Centre for Internet and Society

November 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-06T13:59:11Z

Welcome to the newsletter of November 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis of Section 66A of the IT Act by Pranesh Prakash, comments on the draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, an introduction to 12 mobile devices that we are researching as part of the Pervasive Technologies project, submissions of civil society in relation to the revision of International Telecommunication Regulations that are to take place at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, updates from the Wikipedia community on Indic languages, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Research Manager and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org.

Accessibility
India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:
Blog Entry Human Machine Interfaces: The History of an Uncertain Future (by Sharath Chandra Ram, November 30, 2012).
Event Participated Workshop on Making ICT and Mobile Phones Accessible for Persons with Disabilities in Nepal (organised by ITU, November 9, 2012). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker in the session "Introduction: ICT and Telecom Accessibility, Good Practices in Policy and Industry Initiatives".
Access to Knowledge
The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:
WIPO Transcripts We are providing archival copies of the transcripts of the 25th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights held in Geneva from November 19 to 23, 2012: WIPO SCCR 25 Day 1, November 19, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 2, November 20, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 3, November 21, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 4, November 22, 2012 WIPO SCCR 25 Day 5, November 23, 2012
Comments Comments on the Broadcast Treaty and Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives (by Smitha Krishna Prasad, November 29, 2012). Comments on the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (Draft) (by Snehashish Ghosh, submitted to the Ministry of Science and Technology, November 26, 2012).
Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace As a part of the Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace research project, CIS is researching upon 12 gray-market mobile devices to generate a better understanding of the intellectual property implications of the pervasive mobile technologies available in the Indian market: Workshop Report Exploring the Internals of Mobile Devices — Report from a One-day Workshop at TERI (by Jadine Lannon, November 30, 2012).
Blog Entries ICOMM2012: International Communications and Electronics Fair (by Jadine Lannon, November 14, 2012). Pervasive Mobile Technologies: Meet Our Mobile Devices! (by Jadine Lannon, November 30, 2012).
Upcoming Event 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012).
Openness The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:
Event Organised Autonomy, Access, Infrastructure and Future — A Discussion with C S Lakshmi (CIS, Bangalore, November 29, 2012). A video of the event is published. Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012).
Blog Entry Open Government Platform (by Neeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. Mishra, Informatics Magazine, July 2012).
Event Participated Science Gallery Workshop @ Srishti (organised by Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, Srishti School of Art Design and Technology (N2 campus), Bangalore, November 23, 2012). Sunil Abraham participated in this event.
Access to Knowledge Programme Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Program Manager, Shiju Alex left the organisation. November 16, 2012 was his last working day.
Events Organised Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia! (Kolkata, November 3, 2012). First Odia Wikipedia Education Program (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, November 8, 2012). Odia Wikipedia Workshop at AML (Academy of Media Learning, Bhubaneswar, November 10, 2012). A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi (CIS, New Delhi, November 11, 2012). Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB (KMBB College, Bhubaneswar, November 19, 2012). Follow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session (Bharati Vidyapeeth, Delhi, November 19, 2012).
Events Participated Wikipedia Hackathon (organised by BITS, Hyderabad, October 25 – 27, 2012). Wikipedia Women's Workshop in Mumbai (by Noopur Raval, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala, Mumbai, November 4, 2012).
News and Media Coverage ‘Some Indian laws could be challenging’ (Bangalore Mirror, November 15, 2012). A Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar (Sambad, November 19, 2012). OdishaDiary conferred prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to Odia Wikipedia team (Orissa Diary, November 23, 2012). વિકિપીડિયા ગુજરાતી માં પણ છે (by Harish Kothari, Cybersafar, November 28, 2012).
Blog Entry Typing in Indic Languages from Mobiles made Easy! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 19, 2012).
HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of November: Droidcon India (November 2 and 3, 2012, MLR Convention Centre, Whitefield, Bangalore).
Internet Governance The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:
Analysis of IT Act Breaking Down Section 66A of the IT Act (by Pranesh Prakash, November 25, 2012). Fixing India’s anarchic IT Act (by Pranesh Prakash, Livemint, November 28, 2012). Draft nonsense (by Pranesh Prakash, The Times of India, November 24, 2012).
Analysis of Justice AP Shah Report Q&A to the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok, November 9, 2012).
Comments / Submissions to ITU Statement of Civil Society Members in the "Best Bits" pre-IGF Meeting. CIS was one of the signatories of this submission made to the ITU. Submission on India's Draft Comments on Proposed Changes to the ITU's ITRs. CIS was one of the signatories along with Society for Knowledge Commons, Delhi Science Forum, Free Software Movement of India, Internet Democracy Project and Media for Change. Submission by Indian Civil Society Organisations on Future ITRs and Related Processes. CIS was one of the signatories of this submission in response to ITU’s call for public comments. Indian Government's Submission to ITU: We have put up the text of the submission made by the Government of India to the World Conference of International Telecommunications, Dubai on November 3, 2012.
Event Participated India Internet Governance Conference (organised by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, FICCI and Internet Society, October 4 -5, 2012). Pranesh Prakash made a presentation. CIS was one of the supporting organisations.
Blog Entries Arbitrary Arrests for Comment on Bal Thackeray's Death (by Pranesh Prakash, November 19, 2012). This was re-posted in Outlook (November 19, 2012), KAFILA (November 19, 2012), and Shail's Nest (November 20, 2012). DoT Blocks Domain Sites — But Reasons and Authority Unclear (by Smitha Krishna Prasad, November 21, 2012).
Upcoming Events Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai(CIS, Bangalore, Near Domlur Club and TERI Complex, December 18, 2012, 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.). DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).
Internet Governance Forum Pranesh Prakash, Chinmayi Arun, Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Baku, Azerbaijan in the month of November 2012. In total, CIS spoke in 12 panels: Best Bits 2012 (organised by Best Bits, Baku, Azerbaijan November 3 and 4, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Elonnai Hickok participated in this event. The Privatisation of Censorship: The Online Responsibility to Protect Free Expression (organized by Index on Censorship, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 5, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. Civil Rights in the Digital Age, about the Impact the Internet has on Civil Rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.). Malavika Jayaram was a panelist. Solutions for Enabling Cross-border Data Flows (co-organised by ICC BASIS and the Internet Society, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012). Cloudy Jurisdiction: Addressing the thirst for Cloud Data in Domestic Legeal Processes (co-organised by Electronic Frontier Foundation (Peru) and University of Ottawa, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 7, 2012). What Frameworks for Cross-Border Online Communities and Services (hosted by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Chinmayi Arun was a panelist. Governing Identity on the Internet (co-organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.). Malavika Jayaram was a panelist. Law Enforcement via Domain Names: Caveats to DNS Neutrality (organised by Hong Xue, Vivekanandan, Wei Mao and Leo Liu, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Chinmayi Arun was a panelist. Who is Following Me: Tracking the Trackers (organised by Internet Society and the Council of Europe, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at this event. National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist. Steady Steps.....FOSS and the MDG's (organised by International Center For Free and Open Source Software and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, Baku, Azerbaijan, November 8, 2012). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Event Participated Privacy in the Social Networked World (hosted by the Centre for Business Information Ethics, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, on behalf of the Asian Privacy Scholars Network, November 19 – 20, 2012). Elonnai Hickok spoke on Transparency and Privacy in India.
Featured in the Media Power to youth (The Hindustan Times, November 3, 2012). The article names Sunil Abraham and Lawrence Liang as some of the young people who are shaping the future. 25 Indians to watch (FT Magazine, November 16, 2012). Sunil Abraham is one among the 25 rising Indian stars to watch out for. Malavika Jayaram named a top lawyer for Internet and e-Commerce in India (WHO’s WHO LEGAL, November 20, 2012).
Media Coverage Information security policy on govt agenda (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. Law yet to catch up with tech-enabled peeping toms (by Sandhya Soman & Pratiksha Ramkumar, Times of India, November 7, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. India second in requesting user info: Google (by Karthik Subramaniam, Hindu, November 14, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Post and be Damned (by Kavita Shanmugham, November 14, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. India second in keeping tabs on netizens (by Ishan Srivastava, The Times of India, November 15, 2012). India ranks second globally in accessing private details of users (thinkdigit, November 15, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Google's 'Transparency Report' sketchy, inconclusive: Government (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, November 17, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Women Arrested in Mumbai for Complaining on Facebook (by Neha Thirani and Hari Kumar, New York Times, November 19, 2012). Girls arrested for Facebook post on Thackeray get bail (FirstPost, November 19, 2012). Arrest of girl over Thackeray FB update a clear misuse of Sec 295A (FirstPost, November 19, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. How to Steer Clear of India’s Strict Internet Laws (by Sangeeta Rajesh and Heather Timmons, New York Times, November 20, 2012). Internet users flay Mumbai girls' arrest over Facebook post (IBN Live, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Arrests over Facebook posts: Why we’re on a dangerous slide (Venky Vembu, FirstPost, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Girl's arrest draws flak on social media (The Times of India, November 20, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. India's Shame: World Reacts to FB Post Arrest (by Sonal Bhadoria, India Times, November 21, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Indian government at second position after U.S.A for demanding user data from Google (WHDI Reviews, November 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Indians Rank Second For Online Snooping (Indolink, November 23, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Civil society & industry oppose India’s plans to modify ITRs (by Shalini Singh, The Hindu, November 23, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted. Amnesty International calls for review of 66A of IT act (by Nirmalya Behera, Business Standard, November 28, 2012). Thousands go online against 66A (by Apoorva Dutt, DNA, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. The flaw in cyber law (by S Ronendra Singh, Hindu Business Line, November 29, 2012). Sunil Abraham and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted. Govt tweaks enforcement of IT Act after spate of arrests (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. Yes, You Can Get Arrested for a Facebook Status Update Now (by David Wagner, Atlantic Wire, November 29, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted. The real Sibal’s law: Resisting Section 66A is futile (by Lakshmi Chaudhry, FirstPost, November 30, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s blog post on section 66A which was also published in Outlook is quoted.
Videos Women arrested for Facebook post: Did cops act under Sena pressure? (NDTV, November 19, 2012). YP Singh, Alyque Padamsee, Rohan Joshi, Karuna Nundy and Pranesh Prakash took part in a discussion about the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment. The Last Word: Is there a need to review Information Technology Act? (CNN-IBN, November 20, 2012). Aryaman Sundaram, Pavan Duggal, Pranesh Prakash and Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad took part in a discussion with Karan Thapar on section 66A of the IT Act. Interview with Pranesh Prakash (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, November 30, 2012).
Telecom While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:
Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.
The following are the new outputs: DoT — Its Powers and Responsibilities (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). Government Policy and Guidelines (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). TRAI Regulations (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012). TRAI Telecommunication Tariff Orders (by Snehashish Ghosh, November 30, 2012).
Newspaper Columns Super WiFi & Shared Spectrum: A Time to Start Sharing (by Shyam Ponappa, Organizing India Blogspot on November 3, 2012 and Business Standard, November 1, 2012). Folly of Mandating Spectrum Auctions (by Jayna Kothari, Hindu Business Line, November 24, 2012).
Event Participated 2nd MPL Faculty Workshop (North Zone) on Teaching Public Policy, Media and Law (Central University, Rajasthan, November 1-2, 2012). Snehashish Ghosh made a presentation on "Building a Telecom Knowledge Repository."
Digital Natives Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:
Interview Whose Change Is It Anyway? \| DML2013: As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Watch the video on YouTube.
About CIS CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.
Follow us elsewhere Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter Join the CIS group on Facebook Visit us at http://cis-india.org
Support Us Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.
Request for Collaboration We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

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

Exploring the Internals of Mobile Devices — Report from a One-day Workshop at TERI

jdine — 2012-12-01T05:57:53Z

On October 27, 2012, the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) organised a one-day workshop on exploring the internals of mobile technologies at the TERI Southern Regional Centre in Bangalore. The workshop received more than 140 registrants, of which approximately 40 attended. In this post, Jadine Lannon explores the discussions and the developments that took place at the workshop.

The event brought together professional and non-professional individuals and communities interested in exploring mobile technologies. The aim of the workshop was the provide participants with the knowledge and tools to better understand the internals of mobile technologies as well as familiarize the attendees with CIS's "Pervasive Technologies" research project.

Anil Kumar Pugalia, Sudar Muthu and Pankaj Bharadiya were the expert speakers. The event was supported by the well-established online security, hardware and software domain communities NULL, SecurityXploaded, Computer Club India and Bangalore Android User Group.

Sudar Muthu: Capabilities of Arduino

Capabilities of Arduino (including Due) from Sudar Muthu	Sudar Muthu began the workshop with a talk on the capabilities of Arduino and the ways in which Arduino can be used to interface with different external devices. He discussed with us different types of Arduino, the technical specifications of Arduino, the ways that Arduino can be used to interface with external boards and the interfacing that he has been able to accomplish using Arduino and various devices. The slides from his Powerpoint presentation are viewable on the left.

Anil Kumar Pugalia: Mobile Hacking using Linux Drivers

Anil Kumar Pugalia followed Sudar's presentation with an exploration of methods of mobile hacking using Linux drivers. He discussed various Linux kernel hacking techniques as well as tools that can be used to perform reverse-engineering on a mobile device. The slides from Anil's presentation can be accessed on the right.	Mobile Hacking using Linux Drivers from Anil Kumar Pugalia

The following two talks were delivered by Pankaj Bharadiya from Texas Instruments. In his first presentation, he explored hardware hacking and board/chips capabilities. His second talk was on porting open software on hardware. In addition to his discussions, he also covered porting Android on open hardware. The slides from his presentations will be posted shortly.

After all the presentations, the participants were invited to handle and open up the 12 mobile devices that CIS purchased for our Pervasive Mobile Technologies research project. The participants worked in teams of two to five members to open up the mobile devices and observe their internals. We asked the participants to record any information about the internals of the mobiles that they were able to find, including the make, model, and serial numbers of the components. Pictures from this part of the workshop will be posted shortly.

All of the collected information was recorded and distributed among the participants so that the group could continue to work on identifying the mobile internals and the various data sheets associated with each component. This data will be added to the specifications of each mobile device as it is collected. CIS hopes to continue to collaborate with the individuals and communities who participated in this workshop as well as other interested individuals who may have been unable to attend the one-day workshop to proceed with this process of identification. We also hope to hold a second event, a one- to two-day hackathon, sometime in December to continue the exploration of our mobile devices.

CIS would like to thank Anil Kumar Pagalia, Sudar Muthu, Pankaj Bharadiya, Khasim Syed Mohammed, Akash Mahajan (NULL representative), Amit Malik (SecurityXploaded representative), the NULL, SecurityXploaded, Bangalore Android User Group and Computer Club India communities, and all of the participants for making the workshop a huge success and aiding us in our ongoing research project!

You can reach participating communities at following links:

For any further information on the past workshop or future events, please connect with us:

Jadine Lannon (jadine@cis-india.org), research intern for the A2K programme
Amarjit Singh (amarjitlife@gmail.com), the Workshop Manager.

Click below for a slideshow of the pictures from the workshop:

Photos

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/exploring-the-internals-of-mobile-devices

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T08:19:52Z

This is the second bulletin from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. This issue features education program updates of the Assamese, Malayalam and Gujarati Wiki communities, a hackathon held at BITS, Hyderabad, press coverage of the Odia Wikipedia workshop in Pune, and reports of workshops organised in Bangalore, Ghaziabad and Pune during the month of October.

Education Program Updates

Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012).
Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012).
Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).
Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).

Workshop Reports

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012).
Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012).
Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012).

First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012).

Event Organised

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012).

Press Coverage

Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012).

Team Updates

The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.
We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for New Delhi office.
Shiju Alex, Programme Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom.

Follow us elsewhere

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin

Comments on the Broadcast Treaty and Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives

smita — 2012-12-04T23:11:34Z

This November at WIPO the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights was witness to a tough negotiation on the proposed Treaty providing access to copyrighted materials to visually impaired persons. In between these discussions, the SCCR also found time to have two short plenary sessions on the proposed broadcast treaty as well as working documents on exceptions for libraries and archives.

Although we were unable to make a statement at the SCCR due to logistical constraints, CIS had the following comments prepared on both these issues:

Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations:

The Centre for Internet and Society would like to reiterate the statement on principles provided in the 22nd SCCR by many civil society non-governmental organizations, cable casters and technology companies opposing a rights-based Broadcast Treaty. While we are encouraged by the inclusion of more suitable alternatives in many of the areas that civil society organizations had expressed concern, it is important that these alternatives be considered carefully. Some of the alternatives in the working document are not in keeping with the mandate of this Committee and we need to ensure that any new treaty provides a balanced protection to broadcast organizations.

We wish to enumerate a few key areas that need to be emphasized once again in this regard –

To begin with, the definition of ‘broadcast’ itself should not be too broad. The treaty needs a clear and precise definition that limits the protection to signals and does not extend to retransmissions or transmissions over computer networks.

Similarly, it is essential that the protection granted to a broadcasting organization should be limited to broadcast signals. The current working document extends this protection to public accessibility/performance of the broadcast signal and such restrictions might not be feasible in developing and least developed countries. One alternative even extends the protection available to fixations of the broadcasts and this is entirely unacceptable in a signals based treaty. The obligations with regard to technological protection measures, if any, should also be limited to protect only those broadcasts that are lawful.

Limitations and exceptions to the protections granted by this treaty are also of great importance, especially so in light of the Development Agenda. These exceptions and limitations should be made mandatory and be expanded to include issues of national interest and for free-to-air broadcast signals (such as the laws governing broadcast of cricket games in India).

Lastly, as pointed out many times already, we are of the opinion that a fixed term of protection, whether 20 or 50 years, is inconsistent with the idea of a signals based approach to the treaty.

Proposed Legal Instruments on Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives and Educational, Teaching and Research Institutions and Persons with Other Disabilities:

The Centre for Internet and Society would like to thank the Secretariat and the entire Committee for the hard work being put in this week at the SCCR.

International instruments that govern exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives as well as educational, teaching and research instruments and persons with other disabilities is key to ensure a balanced global copyright system that protects both right holders and users. Such instruments will not only allow the preservation of copyrighted works, but also provide greater access to these materials, especially in developing countries.

The working documents before us cover a number of issues and we would like to address a few of them today.

First, the three-step test. This has been a contentious issue with regard to all three instruments that are being discussed here this week. We would like to reiterate that a narrow interpretation of the three-step test should not be adopted, it is important that any and all flexibilities that can be made available to libraries and archives.

Second, libraries, archives, educational, research and teaching institutions should definitely be allowed to import and export copyrighted works and parallel trade in these works should be allowed. The language used in the current working document (SCCR/24/8) needs to be improved upon (Article 14, under 4.1 on page 12). This provision should indicate that as long as the copy of the work is lawfully produced, an educational institution, library, research organization or student is free to acquire, sell, import, export or otherwise dispose of that copy.

Thirdly, we wish to emphasize once again, the importance of protecting works that are in a digital format, as well as online libraries and archives. Additionally, the transmission of these works in a digital form as well as any internet service providers engaged in facilitating access to materials under this treaty should also be granted protection.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-broadcast-treaty-and-exceptions-and-limitations-for-libraries-and-archives

વિકિપીડિયા ગુજરાતી માં પણ છે

praskrishna — 2012-12-07T10:36:20Z

We've recently been featured in the Gujarati magazine on technology: Cybersafar. The below article was written by Harsh Kothari.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/article-in-cybersafar

Comments on the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (Draft)

snehashish — 2012-12-01T15:36:38Z

The Department of Science and Technology invited public comments on the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (Draft). Accordingly, the Centre for Internet and Society has made the following comments on the draft policy document.

Department of Science and Technology,
Ministry of Science and Technology,
Government of India

Subject: Comments on the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (Draft)

Dear Sir/Madam,

We at the Centre for Internet and Society commend the drafting of the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2013 (Draft). It is a well rounded policy which will pave the way for further informed policy decisions on innovation and research and development in the country.

Few of the notable and welcome policy statements are:

The Policy aims at ‘inclusive innovation’ and takes into consideration the “need to ensure access, availability and affordability of solutions to as large a population as possible”. It also aims at building a conducive environment for research and development by modifying the IPR policy to include marching rights with respect to social goods funded by public. This in line with the aim of the policy to provide access new technologies. The use of government funding in commercially viable research would not only assure better access to medicine and other technological innovations but also ensure knowledge transfer.

The policy decision to "foster data sharing and access" is most welcome and will act as a catalyst for further research and development through open and collaborative research and development.

Policy also lays emphasis on open source discoveries for "public and social good" and it is indeed a pleasure to note that the Policy wishes to build knowledge commons by collaborative generation of IPR. This will definitely go a long way in encouraging further innovation in the country.

It is also appreciated that the policy will aim at "increasing accessibility, availability and affordability of innovations" and will establish a fund for innovation in this direction.

The Policy also states that the "people" and "decision makers" should be made aware of the implications of emerging technologies, including their ethical, social and economic dimensions. Implementation of such policy is a necessity and will enable the government to make informed policy decisions in the future.

Suggestion:

It is submitted that the policy document should take into account that in order ensure ‘inclusive innovation’ and accessibility, the policy should specifically include mandates to encourage and foster innovation in technology related to accessibility tools for persons with disabilities.www.dst.gov.in/sti-policy.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-science-technology-and-innovation-policy-draft

OdishaDiary conferred prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to Odia Wikipedia team

praskrishna — 2012-12-05T04:55:20Z

OdishaDiary (Orissadiary.com) conferred the prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to the team of contributors of Odia Wikipedia.

This report by Pravuprasad Routray was published in the Orissa Diary on November 23, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

Health Minister Dr. Damodar Rout, Revenue Minister Surjya Narayan Patro and Energy and IPR Minister Arun Sahoo presented this award to the the Odia Wikipedians in a function in Jayadev Bhawan, Bhubaneswar.

Odia Wikipedia (http://or.wikipedia.org) is a web based free encyclopedia in Odia language. Odia Wikipedia is flagship project of Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the US. The content of Wikipedia are crowd sourced from the voluntary contributors across the world. English Wikipedia being the 5th popular website on internet Odia Wikipedia is the most visited website with more than 4.7 lakh unique visitors every month and the largest website in Odia language with more than 3100 articles. Currently more than 25 editors are contributing in this project.

Odia Wikipedia aims to provide free encyclopedic content in Odia language which could be accessed online and used for academic, research and expanding someone's own knowledge base. The interesting part of wikipedia is the openness for giving the freedom to users to edit and enhance an article. Most of the articles on Wikipedia start from scratch, small articles.

Over the period of time many readers find more information and start adding them on it and that is how articles grow in quality and content. Most people end up thinking that Wikipedia articles are written by paid editors just like any other newspapers and journals. But surprisingly, any person can who notices a factual mistake can correct it and add more information to enhance the articles. Contributing to Odia Wikipedia will not only create more free content online in Odia language, but also will bring more academicians and intellectuals together to a common platform.

At the same time students and academicians who are seeking information in Odia language can make use of it without even buy volumes of books and spending time in library. “We are receiving this award for all the Odias, who has contributed a bit for the language. Everyone here is welcome to join us and be a part of this family”, said Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer of Centre for Internet Society, a grantee of Wikimedia foundation while receiving the award. Odia Wikipedia could be accessed at: http://or.wikipedia.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/orissa-diary-november-23-2012-pravuprasad-routray

Pervasive Mobile Technologies: Meet Our Mobile Devices!

jdine — 2012-12-21T07:48:40Z

As a part of the Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace research project, the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is researching 12 mobile phone devices to generate a better understanding of the intellectual property (IP) implications of pervasive mobile technologies available in the Indian market. This post is an introduction to our 12 mobile phones.

As detailed in my introductory blog on Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace Research Initiative, CIS will be conducting research on mobile technologies as a small off-shoot of the overall project. Pervasive technologies that can be purchased for less than USD 100 play an integral role in bringing access to knowledge to those that routinely face barriers to the consumption of information. However, their legality, particularly in terms of their use of IP, is unclear. In order to better understand the legal environment in which these technologies exist, CIS purchased 12 mobile phones to study the patent implications of their hardware, software and content.

Through examination, research, interviews and consultancies, we hope to create an in-depth documentation of each device, an extensive database or account of the patents implicated, and a number of narrower research avenues on topics related to IP, patents, and mobile technologies.

This blog post will serve as a brief introduction to our mobile devices. The information that I have compiled was discovered through shallow interaction with the phones — turning a device on and exploring the interface and content — which is why the documentation is not particularly extensive at this point. I have had difficulty identifying certain features of some of the phones, like which media formats they support or whether or not they are EDGE[2] — enable, but I am confident that I will be able to ascertain these specifications in the near future; however, certain features, like what OS (operating system) they run on and what chip set they are using, will require collaboration with experts to identify. The exploration is on-going, and more information will be posted as it is discovered.

Aside from all of the usual functions of a mobile phone (making calls, receiving calls, saving numbers, etc.), each of our mobiles devices possess what I have termed the "basics": dual GSM SIM capabilities with dual standby, the ability to connect to 2G networks, GPRS, a WAP browser (except device 011), bluetooth capabilities, a microSD slot, a dual camera (a camera that takes still photos and records video), an FM radio receiver and the ability to play .mp3 audio files and .mp4 video files, record audio and view .jpg images. Each phone also has a handful of various "utilities" and "extras" applications (such as an alarm, a calculator, a calendar, etc.) as well as at least one game. The full specifications of each phone will be provided in the near future, along with further pictures of each device.

As much of the research in this project pertains to the IP implications of the devices, we have decided to withhold the make and model of each device to shield the producers from any negative repercussions that could be the result of our research inquiries. They have been assigned the numeric code names 001 to 012.

Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to our mobile phones:

001 - The Classroom in a Box

Price: Rs. 6,300.00 / $113.00

KEY FEATURES

Pico-Projector
Analog TV Receiver
MS Office Document Viewer


This bar-design feature phone has all of the basics with a few added bonuses: an analog TV receiver, viewer, and a built-in pico-projector that projects the mobile's screen onto any surface. Though this phone does not technically fall into our definition of pervasive technologies because of its price, it was the first mobile phone with a built-in pico-projector as well as an analog TV receiver available on the Indian market for less than Rs. 10,000 when it was purchased more than a year ago. Since then, other sub-USD100 pico-projector mobile devices have made an appearance on the Indian market, but each of those devices appear to have been discontinued and 001 continues to be the cheapest pico-projector mobile phone available for purchase.

002 - The Supercharger

Price: Rs. 2,499.00 / $45.00

KEY FEATURES

Solar Panel
Hindi Keyboard

	002 is a sleek candybar feature phone with a particularly interesting innovation. While it uses a standard lithium-ion battery that can be recharged via connection to a wall socket or electrical device (such as a laptop), it also has a built-in solar panel that can generate some charge as well. The solar panel technology is not yet very efficient—the panel would have to be placed in direct sunlight for multiple hours to fully charge the battery—but it represents an important step towards untethering mobile phones and mobile phone users from costly electricity infrastructure, a development that would have significant implications for rural populations who have unreliable access to electricity.

003 - The Networker

Price: Rs. 1,250.00 / $22.00

KEY FEATURES

Wi-Fi
Optical Trackpad
Secondary Forward-facing Camera
Support for 8 Languages


With a boxy, QWERTY-keyboard design and relatively small screen, 003 does not appear, at first glance, to be anymore than an average feature phone — but appearances can be deceiving. With a highly responsive optical trackpad, an analog TV receiver, BlackBerry-esque interface and WiFi capabilities, this mobile device packs some sophisticated technologies and features. Further, it is the only phone in our collection that can connect to the internet using WLAN networks. Considering that some of the other devices are much more complex — and expensive — than 003, the wide-spread exclusion of WiFi capabilities in our collection is intriguing. Is the choice to include or exclude mobile technology a matter of economics? Are cellular WiFi components expensive, and producers are choosing to exclude WiFi as a method of cutting costs? Is it simply a response to patterns of consumer demand? The WiFi questions will be explored in more depth in up-coming blog posts.

004 - The Linguist

Price: Rs. 2,250.00 / $40.00

KEY FEATURES

Android-like OS
Support for 14 Languages
Secondary Forward-facing Camera
Large Number of Pre-loaded Apps


Though it may be hard to believe at first glance, this mobile device was purchased for less than Rs. 2500. With its large internal memory, support for 14 different languages (including Tamil, Bengali and Hindi), and its large array of pre-loaded games and social media applications already set it apart from the less sophisticated mobiles in our collection, 004 also runs on a mysterious Android-like operating system similar to the popular MIUI Android ROM developed by the Chinese-based company Xiaomi Tech. This give it a very sophisticated interface with the look and feel of a smartphone, though the device itself lacks many of the capabilities that are often considered as smartphone criteria (GPS, high-speed internet access, push/pull email, Wi-Fi, an app store, etc.). Because this device, and others like it in our collection, have more sophisticated hardware, software and content than a generic feature phone, but are not as capable as a smartphone, I have taken to calling these devices "semi-smart".

005 - TV on the Go

Price: Rs. 1,450.00 / $26.00

KEY FEATURES

Analog TV receiver
Arabic Keyboard
Secondary Forward-facing Camera


Though it doesn't have any particular innovation that sets it apart from the other devices, 005 is a hardy QWERTY-design feature phone with all of the basics as well as a good collection of social media applications and an analog TV receiver. Though its keyboard can be programmed to write in English, Tamil, Arabic and Hindi script, the buttons have the Arabic abjad on them, which brings up the question of which market this mobile was originally designed for.

006 - The Spy

Price: Rs. 1,680.00 / $30.00

KEY FEATURES:

Secondary “Spy” Camera
Ability to behave as a modem via USB connection

	006 is an interesting candy bar feature phone. On initial examination, this mobile appears to be a completely generic feature phones with all of the basics, but nothing auxiliary. However, a more careful inspection will reveal a secondary camera with an unusual placement — instead of being place at the top of the screen like all of the other secondary cameras found on our devices, this camera is situated on the right hand side of the phone.

The manufacturer of this device actually refers to this secondary camera as a "spy" camera, and it is truly an appropriate name; from a distance, it looks more like a headphone jack than a camera, and its placement allows for photo and video to be taken without any suspicious movement or positioning by the user. The secondary camera has 1.3 megapixels and can take relatively high resolution photos and videos.

007 - The Semi-Smartphone

Price: Rs. 2,150.00 / $39.00

KEY FEATURES

Android-like OS (maybe MIUI)
USB Tethering
Push Email


Device 007 is a semi-smart touchscreen phone, and by far the most sophisticated device in our collection. We believe that it uses MIUI OS, which gives it a very similar look to Android and a functionality that is reminiscent of iOSx. While it doesn't have an app store, 007 is jam-packed with pre-loaded applications and can support a wide variety of file formats. Further, while the phone cannot connect to WLAN networks on its own; it can connect to WiFi by tethering to a networked device via USB connection.

008 - The Trendy

Price: Rs. 2,350.00 / $42.00

KEY FEATURES

Android-like OS
Support for 9 languages


Another mainstream look-alike, 008 runs the same unidentified OS as device 004 and has similar capabilities. Its plastic casing is a bit flimsy, but its "back", "home" and "list" buttons are touch sensitive. Its sophisticated OS and pre-loaded applications make it a semi-smart device.

009 - The Boombox

Price: Rs. 1,420.00 / $26.00

KEY FEATURES

Huge built-in speaker
Android-like OS

	Though it is less recognizable than some of the other devices, this mobile may have one of the significant smartphone qualifiers that our other devices lack: an app store — or what appears to be an app store. The app store icon itself is actually the icon for the Android app store, but the interface is completely different, and the only thing available for download is a handful of games. Interestingly enough, many of these games also make appearances on some of the other mobile devices (like fishing joy and tear clothes). Further, I would not call this phone semi-smart, as its interface is not particularly any more sophisticated than some of the other feature phones in our collection.

009 also features a large built-in speaker, the Opera Mini mobile browser and an Android-like OS, though this OS is less sophisticated than that of 004 and 008.

010 - 3D

Price: Rs. 1,440.00 / $26.00

KEY FEATURES

Android-like OS
Pre-loaded Stereoscopic (3D) videos
Support for 13 languages


This semi-smart touchscreen phone also has an Android-like operating system. Though it lacks an app store and push-email, it comes pre-loaded with a veritable smorgasbord of games and social media applications and supports 13 different languages. It also comes with a pair of 3D glasses and two short, very basic pre-loaded stereoscopic videos.

011 - The Mighty Mini

Price: Rs. 750.00 / $14.00

KEY FEATURES

Dual GSM SIM support
Best bang-for-your-buck for a basic mobile phone


At Rs. 750, this little feature phone was the least expensive phone we could find that still had almost all of the basics. Even without any extra features, it is still almost Rs. 200 cheaper than the majority of the most basic GSM dual SIM mobiles available on the formal Indian market[3]— and, in most cases, 011 has more capabilities than most of those devices. With .mp3 and .mp4 file playback, a dual camera, colour display, a WAP browser, MMS messaging support, two charging ports and Urdu and Hindi language support, this mobile phone personifies affordable accessibility to knowledge and media.

012 - The Pianist

Price: Rs. 1,550.00 / $28.00

KEY FEATURES

Touch piano
Two charging ports
Support for a multitude of audio, video and image formats

	012 is a basic candy bar feature phone with a particularly novel innovation: a touch piano. It is quite sensitive to touch and has a one octave range.

013 - The Indian Experience

Price: Rs. 2,100.00 / $38.00

KEY FEATURES

India specific content
Proprietary App Store

	This little touchscreen mobile is chockfull of “Indian-specific” content, including an application that links directly to an online portal where consumers can download “Hungama” videos, music and movies onto the phone—for a price. Many of the games also charge a monthly user fee, though interestingly enough, Angry Birds and Talking Tom Cat are pre-loaded and free to play. This phone also has a proprietary app store with a limited amount of mBounce4] applications and games available for purchase. I am not yet sure if this app store can be remotely updated with new apps, but the device can receive data vis USB connection, so it is possible that new applications can be added through direct file transfer. It also has keyboard support for English, Hindi and Tamil, but the interface cannot be set it appear in anything other than English.

[2]. Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, also known as Enchanced GPRS (EGPRS) is a mobile phone technology that also improved data transmission on GSM networks. It is considered a pre-3G radio technology. Read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Data_Rates_for_GSM_Evolution
[3]. Information retrieved from www.flipkart.com. The prices shown here have been verified as being the same or very similar (though never more expensive) to the prices offered by each brand's official distributors. See Flipkart search links:

Mircomax: http://bit.ly/UW3q0U

Spice Mobility: http://bit.ly/V0DK9i

Karbonn: http://bit.ly/10DKKbz

Lava: http://bit.ly/TSxUzQ

[4] mBounce Ltd is a Hong Kong-based company that performs a variety of mobile phone application support services like proprietary in-house billing infrastructure for app stores, the pre-loading of applications and app stores, and application creation. They are MediaTek-nominated key partner in providing MRE (Maui Runtime Environment) App Store Solutions, but mBounce applications and software can also be placed on other mobile operating systems. You can read more about mBounce here: http://www.mbounce.com/?lang=eng&module=ltrbox&menu=m1&content=home and here: http://developer.mediatek.com/mre/en/partner/335

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/pervasive-mobile-technologies-meet-our-grey-market-devices

Wikipedia Women's Workshop in Mumbai

noopur — 2012-12-03T06:01:18Z

The Wiki Women Workshop was organized at the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala in Mumbai on November 4, 2012. It was attended by over 60 women participants who were taught how to contribute to Wikipedia articles and briefed about the knowledge gaps in Wikipedia — the free encyclopedia. Noopur Raval has prepared a report of the event.

It is a well known fact that over 91 per cent of the contributors on Wikipedia are men. Women contribution comes to around 9 per cent only. As illustrated by this infographic, the articles edited by women also significantly differ from those edited by men or users who do not identify themselves. The major articles are on people, philosophy and arts. The month of November was celebrated by wikipedians across the globe to promote women editors and do women related outreach in different parts of the world. I was part of a similar initiative organized by the Wikipedia community of Mumbai in India on November 4, 2012.

The workshop was planned on e-mail more than a month in advance with inputs from various volunteers of the community as well as members of the Wikimedia India chapter. Once the logistics were taken care of, it was also suggested that the workshop be kept exclusively for women to provide them an uninhibited space to express themselves and learn editing. Although the initial response was huge (over a hundred registrations), eventually about 65 women turned up for the event.

Agenda of the workshop

The community members conducted this workshop differently to how it is usually done — they started with hands-on editing straightaway instead of giving an introduction to the Wikimedia movement and Wikipedia policies. After an hour of teaching the basics of wiki editing the participants were shown a presentation on making user accounts and start contributing articles of their choice. I helped a participant create an article on her village: Vempadu.

In the post-lunch session, participants were asked about the problems they faced and were shown how to contribute images to Commons — the free repository. The winners of the Indian leg of Wiki Loves Monuments were also announced at the workshop. The workshop ended with feedback, Wikipedia quiz and group photographs with the participants.

Feedback

For me, the feedback was particularly interesting because not many women-centric workshops have been conducted in the past. It was good to know that most of the women participants were not feeling left out or grappling with the Wiki interface. There was a diverse age range — from young school girls to retired professionals. Wireless internet access was irregular and not all could connect, which caused a lot of time to be wasted. We (community members and A2K team) would be keeping the participants updated on more events and hope they become an active part of the Wikipedia community as well. This workshop has also opened up avenues for more outreach events in other institutions.

A special thanks and acknowledgement to Vidyalankar Institute (VIT), Wadala for hosting us and to Bishakha Dutta, Moksh Juneja, Aditi Vashisht, Pranav, Krutika, Rohini, Netra, Pradeep, Samir, Netha, Nikita, and everyone else who put this event together.

Here is the blog post written by community members who attended the workshop: http://bit.ly/S78z93

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-womens-workshop-in-mumbai

Transcripts of Discussions at WIPO SCCR 25

smita — 2012-12-05T00:58:55Z

We are providing archival copies of the transcripts of the 25th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, which is being held in Geneva from November 19, 2012 to November 23, 2012.

This is an unedited rough transcript of the discussions at SCCR 25 which is live-streamed and made available by WIPO at http://www.streamtext.net/player/carttranscript?Event=WIPO and http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=WIPO. We are hosting the live-streamed text for archival purposes:

WIPO SCCR 25 Day 1, November 19, 2012 (Full Text)
WIPO SCCR 25 Day 2, November 20, 2012 (Full Text)
WIPO SCCR 25 Day 3, November 21, 2012 (Full Text)
WIPO SCCR 25 Day 4, November 22, 2012 (Full Text)
WIPO SCCR 25 Day 5, November 23, 2012 (Full Text)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-sccr25-discussions-transcripts

A Report of the Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2012-12-07T22:37:59Z

(By Debapriya Priyadashi Chakra) Sambad, Odisha's most widely read and largest circulated daily, on November 19, 2012, published an article about the Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in KMBB College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Read a detailed report about this workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad

An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar

subha — 2012-12-07T22:40:32Z

The Centre for Internet and Society along with Odia Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar organized an Odia Wikipedia workshop on November 18, 2012. It was held in KMBB College of Engineering. Odia Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in Odia language which everyone can edit.

Odia Wikipedians gathered in the temple city of Bhubaneswar on November 18, 2012 to organize the third Odia Wikipedia workshop in KMBB College of Engineering. KMBB College of Engineering is a BPUT affiliated engineering college supported by Ama Odisha, an organization working for media, communication and development of Odia language. Dr. Dhanada Mishra, Director-Academics, KMBB and a veteran educationalist and open source source enthusiast supported this event. Forty-five students from KMBB attended this workshop. The agenda for the two-and-a-half hour session was to educate students about open source movement, journey of Wikipedia and how to contribute to Odia Wikipedia and how it would help them. Nine active Odia Wikipedians joined to support this event.

Dr. Mishra began the session by introducing Odia Wikipedians to the students. He spoke about Open source movement, how the community supports various open source projects, how Wikipedia was started and how it is essential for students to take part in such activities. Subhashish Panigrahi briefly spoke about the history of Odia wikipedia, how it grew up in the recent years to its present state. Odia Wikipedian Manoranjan Behera discussed about how everyone can contribute to the Wikipedia.

To explain the easiness of typing in Odia, some of the students were invited to write text on a board and test the typing tool on Odia Wikipedia. A new article about the college was created and one of the students wrote few sentences. Wikipedians explained the importance of creating user accounts and demonstrated how to search an article, how to create an article and the basics of editing an article. A Question and Answer session was held for students to put their queries. At the end of the session, contact details were shared with the students and the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki) of Odia Wikipedia was shown so that students could continue editing and remain in touch with fellow wikipedians.

Odia daily “The Sambad” covered this event.

Presentation: Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia! on Prezi
Video:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar

Follow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session at Bharati Vidyapeeth — More Interested and More Involved Participants

nitika — 2013-10-30T09:17:31Z

A Wikipedia introductory session was organised at Bharati Vidyapeeth Engineering College in Delhi early this year and a follow up session was organised by CIS on November 19, 2012. About 12 to 15 participants attended the follow up session. Although most of the participants had attended the introductory session there were a few who were coming over for the first time.

Many participants had already tried some wiki editing (such as correcting grammar, spellings, punctuations, etc.) after the introductory session but had several queries with respect to advance editing such as wiki markup, adding references, adding wiki interlinks and so on.

The main aim to conduct a follow up session was to clear these editing doubts, provide editing support and more importantly make these new editors feel a part of the wider Wikipedia community. This session gave us a brilliant opportunity to inform and encourage the participants to be part of Wikipedia mailing lists, talk page discussions, Facebook pages, current Wikipedia projects and Wiki meet ups. Participants were taught difference between article and user talk pages, leaving messages on various talk pages, how to add wiki markups, add references, add inter wiki links, send private mails to other users, page view stats, etc. The good part of organizing a session with second time participants was that they were already familiar with the workings of Wikipedia from the introductory session. They had more intelligent queries especially around editing. In addition, another big advantage was the surety that only those participants will return who are genuinely interested in wiki editing and are not just attracted towards Wikipedia brand or swags.

Albeit being a short two-hour session, the workshop provided a good platform for getting in touch with participants, helping them to gain confidence and edit Wikipedia articles, informing them of different ways in which they could be more involved.

Hopefully, next year we could revisit each of the institutions where we'd organised an introductory Wikipedia session in 2012. Though the number of participants for a follow up session might be small but it definitely guarantees more interested and more involved participants.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth

‘Some Indian laws could be challenging’

praskrishna — 2012-11-19T04:40:46Z

Wikipedia’s founder member Erik Möller says their principle is not to decide the map of India, but to explain that there is a controversy.

This article was published in Bangalore Mirror on November 15, 2012.

Erik Möller, vice-president engineering and product development, Wikimedia Foundation, is one of the founder members of Wikipedia, along with Jimmy Wales, since it started in 2001. Möller was in Bangalore over the weekend to speak at a technical seminar at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a local chapter of Wikimedia. He spoke about India’s role in the growth of Wikipedia not just in the sub-continent, but globally.

BM: How significant is India in the Wikipedia movement?
EM: Very significant and growing. I don’t have the data on exact number of editors based in India. However currently, 2.4 per cent of all Wikipedia edits globally are made from India. As a comparison, the UK’s is 6.5 per cent. India has overtaken Australia and (narrowly) Brazil since last year. In the 2011 fundraiser, India reached the top 10 of countries giving to the Wikimedia Foundation, with 39,000 donors from India giving the equivalent of $360,468. The 2012 fundraiser will be launched in a few days. (Interestingly, India is the only developing nation in the Top 10 contributing nations).

Does the financial support from India surprise you?
Of course not. You are a country of a billion people (laughs). I think Wikipedia appeals to a lot of cultural sensibilities, sharing of knowledge and culture. I think people here want to share.

Where does India stand in the future of Wikipedia’s roadmap?
India was identified as one of three global priority areas in our 2010-15 strategic plan (alongside Brazil and Arabic language countries). While there are active Wikipedia communities in many Asian countries, India continues to be the Foundation’s main focus area in (non-Arabic) Asia through the “Access To Knowledge (A2K)” programme conducted by CIS as our local partner, funded via a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.

From the standpoint of freedom to internet access, what do you think of Indian laws?

Depending on your interpretation, specific laws in India could be challenging, particularly in areas of mapping (geographically). We are concerned about those things, but have to run with it. We consider ourselves specifically (governed by) US laws from where we are legally published. But then, Wiki is not an advocacy organisation that goes around telling people which politician to vote for. As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, it’s very important all people become educated on the issues. It’s not up to us to decide what’s the correct map of India, of course, but it is up to us to explain there is a controversy.

Are you constantly bombarded with litigation world over?

Surprisingly not.

What are the big developments happening in Wikipedia?

We are currently running two pilot projects – Wikidata and Wikivoyage. For example, today you can find out the GDP of each country on Wikipedia but cannot query and arrange countries by GDP size. Wikidata will allow you to do that. Similarly, Wikivoyage will provide matter-of-fact information on local sites that are of interest to travellers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-article-kalyan-subramani-nov-15-2012-some-indian-laws-could-be-challenging

Odia Wikipedia Gets a New Typing Solution!

subha — 2012-12-12T12:28:57Z

Subhashish Panigrahi worked with Yuvi Panda to create a new typing scheme for Odia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This blog post gives a summary of this development and its outcome.


Odia Lekhani Phonetic Keyboard Layout

A new typing scheme Lekhani (Odia for a stylus which was used for writing on palm leaves) to be used for Odia Wikipedia, other sister Wikimedia projects and for offline and typing using mobile devices was researched upon.

Indian languagFedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layoutes use various typing schemes (key combinations for output in Indic languages) which could be used for writing, printing, publishing and for any other purpose both for offline and online publication as well as printing. Development for Unicode standard in Odia language progressed lately. Revival of Odia Wikipedia after 2011 helped the use of unicode more on internet because of its extensive content (more than 3100 articles on various topics) and online activities on social media. Currently there are over different typing schemes available for Odia including the non-unicode typing schemes used mostly by the DTP operators and many newspapers and publication houses. One of the earliest development was the Inscript keyboard layout which follows a global standard for most Indic languages. Inscript is useful and once someone gets his fingers used to typing it is fun. But, most of the beginners find it difficult to type in Inscript. In those cases phonetic keyboards are quite helpful where someone need to press the English keys which corresponds to the Roman characters, e.g. R-a-d-h-aa for "Radha". Based on these sort of logics a keyboard layout was deployed for all the Indic languages on Narayam including Odia. (See Odia transliteration for details). The primary developer for transliteration was Junaid PV, a Malayalam Wikipedian who helped for the Indic languages and few other Asian languages. As transliteration follows more a common rule there are many ambiguities and bugs reported after it was deployed on Odia Wikipedia. Even though many rounds of changes there are still bugs which doesn't allow many editors to type accurately. This is one of the reasons when there was a need for a purely phonetic typing scheme which has more affinity to the way an Odia user would type the words using a Roman key board.

The idea for deploying a new phonetic typing scheme was started during Mumbai Hackathon in 2011. Subhashish brought the proposal in community village pump for ideas and consensus and the basic layout and testing was done. The whole project went into a slumber for a long time! Recently when YuviPanda was in Delhi and met Subhashish the idea of hacking and testing the tool came again. The whole keyboard layout was revised and deployed on github. Two main keyboard layouts which were used for keeping the major inputs as standard were Fedora Phonetic keyboard and Apple Oriya Qwerty.


Fedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layout


Apple QWERTY Keyboard

Majority of the key combinations have been kept same except for few small changes. The typing scheme is deployed on TranslateWiki.net for Universal Language Selector and gerrit which will be enabled on Odia Wikipedia soon for Narayam. The recent mobile typing tool, "Indic typing tool" which was developed at Delhi office of the Centre for Internet and Society by Yuvi Panda and Subhashish Panigrahi also uses Lekhani as a default typing tool.

Quick links:

Lekhani typing scheme for Odia
Source file: https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/blob/master/rules/or/or-lekhani.js
Check the github page for other Odia typing tools and here for all other languages
Typing in Lekhani using mobile phone

Credits:

Odia Lekhani Phonetic Keyboard Layout (CC-BY-SA 3.0): Manoranjan Behera
Fedora's Phonetic Keyboard Layout: RedHat
Apple QWERTY Keyboard: Apple Inc.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-gets-new-typing-solution

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