forming Institute Time Table Committee, conversion of existing LR1 computer lab and teaching scheme of autumn semester 2013 were deliberated upon. The University also organised various events such as Training of Trainers programme and International Conclave on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Documents indicating the date on which such an IPR Chair was set up at your institution and a copy of the application made by IIT Roorkee to the MHRD for instituting such an IPR Chair and documents received by IIT Roorkee from the MHRD approving the same<br /></b>Reply: According to the Office Memorandum (dated 04 May 2012) of IIT Roorkee, Dr P.K. Ghosh had been appointed on the position of Professional Chair on IPERPO with effect from April 27 2012. A suitable financial grant of Rs. 208.02 lakhs was demanded for a period of five years. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Documents detailing the release of grants to the MHRD IPR Chairs under the IPERPO Scheme</b><br />Reply: As it appears from the reply filed by IIT Roorkee to the RTI filed by the CIS, Rs. 30,00,000.00 of the Grant in aid was sanctioned to the University by the MHRD during the financial year 2010-2011 and nil amount was utilized for the purpose of it. At the end of the year, the balance sum of Rs. 30,27,041 (including the interest) was surrendered to the Government.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Documents relating to receipts of utilisation certificates and audited expenditure statements and matters related to all financial sanctions with regard to funds granted to the MHRD IPR Chair established under the IPERPO scheme at IIT Roorkee</b><br />Reply: IIT Roorkee has replied with a series of Statement of Expenditure ranging from 2010-2014 that explains its rate of expenditure and amount of interest accumulated and surrendered to the Government along with the unutilized amount. In the financial year 2011-2012 the unutilized expenditure was 3,105,159.00 which came down to 11,74, 026.00 in 2012-2013 due to which a grant of Rs. 24,00,000.00 was extended to the University by MHRD for the financial year 2013-2014.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Documents regarding all matters pertaining to finance and budget related the MHRD IPR Chair under the IPERPOs scheme established at IIT Roorkee</b><br />Reply: CIS did not receive any sort of clarity on matters pertaining to finance and budget related to MHRD IPR Chair under the IPERPO scheme as the response for this question was coupled with the previous question on utilization certificates.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Details of the IPR Chair’s salary under the IPERPO Scheme indicating whether this amount is paid over and above the professional’s usual salary</b><br />Reply: According to the RTI reply, the position of Chair Professor is awarded for a period of three years or upto 68 years of age, whichever is earlier. The pay of Chair Professor is fixed as per the rules and guidelines of Professional Chair in the institute.</li>
</ol>
<p>2.0 Comparative Analysis between University Response and the guidelines of MHRD Scheme Document</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/scheme.pdf">The Scheme Document of MHRD</a> is a comprehensive document which consists of guidelines regarding Intellectual Property Education, Research and Public Outreach. It talks about a list of objectives, purposes, conditions and eligibility criteria for a University to ensure in order to implement IPERPO in a truest sense. This document provides the procedural as well as qualifying conditions for an Institute to ensure or fulfil before applying for the MHRD grant. Some of these conditions include maintenance of utilization certificates, audit reports, expenditure statements and event information which would be open to access on demand by MDHR or Comptroller and Auditor General of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A. Objectives:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As it appears from the reply statement of IIT Roorkee, each and every event organised after the establishment of IPR Chair in 2012, where the funds from the grant have been utilized, is done to promote the scholarly as well as academic interests in the field of Intellectual Property. Even before applying for the MHRD grant, the University has organised many National Seminars and has started various short term courses in order to encourage research and excellence in Intellectual Property. This fact completely resonates with the core objective of MHRD scheme document, i.e. strengthening the academic and research discourses in the field of Intellectual Property.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">B. Eligibility: <br />IIT Roorkee is recognized by the University Grants Commission. Therefore, it fulfils the eligibility criteria mentioned in the scheme document.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">C. Conditions for Grant of Assistance <br />There are several conditions laid down in the scheme document which need to be fulfilled by the concerned University in order to successfully receive the grant. The underlying condition is the dissemination and development in the field of Intellectual Property Rights.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to the documents available with CIS, IIT Roorkee has organised at least 27 events in the field of IPR ranging from introduction of new electives, National Workshops and Symposiums, Expert Lectures, Infrastructure Development, Online portals for IP Administration and awareness and infrastructure development.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3.0 Financial Analysis of IIT Roorkee’s IPR Grant</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to the RTI reply, the IPR Chair at IIT Roorkee was established in the forenoon of 27th April 2012 with Dr P.K. Ghosh as its Chairman. Dr Ghosh was promised an Honorarium payment of Rs. 30,000 per month and a Contingency payment of Rs. 20,000 per month.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3.1 Financial Year 2010-2011</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this financial year, the IPR Chair was not established at IIT Roorkee. The total grant received by the University was Rs. 30, 00,000.00 out of which Rs.0 was utilized for the purpose of it was sanctioned.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the financial year, the remaining amount of Rs. 30,00,000, (due to Nil utilisation) along with the interest of Rs. 27041 was either surrendered to the government or adjusted towards the grants-in-aid payable during the next financial year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3.2 Financial Year 2011-2012</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The IPR Chair was still not established at the University. The opening balance was the amount carried forward from the previous year (30,27,041) upon which interest of Rs. 1,17,117 was received making the total receipt to be 31,144,158. Out of this, a total of Rs. 38,999 was utilised for travelling and miscellaneous expenditure. At the end of the year, the remaining of amount of Rs. 3,105,159 was either surrendered to the government or adjusted towards the grant-in-aid payable during the next financial year 2012-2013. As per the documents available with CIS, the statement of expenditure for this financial year has not been submitted by the university.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3.3 Financial Year 2012-2013</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy3_of_GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this financial year the IPR Chair was established with Dr. P.K. Ghosh as its Chairman. The Opening balance was the amount carried forward from the previous financial year (31,05,159) upon which an interest income of Rs.1,25,376 was received along with a refund of advance amounting to Rs. 42,968. Out of the total receipt of Rs. 32,73,503 the total expenditure of the University on the current financial year was Rs. 20,99,477. The remaining amount of Rs. 11,74,026 was either surrendered to the government or adjusted towards the grants-in-aid payable during the next financial year 2013-2014.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3.4 Financial Year 2013-2014</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy5_of_GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this financial year, the University received a grant of Rs. 24,00,000 from the government along with the amount carried forward from the previous financial year (Rs.11,74,026) upon which an interest income of Rs. 55,892 was received. Out of this, a sum of Rs. 24,01,045 was utilised as contingency expenditure. The remaining amount of Rs. 12,28,873 has been either surrendered to the government or adjusted towards the grants-in-aid payable during the next financial year 2014-2015.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy6_of_GrantUtilization.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Grant Utilization" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this financial year, the expenditure on library (5,00,979) is the only sum which exceeded the sanctioned amount (5,00,000). Moreover, there has been no expenditure on Outreach Program and Clinics. The honorarium payment to the IPR Chair Professor is similar to the sanctioned amount (3,60,000) but there’s a difference in his contingent payment (1,39,645 instead of 2,40,000). The total amount of expenditure in this financial year is Rs. 24,01,045.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-information-received-from-iit-roorkee'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mhrd-ipr-chair-series-information-received-from-iit-roorkee</a>
</p>
No publisherKaran Tripathi and Nehaa ChaudhariIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to KnowledgePervasive Technologies2015-11-21T07:26:45ZBlog EntryMeeting of the Global Network on Flexible Limitations and Exceptions
https://cis-india.org/news/info-justice-public-events-flexibility-network
<b>American University Washington College of Law organized a meeting of the Global Network in Washington D.C., on September 12 to 15, 2012. Pranesh Prakash was one of the 25 participants. </b>
<h2>Agenda</h2>
<p><b>September 12<br /></b></p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>4:00-6:00</td>
<td>
<p>Recent Developments in Fair Dealing In Canada Room 603 | (<a class="external-link" href="http://media.wcl.american.edu/Mediasite/Play/05899ed8a93048bfa4a91214b47d6f4c1d">Webcast</a>) Peter Jaszi, Ariel Katz, Howard Knopf, Martin Senftleben, Michael Carroll</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>September 13</b></p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>5:00-6:00</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">PIJIP Welcoming Reception, Room 600. The reception will be a joint welcome for the L&E Network and a concluding reception for an Orphan Works meeting with librarians hosted by Pam Samuelson and the Berkeley clinic.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5:30-9:00</td>
<td>Public Knowledge hosts the 9th Annual IP3 Awards. Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>September 14<br /></b></p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9:00</td>
<td>Welcome Introduction</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9:30</td>
<td>Discussion of the model open text</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12:30</td>
<td>Lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1:15</td>
<td>Review of draft 3-Step paper (to be circulated)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2:15</td>
<td>Roundtable on current developments in local contexts</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:30</td>
<td>Review of the current state of the TPP negotiations and U.S. proposed text on Limitations and Exceptions</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5:00</td>
<td>Transport to Leesburg – site of TPP meeting</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7:00</td>
<td>Dinner reception with TPP IP negotiators</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><b>September 15</b></p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>9:30</td>
<td>Discussion of the model arguments and counterarguments document</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11:30</td>
<td>Discussion of a possible report of findings to accompany the models</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12:30</td>
<td>Lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1:15</td>
<td>Roundtable on the way forward<br />
<ul>
<li>What work should we prioritize between this meeting and the December Global Congress?</li>
<li>What research is the group currently engaged in that may bear on limitations and exceptions?</li>
<li>How could this group define future uses of the network after the Global Congress? One example might be a book or other collection of case studies reporting on how laws actually work in given countries.</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3:15</td>
<td>Roundtable on local forums continued: where are L&E interventions needed most?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4:00</td>
<td>End of meeting</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The following individuals participated:</p>
<ul>
<li>Martin Senftleben</li>
<li>Pedro Paranagua</li>
<li>Pedro Mizukami</li>
<li>Dick Kawooya</li>
<li>Hong Xue</li>
<li>Jennifer Urban</li>
<li>Pam Samuelson</li>
<li>Ahmed Abdel Latif</li>
<li>Peter Yu</li>
<li>Andrew Rens</li>
<li>Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza</li>
<li>Oliver Metzger</li>
<li>Gwen Hinze</li>
<li>Peter Jaszi</li>
<li>Michael Carroll</li>
<li>Sean Flynn</li>
<li>Meredith Jacob</li>
<li>Matt Sag</li>
<li>Jonathan Band</li>
<li>Ariel Katz</li>
<li>Howard Knopf</li>
<li>Alberto Cerda Silva</li>
<li>Pranesh Prakash</li>
<li>Allan Rocha de Souza</li>
<li>Sylvie Nerisson</li>
<li>Lila Bailey</li>
</ul>
<p>Read the original published in infojustice.org <a class="external-link" href="http://infojustice.org/public-events/flexibility-network">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/info-justice-public-events-flexibility-network'>https://cis-india.org/news/info-justice-public-events-flexibility-network</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaCopyright2012-10-04T05:59:56ZNews ItemMarch - May Newsletter
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-may-2021-newsletter
<b></b>
<h3>Cybersecurity, and Emerging Technology</h3>
<ol>
<li><strong>Doctrinal clarity</strong> and <strong>institutional coherence</strong> are essential for a robust cybersecurity posture. Arindrajit Basu and Pranesh Prakash analyze this in an opinion piece in <em>The Hindu</em>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/mkAIQo7C4IZmt9JYL5DoADKYnQqxm9fka-gdBSvoA81rsg6GEgy07tjzn0qNQvz4PxT4dYB5ZeNQ1Bbi1ubYUR0z6z8dy3e5FK9grxNzzgZSO0IUwVPm8behwp6dBjhS3_xc9_d4Bz234TH-U0qMpqF9sJzKUGtQ7MZi0hnzsUaVhsA2VGsqoSC3xrrr1cD9ZX8AlcPmIR3uj5moIhV9EfHcU2EHOQqhu6OCGcfuUBS-tgGe1iBvbOikAjEWMJin4Q61Rd8p31vaLtqTwVe2uw">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">U.S. and Indian decisions about <strong>Huawei</strong> have implications not just for their separate relations with China, but the <strong>U.S.-India bilateral</strong> as well. Arindrajit Basu and Justin Sherman co-authored an article in <em>The Diplomat</em> examining Huawei’s role in India [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/M0GGHsg5EtZWdtPNqwbeCiMiN7elnvi6aLYTpAVn0gw7se-z20XDgj6jfb79INZxyFmGtDXDcD0pf_RfRo3K_RyXEav9HKy_gV1G8nDVPhoN8Kp2G9-NLUeUCXxW6WYbiyyWDZdKwxzd4PsyoxybVKoJ9XH7JhsVFDPhN0ySqc8Mi6MD0zq8q_CRT9dDkdCC2queRjZdcOr4eoC8YPjU-LVpaxJGge0rOaPrYmM3oe__OoIjvA">link</a>]</li>
<li>In an article for <em>The Wire</em>, Aman Nair points out that India might miss out on <strong>NFT (non-fungible tokens)</strong> which is set to become a mainstay in the modern digital zeitgeist. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/wKv_Gt32QSHdLE3-ykqX_8DMhA2QohVdjXJn-C65rBN_0nsI9LCIhp3WrANkb-8cDzw1rSkKGrJ0gyPwV_p9aqBIOu3ioMRLjQmVdwMwcVH6nVHELvDJiebOfI5HgW0DS2jvjYUGiFNuBE4y5k7D6hcdEnmRXZ0cGaM-VT0qPJcw28gDhe7eJcg_rmvGhHbJBm_h0VnZfNJyjqZ8CFoiIU0z3QaGDqk16_gOlCYYR98VTEehLBYUs8ymz6Fggw">link</a>]</li>
<li>Arindrajit Basu and Andre Barrinha co-wrote for the <em>EU Cyber Direct</em>, <strong>on outer space diplomacy in the 1960s</strong> and why cyber (security) diplomacy isn’t quite progressing as well or as fast. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/Ud7YZJn5YKOmIROHOUMyLVB-69aNwlb-FParRXYStS_vdQ3SDwErMwxNQlu8iFNnUlSI5lejtsIHgERXyVY3xzTjRGyNP9_sR-uAyfxusTZlSMU3qNs5OPlSJfRErWBEkj_TiT2y1QQwZH8brbn6P8H4S1rDBX1QFICDOe5HjYF2GOdrgzwA1vaeJB6YrFcn2BUNmpsDD4f0mKwcYkCVVFCYgOtbj1-59CoswRfSqgA">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Arindrajit Basu, Irene Poetranto and Justin Lau co-wrote an article for <em>Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</em> which captures some <strong>concerns with the United Nations OEWG process</strong> dealing with cyber norms and the absence of discussion at the forum on key issues. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/G-0Ok05_UomEqWTkmsuUXGq9V-i2zMa0ul5zzkfLKC8Rj5rCGsl12lrJl7tfGzORBxTOYoVPoLUlHF_KaD2z05TyeW3cQDqaxvlhUDxfr2Z9n64Lbe1_p8FYKFvLXrsNVAoEbxsCbOncqzkKgVebcxHe_HF5Murx9aVk6Ps9ik34I4Sj3y26-_Nj98iLwMPZO0rs8hYNZbvsjcUbyGxm6G5xlfjakhy-UsjioXEGdz7zQdV6O_FCG1BoP1Rvm8fPxvdK1JEbGkedHgwk9ENn9na2J6I">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In an article for the <em>Observer Research Foundation</em>, Arindrajit Basu writes about how India must avoid getting its <strong>data policy</strong> caught up in tired existing machinations and instead forge <strong>a new path that prioritizes Indian strategic interests</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/eZHdtXVJIePupyeXaX8RUlkusvtOgHe4VHCDeiVpkTS0P4ji1lGib5cqvQX0nGf5iIx6vb52mwWtd9Z5G5z71_dGvd89c5xn2JyZ-f9cdOWTAsHKRwxo_Tk2Kp7Dfb4JEi4r2Sd5r3dHPc3YmRMYLseDLnESCpmxnPkbX5y1sMitN5OUu4x1ydiYZxfB3FKVZjnnXSCAmB2yPWS7pL4cGcVWpJ1PqBoqPAvvs_Ofqyg58K7inxfax-5tIPk5wyLsEARP92qYgPo">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Aman Nair, Arinjay Vyas, Pallavi Bedi, and Garima Saxena authored a <strong>response to the Supreme Court E-committee’s draft vision document of phase III of the E-courts project</strong>. This response recommends consideration be given to the digital and gender divide, and lack of clarity in the document on several data-related aspects. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/eLr3hXFonL5hfAUH5ux5zoQcTrY2PxRDO9kflkNqtcUObBbYWm-vqp7v4Ex0g_o7YtCokB315adj-1k_QwDebJ1k9G626m1MGuTYmlfKdwSVl7mYsfna4Dy96z8Eb7iJ7gtcZZF8s5JQCGN1ux3PiYvgDrxbs3MeXeZizpIZsm9OsPvCGzvC5HbxkhfdFG2B6853ajax3xofJRcucZ2Jc1AFEg5iAVrwiopY0SFIb99XHRESaUFEP9KYNs2bC1nAXaAW4AU7OPG_">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The proposed <i>Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019</i> is being deliberated by the Joint Parliamentary Committee and is expected to be tabled in the Monsoon Session of Parliament. Pallavi Bedi and Amber Sinha co-authored a white paper to examine the <strong>personal data implications on welfare delivery models in India</strong> and to suggest ways to operationalise key provisions. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/_Gjo4q_RVbTa0sA8X1FOhYiB4McMtr_8JgcG33Uf9nXIX9VsXvDxzVvYABfOz-DyVN14iCoyotGqfkjezyNjJFt4RsiYkw6m0UFNhGd9NYLj3fkrn8IfKwI3YJtO9-FrkgMxcCOTc1PdedlPXPGO2cafHCYUaLhHNMXIepnX2L2KC-mG_-l0Fjx5m-GvmP6GcXg1eyOyNZjrCL8eFWzyCT9XVDv8afLm2D3F0l-28tz-MwSJRRqc4vIjV0PCykM6NXQ">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Shweta Mohandas authored an article for <i>Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law Student Research Review (RSRR)</i><span>. In this article, which forms a part of RSRR’s ‘</span><i>Excerpts from Experts Blog Series</i><span>,’ Shweta examines whether </span><strong>Indian data protection legislation can act as a check on growing workplace surveillance</strong><span>. [</span><a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/5X-z4Ay91QvhUYmdHomWwzdgLp7eCubPpwLyaH1H0MWiyiQfU9PIIQSg2Nshk2mfLJYrb65hiGIj3xyuffXiDnOu9lbwfFsrQCL6D5DnQ9HkvOoZHcq3_Kgf9NVKSAX7tv-aqy00L3jjJtbWbvfaqwnagmdUVSLEP9E7S6s-UTBvO-KCO82DhWELF0Od6dhVrbr0WvVi980IX67IkCiSNaKwpuNwSXuYS9bgD0s">link</a><span>]</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Aman Nair and Arindrajit Basu examine the changes in the context of <strong>data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook as being an anticompetitive action in violation of the Indian Competition Act, 2002</strong><span>. Having previously </span><a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/u35U0gu1I7Y81i6OYu20wN7zgiA4FxKWowVPgk7Gmafn69IJLoZapqrfCSWui33Sh0ntbkPajjtW_p35C3qMoCP5xcrC2dHSO3DX9MZ7uFNbJZ-p_NRBv5bOZ_1jKeH2KYBYohqWlZ83VVG3CDvNl1AK_4xmNrr9L578OragYyJQo2U93bxHbLw1fnLc1CPWqkfZvcmydFo1HGyNBeFpRqiTVn6ytQjyAiUw2Gisx7itlxVHmb_QCuSd0T8nD47U4UBH_i_dg6PN5R4PcjU">examined</a><span> the implications of WhatsApp’s changes to its privacy policy in 2021, this issue brief is the second output of the series examining the effects of the changes. [</span><a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/jOUH-SfgRCjdp9DORlyEL16nnyJ_ogGha0d2DdYJGcRnBOiZt6F3SuhZzZYX8t1umpAtId1_80WNiW3Y6CgGDA-TYQ2hORCBWeOvvoPphGzr0DfCy_6tD8QQMzgb3mCm1GXECkmJM_kTL9kfRrj8GVpe3DHJ7_jX3pKBQx9HHWKqkgftY_8wTG6zCG4J8HZC-1Hv66BsR1didil6DVh-HtetydLcMzlikdBj4bvxTjzFRAoLvsyeBH9PaoDRJuUXTYR5-8BcE8ITu2TyiOyc_ME2kuDJ3DJiE4PDeNHutpTJyuc7lqwp-g">link</a><span>]</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In a blog-post, Pallavi Bedi provides recommendations for the <strong>Covid vaccine intelligence network (Co-Win) platform</strong><span>. She says that as a first step it is essential that Co-Win has a separate dedicated privacy policy which conforms to the internationally accepted privacy principles and enumerated in the Personal Data Protection Bill. [</span><a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/o19mW5Vyy3giilmnC_ef5khZu85qA-A3uDr687psJN0UhAkPY43mYt7Jaw7cXwy0NJK7ky9IvnklXsGPIME4bYH2cCVK_NeXEhZK-N6RRRSSDFUG33BpdaFtUD3cqIxrsEV_-ILCXF4SDN3IBmJFKeJDBFZA4bLuUWEzsAhBQbnFcbGuITTNq74cViuBSO-p09OT9-AtzOUgce0Brhta6YmU5iSmpMGW2XWhWTw3ueesRR_8fjDkF7XoLDGCMmkdjvAeyfbCIee0z-30EbUN5sbLzCCHVUHmuYVPzqtLeV8">link</a><span>]</span></li>
</ol>
<h3>Freedom of Expression, and Intermediary Liability</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In February, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) had issued draft rules for <strong>regulation of digital influencers</strong>, with an aim to <em>“understand the peculiarities of [online] advertisements and the way consumers view them,”</em> as well as to ensure that: <em>“consumers must be able to distinguish when something is being promoted with an intention to influence their opinion or behaviour for an immediate or eventual commercial gain.”</em> Torsha Sarkar and Shweta Mohandas respond with comments and recommendations to the rules. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/nP6_NZer0OIQv_bMG6p9Vzx-uTdYi17sYHl0xdFjMYzEzv9xmTvSG73K8_7sq4J6NPdQ5sNA5eaQvAwMHBrYkAt2mGFF9SLlrCSfNZ3K6rpRyst36jbtHpdD3_Pc9ukKdBW3_lhiGpISLi7H2TBa0BumRk2JV3PFdUBH6R3kk0ywJuvcHeJJWxAsnyydYY2s2_iRpo5Sc0MvHbC8vlDCoI6mtuL0_PC6B2eL0G8wZqbtwYYM2hNO-DfobKXJV16nfGC8GxASmN2FmH07pif0Cn5xSXoeadfmwb-Fox-B03UAn-0THELMM1beVubJWnOAOrPXoA5JIZ7CQe5x3g">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<h3>Copyright, and Access to Knowledge</h3>
<ol>
<li> Anubha Sinha explains what the draft national science, technology and innovation policy means for <strong>open access to scientific literature</strong> for Indians. This article was published in <em>The Wire Science</em>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/CJjg4ihUvxLz1chJKcO03n5_Ydr9rvEDH_kFGYPs7_aijAvgsioqcqvZU0n41Ly6CNagHY1Upc0-3eCPsdo3GxXWC6baFyPSXImgs7tRy-Tio7TdRDS1qHU9i5YghNVjsoIunFozlrsutZGnXjXNF6Ce04lDrZ0g0dOdBIDt-InCeubeq35RnbIj3Qb2jdf2vwlkcAeyC925K6WeyzPM7sGUAVmMH1wKu9pmN-bgHJfNRodxOWODiF_o5vmu6g25UP6IdunHwUKorudI_0RopdHXBA">link</a>] </li>
<li> In an article published in <em>Info Justice</em>, Anubha Sinha provides a summary of the progress of the <strong>copyright infringement suit against Sci-Hub and LibGen</strong> in India. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/Jg1NJZxuFnR-Srq0Tz1RS3XZZ17cL4JxJFlOY2g12wpoHPIxsc-lW18hjUe7sg309BNiO1i0V_yLGaQsQiAzILlWe2zd3ctx4dTTFvyFbs_Ds1w3W91GNEdoWszaryWzeKs-ZSDZYR1IPZa4ZGXpOrd21RiKK6InuJVXGZRN6WJzmgdBr4ZWre9-NP3AxduZDFnzXrjfCho6iDPhS7CuR8ZW4bFCwkmvCr70-yTDLLkT2DUmkB-caRfvMxukUyr1fjilhp-3vJwEt1gHi0HP-kpyx3wac8mjFxSCbsVg-5AiRMti">link</a>] </li>
</ol>
<h3>Digital Cultures, and Social Justice</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In a research paper, Noopur Raval offers critical historical insights from the fields of international development, anthropology, and postcolonial history to caution against both the possible harms of <strong>gender disaggregated datafication</strong>, as well as the consequences of <strong>non-participatory datafication of women</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/WmB3X2tO_c8hEDCY-QCDD1tTPBIEB7Gt4bFRLY7mNCB3X5sRuV6npbW4eIX8ta-lGod2fia1v8ZTxZurtXczkJQbBg5ckgKRSG3eYKfG9ntQ5qRKVkq12g9YEmZ1eP1raJjh5p5aHQ-0MhUsQafyvBQpzVEdDK9ZJecvYAq3GyD42aSWkS0iQ17sS9WCDchDhFQn20CS7MAEmZm6rM0yymmNBqTHRR7GuKxP3edQqiMTblOufA4mhx62YuIgqn_mRv5uOPqxevVBmTtlTTyMmZihFccK">link</a>]</li>
<li>Kaarika Das, a research scholar at NIEPA and Sravya C, a researcher in the Humanizing Automation project at IIIT Bangalore published <strong>a study on migrants in India's Gig Economy</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/H6Jr3Xykf4-nxghqRxErQtEVs4TH-l3S2LVhiXIisAPDyUCm6fiWyLGCI_V9jrofmSaX7B1sFEjjVvhsqbNcHpKz6_ztX9o6ZMp-BRrke6HgLScE3FYxJKKFhtGyp_w_xUwJu1jybdsltHMKm1oNjRgYm4Z_hbpUTmJlK72raCD6jC7VjvTmuJmIGZLFa1J18o0IoImVO8VLqbV_lUigTVBNQWqZsgl_TyjYf3a6H8oLBlG4fo3jIXAsU5S2aySLzNO9u46C1Zv5g-D3wc6jChAhrMcOtcp2NNeEOJRw_n-nzYNrfVNwwLKdIOY">link</a>]</li>
<li>Sameet Panda and Vipul Kumar wrote a blog for <em>Privacy International</em> pointing the <strong>failures in the digitisation of India’s food security programme</strong> in light of the <strong>exclusion of married women of Odisha</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/czsORnDtqHr4eMfKxD9huAqfK9BfJ_oZWslVsCoG63dJQwSqFhMbQzBgtolMXmsnvl3TuEaSJXOIWWc6z-EcMaMSfZwAZR6Tixu7KVE3u343x0qCePCh6k_Mbyo1ckxpCdq6R4M2f8b-8PdxHsW1OzgIALcgF63n63DmmmP3krIGfTsWj-kO03xSa6lho6qrFDnEQeDW6zuMc8mHf-o34ogIveNxvYoa_gtPEag390DefdFa5not77SmRSLeLd-oAFxkcQ_jrSEiEnyjD9UNdb0COOFbk8KlrD2y7SBM27_5U_oRY1tHFTDIpBT3z4k">link</a>]</li>
<li>Shreya Ghosh, a research scholar at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi authored an article in <em>EPW</em> on <strong>access to welfare and health for women during the initial phase of the pandemic</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/WrUVPoWi-5LlI7z8_qy9HVtjyDoIgjSdclz7-wdA1OV2tG7GWSuUQ-F31hf1TpaGumhcxYeQJE9vqj1LRYpoKJfaHyCQHx_Dnt8PcNB2eEvQAbtHEdjAZLIu6Pno55XvtCJ33EBRdNRU-tu0Tt8j_lXT_nSChepY18OpIu69PUGNBI7Lsp6pkOo4LXhtUKdImoitU_-lBg1-paVePznLYRWL7bhk5rm_OrIsJPZuKbEnew8kXTwbDvjUgZbD">link</a>]</li>
<li>Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi in a research paper, <strong>“Fault lines at the Front lines”</strong> analyze the <strong>changing employment conditions for domestic workers</strong> in the growing platform economies of South and Southeast Asia. By analyzing different platform designs and comparing regulations in <strong>India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam</strong>, the authors present a thorough picture of the situation for domestic workers in the new economy. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/kPMoaM42DpjpGxHbzGnAXycfRBu9fPzVJ6jQoyePUjDKKV9KMz8HDo8M3h5fDoOFAynoCq8ARyzHdBIkACBBy8eWHRWjcbXslejcnZZIn2LP-BsWh_Sr4FMl2AWDTQktt8tlZAZ2PcTfL_KE1sYJD1d4522v3eLvu_QUX8LCXvuznSIusIe7e_vFu3MNdylOuSIK_-L61Uin8gAEZ-eO4DDwYaE42Uc0">link</a>]</li>
<li>In a blog post published by <em>Ethical Source</em>, Ambika Tandon throws light on <strong>artificial intelligence and allied technologies</strong> that form part of <strong>Industry 4.0</strong> in the future of work. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/Hrd-w4fWPa8ThFlmr-Zw_-LR96KsoFTBchzDQ8QwDJALcjcwz1fCn49RAws3-xmNATUZIYUaSQT4nJxodQvSgrzlzKXEOdj64Sx8aRvtkyPaolpAml7hSDcczWdPJPaZISxUxCl9S1DHnfujOulrLkdqgEf1xPsWSQk_TQZJU4dOE7Vnqm_pmCnFVs_WLo4yQ2P00Td3VYd78HikHsyLC3yqju4">link</a>]</li>
<li>Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi authored a chapter titled <strong>“Care in the Platform Economy: Interrogating the Digital Organisation of Domestic Work in India”</strong> in a book titled <em>“The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence.”</em> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/-vxAl0-OSphrFabwlh8Ir2yhdE_cYeWryiSavWFOByLbxWzlndVfgl1K0awHZjD1J6LmUbu2OaoCgNKL3Dcozv_hQ9WEi1MeQdSRmT1kKProU_9fJexLKPbw80T69AfzXMtjpfX_6zYPpWohxsh1xxOwK86Vs5S_x73hOG7hhuQxFfy4VF4co0Ls2jX-Wi7-L4pf-SBVBekVFuObAI6dOsUwWyywiSYldGbFbxxPfyVegmZuKMtD4bBycNBw_B__X1IogiPK5fj0851hxFM4eo5Wl2s0dZY37-UhpKL4xS0gLZI9UozMux7JbmzM4jpZT1AAGGCNlYb4DM3_Alf0YHI1KQ">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-may-2021-newsletter'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-may-2021-newsletter</a>
</p>
No publisherpranavInternet GovernanceCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2021-08-08T15:45:45ZPage