Centre for Internet and Society

IGF 2009 - Main Session: Emerging Issues: Social Networks

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T13:46:50Z

Current laws don't seem to scale well to handle Web 2.0 issues

Session description: Discussion was centered on the development of social media (social networks, user-generated content sites, micro-blogging, collaboration tools, etc.) in order to explore whether these developments require to new or modified policy approaches. Key issues explored include privacy and data protection, rules applicable to user-generated content and copyrighted material, and freedom of expression and illegal content. The session also addressed the importance of the “terms of service” of large platforms, how they are developed and their relationship with emerging business models that are based on behavioral analysis.

Participants in the discussion included: Sunil Abraham, director of policy, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore; Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of the Global Network Initiative; Grace Bomu, manager, Kenya-Heartstrings and Fanartics Theatre Company, Kenya; Sergio Suiama, prosecutor, State of São Paulo, Brazil; Rachel O'Connell, VP of people networks and chief safety officer, Bebo.

November 18, 2009 - Sunil Abraham, an Internet policy expert from Bangalore, was a key panelist in this session who introduced the primary concerns tied to social networks today.

"I'm going to raise nine emerging issues about social media," he began, "and I categorize them into four categories: Intellectual property rights, morality laundering, the hegemony of the connected and the hegemony of text."

He noted that intellectual property law is completely outdated and cannot be applied in today's communications environment, saying it is "irrelevant." He added, "To take some examples, the right of the consumer to review, the right of the consumer to privacy, the right of the entrepreneur or enthusiast to make interoperable, complementary or competing products. All these rights used to be protected under the right to reverse-engineer. Issue 2 under IPR: On some corporate-mediated social media platforms, copyright takedown notices from one political party are acted on much more swiftly when compared to similar takedown notices from an opposing party. Issue 3, under IPR: Some rights holders, and in particular news organizations, use copyright takedown notices selectively to purge social media Web sites of content that opposes their editorial viewpoint. Issue 4 under intellectual property rights: The increased use of automated enforcement of copyright by rights holders is seriously undermining freedom of expression on the Internet, as in the case of the baby dancing to Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.'"

He explained "morality laundering" - saying that, like policy laundering, it is "trying to impose a globally homogenized morality regime." He cited the example of breast-feeding photos on a social network being deleted because they were considered obscene. "Breast-feeding, I may remind you, is still a public activity in many southern countries," he said. "Photographs of public life on a beach in a country where nudism is the norm becomes child pornography in another country."

He said that religious traditions can sometime be reduced to a monoculture on community-managed social media platforms that "depend on editors to determine the truth," adding "That is because upper-crust and upper-class populations have greater access to the Internet. Literate communities will try to maintain their hegemony on the Internet. Community-managed social media platforms that depend on textual citation often ignore the knowledge of the oral communities of the global south."

Session moderator Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, asked Abraham if automated enforcement of social network policies should be outlawed. "I don't think it is possible for us to completely take out machine involvement in moderating content online," Abraham said, "whether it is from a freedom-of-speech perspective or a hate-speech perspective or from an intellectual-property-rights perspective. But I think the process has to become more transparent, so that the public will know what happened and why it happened and that there is due process and the possibility of appeal."

Davies had kicked off the session with a plea that participants try to think ahead in this discussion of social networks. "Our role today in this panel is to look to the future, and our mentors at the UN and at IGF have urged me to motivate, as much as possible, an imagining of the future," he said. "Our role, as we can see on the program, is to look at social networks and social spaces such as micro-blogging and Web 2.0, as we move through to the next - what are the issues that we're likely to confront. So our two goals, if I can suggest a focus, is: What have we brought out of this last few days that tells us something about the way the future will go? Particularly in terms of social interaction. And second, imagine that future."

Sergio Siuama, prosecutor for the State of São Paulo, Brazil, was asked to describe the privacy problem that developed there on Google's social network Orkut. "Social networks are the fourth most popular online activity, ahead of personal e-mail," he said. "Eighty percent of Brazilian Intenet users interact through social network sites. In Brazil as well in India and Pakistan, the most popular social networking service is Google's Orkut. More than 30% of Brazilian users access regularly use Orkut and about 25% of them are children and teenagers." He said many social networks accessed by people globally are transnational. "The most-accessed services in Brazil are provided by companies physically located in the United States," he said.

In 2005 Google set up a branch in São Paulo, but it was not enough to handle the business of 30 million users. Since 2004 Brazilian authorities have been receiving reports of cyberbullying, drug dealing, child pornogrphy and other human rights violations in Orkut's space. In 2006 the federal attorney's office started a collective lawsuit against Google. Google responded with a proactive plan. After two years of litigation, in July 2008, the parties settled on a collective agreement in which Google agreed, among other obligations, to comply with Brazilian legislation, to store traffic data for at least six months, to take down child-abuse images, to develop a proactive system of child-abuse images detection, removal and report to law enforcement, and to establish a customer-service office able to quickly respond to all users' complaints. Some of these obligations were adopted as standards for the whole of Latin America in a document - the memorandum of Montevideo.

Siuama raised several governance issues that arise from this case: Which criteria should be used to define the ability of a country to legislate over and sanction conducts committed on the Internet? Is it legitimate to enforce rules at a local company's office regarding a service operated from another country? What are the basic standards we should expect from ISPs to help cope with human rights violations on the Internet? Is any national law enforcement agency equipped to cope with crimes committed on social networking sites? Will it be necessary to ensure minimum levels of transparency and social accountability of networking services?

Panel member Rachel O'Connell, vice president of people networks and chief safety officer for Bebo, chaired the European Union's Safer Social Networking Cross-Industry Task Force - an effort by 18 social networking companies, including Facebook and Google, working with the European Commission and civil liberties, child welfare, law enforcement and parenting groups.

"We came up with seven principles that relate to education and ensuring that we have prominent and easily accessible safety messages and also addressing reporting abuse and providing people with the technologies and capabilities so they can use the Internet safely," she said. "We are doing a lot of filtering on the back end. We have moderation teams in place. We have very strong links with law enforcement. We look at the legal issues in each of the countries and the markets in which we operate and see how that ties up with being a US-based company. We're also aware of treaties like the multinational legal assistance treaty, in terms of working with law enforcement and investigators."

O'Connell said the industry has probably not been clear enough about how these procedures are implemented. She expects that the principles set out by the task force will make things more clear. "The number of signatories was 18 and now it's up to 23, and part of my role is to encourage companies to become signatories," she said. "It means you need to self-declare how you have implemented the principles and each of the substantive recommendations. These self-declarations are being reviewed by independent researchers, and their report will be released to coincide with Safer Internet Day in February."

She added that U.S. attorneys general have asked social networking companies to begin being more transparent and accountable. "Facebook has an internal auditor to ensure that they are meeting the requirements outlined by the attorneys general, and similarly MySpace has an agreement, so there is an incredible amount of work going on," she said. "That said, there is still a log of work to do, as there always will be. For example, AOL has been working closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and are diligent about working with law enforcement in other countries to ensure we can facilitate the investigative process. We also have a filtering process we run on the back end."

Grace Bomu, manager for Kenya-Heartstrings and Fanartics Theatre Company, Kenya, was on hand to talk about the positive influence of social networks. Her creative troupe uses them to do marketing, research and concept development. "From our Facebook page," she explained, "we're able to tell which issues the youth in Kenya are facing, and from those issues, we are able to develop a concept and sell our plays. On our Facebook page, people propose lines, other people propose they be actors, and this has really changed the way we do business. It's the actors who write the script, and our friends help us in writing the script.

"Another way the Internet helps us is using the mobile money payment systems. Our management uses a mobile phone to update the page, to make comments and so on. Friends came up with the idea that they could pay to attend plays using mobile money payment systems."

She said there are some negatives. Anonymous respondents and competitors write negative comments on the troupe's page, politicians sometimes try to use the page to advance their goals, "and we have had problem of balancing what some people call abusive language with what others say is artistic expression."

"We'd say that these tools have really helped news opening up culture, in growth of urban language and also in the contribution of topical issues," she concluded. "Tools are helping us to expand freedom of expression rather than caging it. So what we have done as a company is that we are coming up with - slowly, we are coming up with a code within us that we shall follow in balancing the competing interests."

Rebecca MacKinnon, Open Society Institute fellow and co-founder of the Global Network Initiative, noted that throughout the sessions of IGF-2009 people have been speaking out about the power of social networks as spaces where individual citizens can speak truth to power. "Spaces that help to make governments and other institutions more accountable to individuals," she said. "This is happening all over the world, across a range of political systems. But there are trends that are counteracting the potential of social networks to be a force that can truly help citizens participate in public life. This may be contributing to social networks acting as more opaque extensions of incumbent power in some situations, rather than as transparent conduits between citizens and institutions."

MacKinnon raised four key points. The first is the level of liability governments place on social networking services in regard to user-generated content.

While it is part of the groundrules for IGF that participants are encouraged to avoid singling out people or nations when meting out criticism, it was clear that she was referring to China when she said, "In some jurisdictions, international social networking sites end up being blocked because the sovereign government is not happy with some of the content being posted on the sites. And in some of those jurisdictions, what then ends up happening is that a robust set of domestic social networking sites evolve. And the social networking sites that are hosted domestically are held liable for all the content that their users are posting on the site. And so in order to comply with government requirements and the particular government's definition of what constitutes legal speech, these social networking sites end up having to develop large departments of people whose job it is to police content. international social networking sites that want to act - want to operate in certain jurisdictions have to make a choice, either to be blocked to users in that country because users may post things that the local government objects to, or agree to develop a locally hosted site in the local language which would then be subject to greater local jurisdiction and agree to police it. And there have been some cases where certain - and I have again been asked not to name and shame - but where certain companies have chosen to host locally and comply with government requests for political censorship in that regard. And so this is one challenge that social networking companies around the world are facing, is how to deal with this."

Other points she outlined were:

- Social network users are often not allowed to be anonymous. "There's at least one country where now anybody who uses a social networking site or Web service over a certain size has to register with their national ID number," she explained, "and many human rights groups have expressed concerns about some users who have been traced for political speech. At least one international social networking service decided to disable the local uploading of videos and comments onto its service, so people in that country have to use the international version of the service rather than the local service - so that this particular social networking site would not be in the position of handing people over for speech that might arguably be political."

- Administrators of social networking sites will sometimes perceive that something is going against the terms of service when the content has a much different intent. "There are political activists from a range of countries who found their Facebook accounts frozen because their pattern of activity resembled spamming," she said, "and this had an impact on their ability to conduct political activities. And there have been situations where activists in various countries post images of abuse by authorities against citizens and these are quite graphic and are deemed to be against terms of service. And the people concerned feel that 'if these sites do not let me speak truth to power, then were can I go?' So that's another sort of human-rights issue."

- A new multistakeholder group, the Global Network Initiative, is being co-founded by MacKinnon and others to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in ICTs. "Our approach recognizes that a lot of these issues are difficult to legislate for because they involve very nuanced contextual situations that differ greatly," she said. "Companies do feel there is a need to have some kind of assistance in doing the right thing. How can social networks fulfill their potential and serve their users so they feel they can use these services without becoming victims of oppression in various ways? The Global Network Initiative combines companies who have signed on as well as human rights groups, socially responsible investment funds and some academics to help companies proactively figure out how to anticipate free-expression issues in order to avoid problems and assist in making choices about how to structure businesses."

Pavan Duggal spoke from the floor of the session about the formation of a dynamic coalition on social networks, which came together after a session on legal issues and social media earlier in the day. "These issues not only relate to data protection and privacy," he said. "They also relate to the issue of jurisdiction and ownership, storage, retention and transmission of user-generated content. Do we have the right to be anonymous? Do we have a right to oblivion? Can there be a right to delete in the context of social media? Is there a right of purging children-generated content? Can there be a right to forget and to forgive in the context of information? We also discussed how the deadly cocktail mix of social media and cloud computing is venturing us into a wild, wild west as far as jurisprudential rules and principles are concerned. Which country, what data, which server, which law would apply, which would be effective remedy, which would be the relevant court and how would the ultimate adjudication be done?"

He said it is expected that national governments will try to legislate in this area. "While the Internet has made geography history, the fact still remains that national governments will try to legislate," he said. "It is time that respective stakeholders must come together, not just the players, the users, but also the industry, the government, the lawmakers, law enforcement."

For the UN video, click here

For the UN transcript, click here

For the original article, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/emerging-issues-social-networks

When Whistle Blowers Unite

sunil — 2012-03-21T10:17:48Z

Leaking corporate or government information in public interest through popular Web service providers is risky but Wikileaks.org is one option that you could try out.

Leaking corporate or government information in public interest in the age of Satyam has new challenges. You couldn't just upload it to a blog, social networking website or even a document management system like Google documents. Google, Yahoo and most other Web service providers nearly always comply with the national law and cooperate with enforcement agencies. In India there have been several arrests in connection with alleged illegal email messages and content on social networking websites. It did not take court order – just a request from the local police station. Furthermore, you would have to undertake additional risky activity online to draw media attention to your documents. Also those who stand to lose from the leak can send a couple of copyright take down notices which will lead to deletion. So your only real option is Wikileaks.org, where they boast: Every source protected. No documents censored. All legal attacks defeated.

Launched in December 2006, Wikileaks.org stands alone on the Internet as the last refuge for the truth. Even though the promoters are European and US academic organisations, journalists and NGOs – a near neutral point of view is realised by sparing no one across the political and ideological spectrum. It is the archive of the whistle-blowers of the world and it is ugly: login information and private emails of a holocaust denier, secret documents from the Church of Scientology, Internet block-lists from Thailand and standard operating procedures for US guards at Guantanamo Bay, et cetera. One could safely assume that these guys have very few friends. Unlike Wikipedia.org whose technology it employs, Wikileaks does not have an open and participatory editorial policy. It accepts documents through a trusted journalist–source system.

Leaking controversial documents can result in loss of job, limb and life, so extreme caution is always advised. Remember that India still does not have laws protecting whistle blowers, in spite of a bill being introduced in 2006. What follows is only a very rough guide to digital whistle blowing, so please get expert advice before you try these at home:

Download and install military grade encryption software like Pretty Good Privacy. Generate a pair of keys – a public and a private one. Use your private key in combination to a journalist's public key to send him or her, a 'for your eyes only message' email. Only the journalist will be able to decrypt the message using your public key and his private key. Note however, that an Indian court under the 2008 amendment of the IT Act can ask you to disclose your key-pair.
Step outside. Working from home is a bad idea since DOT mandates that all ISPs retain logs for all users and for all services utilized for an indeterminate time-period. Office is still worse as your network administrator might be also logging your activities.
Find an anonymous public access point. Cyber-cafes, especially in New Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are asking users to provide identity cards and record contact details and in some cases web-cam photographs as well. Using your laptop in a coffee shop may work but DOT is considering cracking down on open wifi networks.
Use an anonymizing service so that the chain of digital evidence leading up to Wikileaks is obliterated. TOR is the anonymizing solution of choice. Several TOR servers that provide private tunnels across the Internet work in unison, to form a cloud of anonymity.

If you were leaking large amounts of data, uploading it may be too risky. Burn the data on DVDs and mail them to Wikileaks. However, do ensure that all digital files have been purged of personal information. For word files this can be done by converting to PDF. Also you may not want to leave any finger-prints on the package. India will soon have a database of finger prints thanks to the National Unique Identity (NUID) project. We know this thanks to the leaked NUID project document on Wikileaks.org, days before the consultation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/whistle-blowers-unite

Drawing maps for change

radha — 2011-04-04T06:49:53Z

Digital maps can hold immense academic value – an article by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, 3rd Jan, 2010.

BANGALORE: The mash-up story is an old but compelling one, particularly when used for advocacy as in Tunisia where exile Sami Ben Gharbiais used a GoogleMaps mash-up to paint a different kind of landscape.
So random net surfers were startled to find the Tunisian map dotted with a string of prisoner’s names, their biographies, and videos of their family members telling the story of the human rights situation in the country.
Closer home, rights activist K. Ramnarayan is trying to do something similar. Using GPS and simple mapping technologies, Mr. Ramnarayan maps the location and extent of damage that will be created by proposed hydro-electric projects in Uttarakhand.

“We knew that many projects were announced. But it was only when we began mapping, we found that the 550-odd projects were concentrated in three valleys, and could potentially ruin all the State’s rivers,” he says.

Detailed perspectives

Mr. Ramnarayan believes that mapping technology can provide detailed perspectives, enable analysis — GPS devices are easy to use and collated data can be simply added as layers to existing maps — and create better awareness by sharing data online. Using the more accurate GIS mapping can also hold immense academic value.

It is this potential that “Maps for Change,” a collaborative project hosted by Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Tactical Tech, endeavours to tap into. Anja Kovacs, a CIS fellow, believes maps are powerful, as they provide the larger picture. For instance, she says, news reports lead one to believe that protests against SEZs are isolated today. Now, put all those protests on a map, and you get the real picture! “Maps for Change” participants are involved in a slew of fascinating projects such as mapping land acquisition patterns in Bangalore, tribal displacement issues and dissident sexualities in Delhi.

Layer of information

So mapping is not a complex cartographer’s job anymore. With cheaper and more efficient GPS devices, in the market and on your cellphones, anybody can map. Pradeep B.V. of MapUnity.org, a site that lets you create your own map, says that ‘neogeographers’ are redefining online maps.

Neogeographers use available online maps such as Google MyMaps or Open Street Maps to add layers of information to a typical mashup.

GIS adds that critical layer of accuracy, and is essential in remote areas which are not mapped by these services. So you collect data (typically latitude, longitude and altitude information), mark your points of interest and upload this on a map, Mr. Pradeep explains.

Using attributes these simple maps can be used, accurately, to tell a story and document several layers of information.

Tracking changes
Say you wish to record access to health facilities in a backward district. A GPS device helps you collate info and create a ‘schema’ of data that can be uploaded directly to any mashup. Open source tools such as JUMP or UDIG can help you work easily with GIS datasets. The map can be interactive, you can track changes and can be as dynamic as you want it to be — for instance, you upload videos of health care facilities or highlight patches of social exclusion.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/drawing-maps-for-change

Wired state of mind

radha — 2011-04-02T13:56:55Z

Information technology is the driver of society today — the basic block of innovation and growth in organisations, the mainstay of the 21st century. The decade bygone was only an indicator of the things to come. Whether its ideas or friendships, the future indubitably belongs to linking-up on the web, writes Malvika Tegta , DNA - Digital Edition, Monday - 28th December, 2009.

Did cyberscape make us cogs on a new machinery or liberate us, empower us or make us vulnerable, enrich us with cultural diversity or homogenise us? There isnt a simple answer. Not in a diverse world digitally sewn into a remarkably new pattern. Here what is certain is what is manifest — the emergence of an information society witness to changes in organisation structure, work cultures, community life, lifestyles, medicine, governance, activism, political participation, commercial business, conventional media, spaces for those on the social fringes, emergence of support systems. And a new connected state of mind.

Increased spread of the web and an exponential increase in internet platforms and applications unleashed a world of possibility for the user like never before. You could collaboratively edit a dynamic encyclopedia, collectively write a book on an idea seeded in the US and source ideas for your art project from perfect strangers from across the globe. There were endless ways of connecting with people we never knew existed — an increased consumption of global culture.

A phenomenon that enabled linking up like never before was social networking, invented in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The Facebook culture that it spawned was drastically going to change our world as we knew it.

Consider how your life changed. A regular college evening in 2000, which was spent on chai, sutta and long walks, was invested in collecting updates about friends living on the same hostel wing on Facebook or Twitter. You were poked if you were being lazy about parting with your current mood update. When you spread out after college, these platforms kept you perpetually in the loop. You knew whod put on weight, whose relationship status had changed, that xyz was feeling crabby today. You, in turn, made sure that you posted one good picture of you in the Jaisalmer deserts for your 369 Facebook buddies to see.

And, all that upload and download of continuous information was negotiated on multiple browser windows, deftly juggled at work, while you waited for your strawberry crop on Farmville to mature.

In short, social lives of the 15% of us (Indians) with internet access were, if not fundamentally altered, certainly uploaded and impacted over the last 10 years. We became comfortable with the idea of trading identities and data about ourselves with companies like Orkut, Facebook or Google in return for the opportunity to realise the last connection on our six degrees of separation map.

Factors that made 24*7 wired lifestyle possible were miniaturisation, therefore portability computers; the smartening up of mobile phones; better broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity, and social media boom. Laptops made way for notebooks, notebooks for netbooks, and cell phone companies rolled out browser-based phones like the Blackberry and Android handsets.

To grasp the changes in the backdrop of the colossal exchange of data was to revisit Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhans line, made famous way before the Internet got big, “The medium is the message”.

Cultural evolution
The Internet grew up fast over the past 10 years, both embodying social values like connectivity, participation, creating, collaborating and self-sufficiency, and in turn affecting them. It went from read-only sites to being driven by user generated content. The user became the creative dynamo, armed with tools like blogs, review forums, and sites like WordPress, Blogspot, Flickr and YouTube.

Then came social media: Orkut, LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter. Peer-2-peer file sharing application BitTorrent and music sharing sites like Napster came to represent the new philosophy. Here, the user became an active supplier of movies or music without the need for an intermediary server, as was generally the case before.

“The three cultural turns that social networking has introduced have been peer-2-peer networking, collaborations and new processes of publication and dissemination. These have changed our notion of history, cultural production and consumption, and knowledge production,” says Nishant Shah, director, research, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Sites like Wikipedia have dismantled the processes of knowledge production and learning and introduced new forms of knowledge-sharing, like crowd sourcing. Collaborations have managed new forms of emotional bonding, creative production and interaction which propel the blogosphere and public opinion. These have an impact on questions of consumption, lifestyle patterns, etc.”

24x7 connectivity
The Internet speeded up time and we “drew gratification from speed”. You wanted to look up a breakfast place, a word meaning or answer to the first thing off the top of your head like why are men the way they are? You wanted Google to turn up an answer, and fast.

Since free social working sites became a landmine of data on consumer behaviour, trends, likes and dislikes, they needed to attract and keep the numbers. A few sites maintained a near monopoly; search was to Google, social networking meant Facebook and realtime synonymous with Twitter. Apart from constant re-invention, the sheer potential for large-scale networking was the reason. “My friends stick to Gmail, Facebook and Twitter because we dont want to manage information on too many sites,” says Saurabh Shrivastava, an MBA student.

It was reported that Facebook users woke up to water virtual crops at 4am just to stay ahead on Farmville, or sign into Twitter to see how far the world had come. Instant feedback was the expectation. The experiences and satisfactions were on multiple windows; to be out of that pattern caused anxiety. That was also in part because people fell back upon structures of social support online, which were earlier unavailable; BlackBerry/smartphones to the rescue.

Though the network grew stronger, it essentially comprised weak ties. Technology consultant Atul Chitnis feels that wider reach… reduced real-world interactions are unnatural in the social perspective, and have made social interactions more competitive. “Its more about getting more comments and reactions.”

What writer James Harkin portrayed as the new crack cocaine, professor Clay Shirky saw as not the case of information overload but of “filter failure”.

Virtual & physical
While we became human nodes spending a large part of the day on the network, the physical fed into the virtual world and vice-versa. Shortened attention spans created an attention economy, leading conventional media to get increasingly visual and in some cases sensational.

The response to crisis speeded up and social mobilisation became easier. In Tsunami-hit South and Southeast Asia, people mobilised resources for the disaster-affected. A pub attack on women in Mangalore snowballed into the nationwide Pink Chaddi campaign.

While its constantly said that the Internet connects us virtually and isolates physically, Shah says: “Contrary to popular perception, studies have shown that interface time increases peoples face time because new friendships, alliances and interests are anchored in the physical world.” The quality of interaction, however, will go down, says Chitnis, “due to current social patterns created by loss of cultural distinctiveness, and reduced real-world interaction”. This will especially be true for young adults “who will grow up not knowing a world without social networking”.

Language blends
Shah sites the change in language as the most visible and dramatic. “Easy access to writing and publishing tools has led to the development of new forms of speech and articulation. In countries, where English is not the majority first language, new blends like Singlish (Singapore), Hinglish (India) and Chinglish (China) have emerged as Western contexts, cultural products and ideas proliferated in new vocabularies on the information superhighway. These changes are associated with other changes in terms of new linguistic identities and nationalities,” he says.

Niche goes pop
The growth of the Internet revolutionised the economics of distribution of the media and the entertainment industry, a trend Chris Anderson tracked in his book, The Long Tail. Once it would have been unthinkable to get a copy of a Skinny Puppy CD in the music store because it simply wasnt worth the stocking cost — it wasnt popular enough. And if it wasnt stocked, it was as good as non-existent for a buyer who had never heard of it. That was the era of the blockbuster: what was profitable sold. The Internet changed this: with virtually no space constraints, and the low manufacturing and distribution cost of digital content, a hit became just as good as a miss. Both constituted sales: larger the number the better. Today, Google, Rhapsody, Apple iTunes and Amazon, all operate on that business model. The result: niche worlds have become much more visible and mainstream.

So, as we slow-waltz to the buzz of information, an online etiquette evolves. We gradually learn to turn noise into substance, come to terms with the blurring of private and public, mobilise in crisis, hone the skill of swimming through information to come up with the right find, and learn to direct at least some part of leisure time spent surfing and chatting to tap into the Internets true potential.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wired-state-of-mind

A provisional definition for the Cultural Last Mile

nishant — 2011-08-02T08:57:07Z

In the first of his entries, Ashish Rajadhyaksha gives his own spin on the 'Last Mile' problem that has been at the crux of all public technologies. Shifting the terms of debate away from broadcast problems of distance and access, he re-purposes the 'last mile' which is a communications problem, to make a cultural argument about the role and imagination of technology in India, and the specific ways in which this problem features in talking about Internet Technologies in contemporary India.

In its classical form, the ‘last mile’ is a communications term defining the final stage of providing connectivity from a communications provider to a customer, and has been used as such most commonly by telecommunications and cable television industries. There has however been a a specific Indian variant, seen in its most classical avatar in scientist Vikram Sarabhai’s contention that overcoming the last mile could solve the two major challenges India has faced, of linguistic diversity and geographical distance, and mounted as the primary argument for terrestrial television in the early 1980s. (I will try and attach the Sarabhai paper a little later to this posting).

This specifically Indian variation, where technology was mapped onto developmentalist-democratic priorities, has been the dominant characteristic of communications technology since at least the invention of the radio in the 1940s. For at least 50 years now, that means, the last mile has become a mode of a techno-democracy, where connectivity has been directly translated into democratic citizenship. It has continuously provided the major rationale for successive technological developments, from the 1960s wave of portable transistors, the terrestrial transponders of the first televisual revolution it the early 1980s (the Special Plan for the Expansion of Television), the capacity of satellite since SITE and the INSAT series, and from the 1990s the arrival of wired networks (LANs, Cable, fibre-optic) followed by wireless (WLAN, WiMAX, W-CDMA). At each point the assumption has been consistently made that the final frontier was just around the corner; that the next technology in the chain would breach a major barrier, once and for all.

What I hope to do is to provide a historical account to argue that the theory of the ‘last mile’ has been founded on fundamental (mis)apprehensions around just what this bridge constitutes. Further, that these apprehensions may have been derived from a misconstruction of democractic theory, to assume, first, an evolutionary rather than distributive model for connectivity, and second, to introduce a major bias for broadcast (or one-to-many) modes as against many-to-many peer-to-peer formats. The book, whenever I succeed in writing it, will hope to argue the following:

1. It has been difficult to include human resource as an integral component to the last mile. Contrary to the relentlessly technologized definition of the last mile, it may perhaps be best seen historically as also, and even perhaps primarily, a human resource issue. This is not a new realization, but it is one that keeps reproducing itself with every new technological generation[1], with ever newer difficulties. The endemic assumption, derived from the broadcasting origins of the definition is that it is primarily the sender’s responsibility to bridge the divide, that technology can aid him to do so on its own, and that such technology can negate the need to define connectivity as a multiple-way partnership as it reduces the recipient into no more than an intelligent recipient of what is sent (the citizen model). On the other hand, it is possible to show how previous successful experiments bridging the last mile have been ones where recipients have been successfully integrated into the communications model both as peers and, even more significantly, as originators as well as enhancers of data. Importantly, this paper will show, this has been evidenced even in one-way ‘broadcast’ modes such as film, television and radio (in the movie fan, community radio and the television citizen-journalist).

2. The one-way broadcast versus peer-to-peer versus two/multiple-way debate needs to he historically revisited. The need to redefine the beneficiary of a connectivity cycle as a full-fledged partner tends to come up against a bias written into standard communications models – and therefore several standard revenue models – that consistently tend to underplay what this paper will call the significant sender/recipient. While both terrestrial and satellite systems require some level of peer-to-peer transmission systems to facilitate last-mile communications, it has been a common problem that unless either a clear focus exists on geographic areas or significant peer-to-peer participation exists, broadcast models inevitably find themselves delivering large amounts of S/N at low frequencies without sufficient spectrum to support large information capacity. While it is technically possible to ‘flood’ a region in broadcasting terms, this inevitably leads to extremely high wastage as much of the radiated ICE never reaches any user at all. As information requirements increase, broadcast ‘wireless mesh’ systems small enough to provide adequate information distribution to and from a relatively small number of local users, require a prohibitively large number of broadcast locations along with a large amount of excess capacity to make up for the wasted energy.

This problem, importantly, springs as much from a built-in ideological commitment to one-way broadcasting formats, as from technological limitations. The technology itself poses further problems given the bias of different systems to different kinds of connectivity, and with it different types of peer-to-peer possibilities. Rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all model for all models to follow, we need to work out different synergies between broadcast-dependent and peer-to-peer-enabled platforms.

This book will eventually hope to study the history of peer-to-peer and multiple-way structures as systems where sending has become a component part of receiving. Key technological precedents to the present definition of the sender-communication ‘partner’ would be community radio, low-power transmission-reception systems (most famously the Pij experiment in Gujarat conducted by ISRO), and various internet-based networking models.

3. The need to revisit the technological community is therefore critical. The key question is one of how technological communities have been produced, and how they may be sustained. In January 2007, the attack by V.S. Ailawadi, former Chairman, Haryana Electricty Regulatory Commission, on India’s public sector telecom giants BSNL and MTNL for keeping their ‘huge infrastructure’ of ‘copper wire and optic fibre’ to themselves, when these could be used by private operators as cheaper alternatives to WiMAX, W-CDMA and broadband over power lines, shows the uneasy relationship between new players and state agencies. Mr. Ailawadi’s contention that the ‘unbundling’ of the last mile would bring in competition for various types of wireless applications and broadband services not just for 45 million landlines but also for 135 million mobile users of various service providers, also therefore needs to be revisited from the perspective of community formation. How would the new 135 million mobile users be effectively tapped for their capacity to become what we are calling significant senders?

In defining the last mile as to do with the recipient-as-sender, and thus the community, this paper will focus on a history of community action along specific models of connectivity. These are: cinema’s movie fan, internet’s blogger and networker, solar energy’s barefoot engineer, software’s media pusher and television’s citizen-journalist. A specific focus for study will be the models of participatory learning in the classroom, using film, the vinyl disc, the audio cassette, the radio, the television, the web and now the mobile phone.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/definiton

Techies mapping change

radha — 2011-04-04T06:51:49Z

A group of 40 Bangaloreans, including techies and social activists, are creating digital maps that will be used to bring social change in India - an article in the Bangalore Mirror by Renuka Phadnis - Monday, December 07, 2009.

Here is an example of how technology can be misused and used. A year ago, following the Mumbai blasts, everyone was talking about how terrorists had misused information from Google maps. Now, a group of 40 people in Bangalore including activists and techies, are creating digital maps that will be used to bring social change in India.

Called “Maps for Making Change” the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, a social organisation that studies the connection between the Internet and society, and the NGO Tactical Tech Collective (Bangalore and UK) are creating a map of India that will show hotspots where social change can be brought about.

Individuals working with groups and organisations working for social change across India, including grassroots activists, NGO workers, artists and researchers, sent in 70 high quality and detailed additions to the digital map. These places across India highlighted issues such as: the socio-economic aspects and consequences of the construction of Bangalore’s Metro, fighting for clean rivers, people’s rights to livelihoods in the Himalayas, monitoring the national implementation of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), mobilising slum dwellers to engage with Mumbai’s new Development Plan, human rights violations in Kashmir, identifying land where internally displaced people can be resettled in the North East.

“You don’t have to be a professional cartographer. With new technologies such as GPS and the Net, anyone can easily add to digital maps,” says Dr Anja Kovacs, fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Bangalore Angle

In a city like Bangalore, the potential of using digital maps is tremendous. For instance, such maps could be used to show which Metro routes and stations Bangaloreans want. Or, it could show how BBMP’s reserved wards are delineated (example, the population profile in Bellandur or Girinagar). The maps could tell us where migrant labour (masons, carpenters, plumbers) enter the city, where they live and where they move on (information that could be useful for Unique Identification Authority of India too!). It can also show where marginalised people live in Bangalore in slums, along railway tracks, by the lakes.

Says Bangalorean techie B V Pradeep, who provided technical support to the map team, “In a map, every person draws what is important to him. One person may draw a mall, another may mark the school and hospital. This map will give visibility to invisible people.”

Bangalorean Rekha Shenoy, who has been involved in rehabilitating earthquake-affected people in Kutch for the past eight years, says, “Such digital maps are a good resource of marking places and social issues that other people know nothing of.”

Any one can access Maps for Making Change. See email list (http://groups.google.co.in/group/maps-for-making-change). The wiki will be up and running in a few days time (maps4change.cis-india.org), said Dr Kovacs. To follow on Twitter, use the hash tag #maps4change.

Link to the original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techies-mapping-change

10 tactics for turning information into action

radha — 2011-04-05T04:19:46Z

Tactical Technology Collective (TTC) with The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Alternative Law Forum, is happy to announce the Bangalore launch of TTC's newest toolkit - '10 tactics for turning information into action'.

‘10 tactics’ explores the use of technology and social media platforms such as Google Earth, Twitter and Facebook on human rights advocacy in the developing world. The film presents ten strategies for turning information into action and is aimed at global human rights advocates, as well as campaigners of all kinds.

The launch will be in the form of a screening organised by Tactical Technology Collective- India, CIS and ALF. After the screening, there will be an open discussion on the use of social media for advocacy.

This documentary is very important and timely viewing for all and most relevant to advocates working in the grassroots, campaigners, information actvists...

This event is open to all. Admission is free. Attendees will receive a copy of the toolkit in its offline form.

For more information about the film and the event log in to: http://www.informationactivism.org/, or call 080 4153 1129.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/10-tactics-for-turning-information-into-action

Mumbai no longer ‘meri jaan’

radha — 2011-04-04T06:52:29Z

Why online (and offline) activism after 26/11 never took off; what should have been done to mobilize people - an article in the Livemint by Seema Chowdhry and Samanth Subramanian - 20th November, 2009

On “One Million Strong for Bombay” (23,601 members), a 9 October post concerned the activist Hansel D’Souza, chairman of the Juhu Citizens’ Welfare Group, the Citizens’ Consensus candidate for the Andheri (West) assembly constituency; an earlier post involved the schedule of the Jazz Yatra. On “The Black Badge for Bombay” (853 members), the last post, from 31 August, wonders if Pakistan is a pawn being used by China against India.

“The idea behind ‘Black Badge for Bombay’ initially was to keep the pressure on so that the reaction to the attacks in terms of government preparedness results in concrete action,” says Somasekhar Sundaresan, the group’s creator. “The government has now set up a combat force in Mumbai, which was the stated immediate objective of this movement and
pressure group. After that, we needed to move on.”

Sundaresan admits that the posts have not been updated more frequently because he hasn’t worked hard enough to get people interested in newer issues. “Most of my discussions about civil rights movements are restricted to five or six friends who are members of this Facebook group too,” he says. “It is easier to talk to them because I meet them
professionally and personally often.” “The Black Badge for Mumbai” has also been unable to organize offline meetings.

What these groups lacked, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, was a dedicated team to keep the momentum going. “They don’t have intelligently incremental action points that keep their audiences increasingly engaged,” he says in an email interview. “The creators often underestimate the importance of offline activities that will keep their audiences motivated. Finally, many of them take their membership for
granted and don’t bother sending regular updates or even an occasional thank you.”

It was perhaps the need to sustain momentum that drove some of the offline citizens’ groups into the political sphere. Anil Bahl allied his Let’s Rebuild India with the Professionals Party of India. A group called Jago Mumbai turned into the Jago Party, which fielded a candidate in the Lok Sabha election from north-west Mumbai. (He lost.) “We decided that we couldn’t do anything alone,” says Bhuresh Barot, a working member of the Jago Party. “You need to be in power to do anything.”

As his party’s south Mumbai coordinator, Barot witnessed a rapid dissolution of voter outrage back into voter apathy; in the Lok Sabha election, the turnout stood at 43.3%. “The main reason seemed to be that voters thought they already knew the ideology of every party,” Barot theorizes. “And they decided they simply didn’t have faith in the candidates.”

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/mumbai-no-longer-2018meri-jaan2019

Shanty home

radha — 2011-04-04T06:53:08Z

A nationwide initiative is imploring that you look closely at the greyed-out areas on your GPS maps, says Jaideep Sen in an article in the Time Out Bengaluru Magazine, November 13-26 2009 [Vol 2 Issue 9]

Call up a map of Bangalore city on Google, key in the letters “HAL”, and hit the return key. When the squiggly lines demarcating the area show up, put down the end of your forefinger at the Marathahalli end of the Old Airport Road stretch, and begin tracing your way all the way up to MG Road. It’s an easy route to follow, if you’re merely looking to head from one end of the city to the other, but that isn’t the purpose of this particular exercise, which could well be tried out along all major roadways in any city across India.

As the two Bangalore-based groups Centre for Internet and Society, and Tactical Technology Collective describe it, the attempt of that lingering fingertip is to ascertain the possibilities of creating “maps from the margins and of margins”. While that wouldn’t make immediate sense to most GPS-impelled drivers, what they’re implying is that you look around that route to try and locate and identify the numerous slums, unauthorised settlements and illegal waterways that remain greyed-out along those delineated main roads and prominent residential areas. As co-hosts of a two-month-long nationwide project titled “Maps for Social Change”, the groups are also wagering that you most likely won’t find such expanses on a map. Although, if you were to explore the neighbourhoods of say, HAL, Indira Nagar and Ulsoor, you’d find at least 30 unmarked shanties along that stretch of Old Airport Road alone.

Official figures peg the city’s slum-dwelling population at roughly 10 per cent of an estimated total 5.3 million people, in a little over 200 slums as declared by the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board. While that figure would appear minor in comparison to that of a city like Mumbai, where 60 per cent of approximately 19 million people are said to live in slums, it’s precisely that kind of disparity that this project aims to pin down against latitudinal and longitudinal positions. The purpose, said a note from the groups, is to use “geographical mapping techniques to support struggles for social justice in India”. The end result, it added, could make maps as “tools to fight injustice in society”. To understand that intention, the activists and technology specialists of the two host groups are urging people, and groups involved in social projects especially, to revisit maps and identify possibilities relevant to local campaigns and movements.

“In other countries, there’s a lot of talk about social movements using technology, even in subversive ways, but in India, this hasn’t really taken off,” said Anja (pronounced Anya) Kovacs, a Belgian who has lived in India for eight years, is a member of various campaigns in New Delhi, and is a CIS member spearheading this project. While there are many reasons for Indians to be desisting from technological means, there are many practical applications where mapping techniques can benefit social causes, she insisted.

“One example is to do with people who face displacement caused due to upcoming Special Economic Zones,” explained Kovacs. “The media, at times, portrays people against such models of development as a minority. But if you count the number of people involved in these movements, you’d come up with a mad number, and there are a mad number of struggles going on.” The project, she added, could help place such information on a map, “so that different classes of people could see what the truth actually is”.

The application inviting proposals from groups, individuals and students, begins with an exhortation for people to rethink the concept of maps. “Most of us think of maps as representations of territory,” it states. “But have you wondered why poor people are rarely given prominence, or at times are absent altogether?”

The graphic representation of a map also presents a handy educational medium, added Kovacs. “People working on concerns of sexual harassment, or state repression, public health, water management issues… the possibilities are immense.” Allan Stanley, another CIS member working on the project’s technical aspects, said the aim was to facilitate training, and extend their expertise. “It’s easily doable even for people with little internet experience,” said Stanley. “Where you create mash-ups, with [online photo and video hosting services] Flickr and You Tube, and some overlaid locative work.” At advanced levels, Stanley said that open-map projects could serve to track things like education, and density of schools in areas. Kovacs also spoke of the recent “pink chaddi” campaign, against instances of violence inflicted upon women, where a simple Google map was used to mark locations that attacks were reported from, to highlight the possibility of indicating potentially unsafe urban regions.

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/shanty-home

Improving Collective Intelligence

radha — 2011-04-05T04:19:02Z

CIS in collaboration with iMorph, Inc. and Program For the Future, is organizing a Tweetup on Dec 20th, 2009 at TERI from 4pm to 7pm.

The tweetup is to increase the awareness for "Improving Collective Intelligence".

Tools like Twitter and other social networks allow global participation of a large number of people in solving some of the World's pressing problems. This Tweetup is aimed at identifying some of these problems, brainstorming about ways to solve them and raise the awareness of the power of Collective Intelligence.

Specially, a Collective Intelligence Challenge organized by "The Program For The Future" will be the first step towards the effort. A description of the project (from the website - http://thetechvirtual.org/projects)

Develop a practical method, tool or technology that connects people so that they collectively act more intelligently. The challenge embraces all areas of human endeavor – not just technical domains like computing or engineering but also the arts, business, economics, education, government, health, law, philanthropy, science and other spheres. Winning entries will be displayed in the participating museums.

Participating museums: Tech Museum of Innovation, MIT Museum , Science Center Singapore, Citilab Barcelona, Global Women's Leadership Network

Indian Organizations - National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Innovation Cell at KCG College of Technology

More Information

Contacts:
Dorai Thodla - dorait@gmail.com
Hrish Thota - dhempe@gmail.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/improving-collective-intelligence

Information and livelihoods

radha — 2011-08-02T07:18:32Z

An article by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam (Distinguished Fellow, CIS) in GISW 2009 (Global Information Society Watch, 2009)

Introduction

We live in a divided world where far too many people live in abject poverty. To help these people get out of poverty is good for the world as a whole, for great disparities in wealth will lead to violence and terrorism and no one can live in peace and harmony. None of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be achieved if we fail to address the problem of poverty and ensure livelihood security for the majority of the poor.

A vast majority of the poor live in the rural areas of developing countries and are dependent on agriculture or fishing for a living. They need information directly relevant to their livelihoods. Agriculture-related information is often one of the most immediate needs, since small-scale agriculture is very important to household incomes in rural areas. Information on current crop prices, fertiliser and pesticide costs, and the availability of improved seeds and low-cost improvements in farm technology can help farmers buy farm inputs and equipment of good quality at the right price, or help them successfully obtain credit.[1] Information on government entitlements and training programmes, opportunities for developing new products, and markets for environmental goods[2] is also useful. Without such information, poor families find it hard to take advantage of new opportunities for generating income and increasing their assets.

Many asset-less poor migrate to cities far and near and are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to work in construction sites, ports, factories and wherever they can be employed. They are often exploited and work in conditions far from satisfactory. They will be happy to have information on where work is available and wages are good.

This report looks at a few examples of how access to information helps improve the lives of people and how new technologies are being used in getting information to those who need it.

Small catch but big impact

About twelve years ago scientists at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) started working with fishing communities in coastal villages of southern India. The major thrust of the project, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), was to look at how emerging information and communications technologies (ICTs) could be used to make a difference to these people’s lives. But the project managers took a holistic perspective and put people and their needs before technology: they went beyond merely providing online access to information through their internet-enabled Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs). They were concerned about fisherpeople losing their catches, nets, boats and even their lives on days when the sea turned rough. Lives could be saved if only one could have advance knowledge of weather conditions. After some investigation, the MSSRF researchers found that United States (US) Navy satellites were collecting weather and wave height information for the Bay of Bengal, and the Navy website released forecasts based on these data twice daily. The VKC volunteers started downloading this information and made it available to the fisherpeople in their local language through notice boards and a public address system. Ever since this service commenced not a single death in mid-sea has been reported from these villages.

The need for innovation

Suddenly, the US Navy stopped providing this information and something needed to be done. MSSRF joined hands with Qualcomm, Tata Teleservices and Astute Systems Technology,[3] and these companies came up with an innovative mobile application called Fisher Friend based on third-generation code division multiple access (3G CDMA) technology. With Fisher Friend, the VKCs provide fisherpeople with real-time information on things like fish prices in different markets, weather, wave heights, satellite scan data on the location of fish shoals, and news flashes while they are at mid-sea. Access to these, as well as other information such as relevant government schemes, has improved market transparency and the earnings of smaller fisherpeople. Qualcomm is working on incorporating global positioning system (GPS) capability in the phones, so their exact location can be tracked. This would make rescue operations much easier.

Timely access to relevant information can not only improve the standards of living of a community, but also save lives.

Real evidence, not just anecdotal

Much of the evidence of the benefits of access to information and the use of technology to facilitate access so far has been anecdotal. In a recent paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics Robert Jensen of Harvard University has quantified the benefits.[4] He showed that the adoption of mobile phones by fisherpeople and wholesalers in Kerala in southern India had led to a dramatic reduction in price dispersion (the mean coefficient of variation of price across markets over a stretch of 150 kilometres came down from 60%-70% to less than 15%); the complete elimination of waste (from 5%-8% to virtually nil); and near perfect adherence to the Law of One Price.[5] In addition, fisherpeople’s profits increased by 8%, while consumer prices declined by 4% (directly driving a 20 rupee/person/month consumer surplus, the equivalent of a 2% increase in per capita GDP from this one market alone). Sardine consumption increased by 6%. The advent of mobile phones also led to a 6% increase in school enrolment and a 5% increase in the probability of using healthcare when sick. All this with no government programmes, and no new funding requirements.[6]

Several other initiatives involve mobile technology. Nokia recently launched Life Tools in India, a fee-based service, with a view to impacting on the daily lives of people, especially farmers. Life Tools offers timely online access to information that will be of great relevance to farmers, students and the lay public. Nokia has partnered with the Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board (to gather commodity prices from 291 markets), Reuters Market Light, Syngenta and Skymet,[7] among others. It has plans to introduce Life Tools to other developing countries before the end of the year.

Online access to information through mobile phones and through telecentres has also helped shop owners, traders and the self-employed increase their earnings in many countries. The mobile phone is becoming the primary connectivity tool. With significant computing power, it will soon be the primary internet connection, providing information in a portable, well-connected form at a relatively low price, pushing aside the personal computer.

Conclusion

Today the “bottom” three-quarters of the world’s population accounts for at least 50% of all people with internet access, says a Pew report.[8] As Turner pointed out in 2007, investment in telecom, which facilitates easy access to information, is more productive than investment in other kinds of infrastructure.[9] The impact is particularly noticeable in developing nations.

ICTs are not a technical solution on their own but are enablers in a process of local prioritisation and problem solving. This report has highlighted initiatives that use mobile technology. But mobile solutions are obviously not the only useful ones. For instance, LabourNet in Bangalore connects employers and casual labourers through an online database that is updated constantly.[10] Thanks to LabourNet, workers, especially at construction sites, get decent pay, training, insurance and safety measures at the workplace. However, the information supplied is more at the administrative level than the grassroots level.

The success lies in embedding ICTs in a holistic approach encompassing a diverse range of development initiatives. The trick is not to emphasise technology but to put people and their needs before technology. Sustainable livelihood approaches need to be people-centred, recognising the capital assets of the poor and the influence of policies and institutions on their livelihood strategies.[11]

Also, the mere ability to access information cannot take one far. What is important is what one can do with that information. Often one would need to have additional skills and capital to take advantage of the information. That is why efforts to provide improved access to information should go hand in hand with efforts to enhance skills through training programmes, and efforts to enhance access to finance through microfinance and the formation of self-help groups.

Rural livelihoods involve a wide range of strategies both within and outside the farming sector. Often farming communities need to augment their income through non-farming enterprises, and here the women and youth could play a role in enhancing household income.

It will be good to remember that a large number of ICT-enabled development pilot projects have remained just that – pilot projects that did not scale up.

References

Chapman, R., Slaymaker, T. and Young, J. (2003) Livelihoods Approaches to Information and Communication in Support of Rural Poverty Elimination and Food Security, Overseas Development Institute, London.
Chapman, R. (2005) ICT enabled knowledge centres and learning in the global village, in The Third MSSRF South-South Exchange Travelling Workshop (MSSRF/PR/05/59), M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai.
Jensen, R. (2007) The digital provide: Information (technology), market performance, and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122 (August), p. 879-924.
Quitney Anderson, J. and Rainie, L. (2008) The Future of the Internet III, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Washington. www.future-internet.eu/fileadmin/documents/prague_documents/oc-meetings/PIP_FutureInternet3.pdf

Chapman, R., Slaymaker, T. and Young, J. (2003) Livelihoods Approaches to Information and Communication in Support of Rural Poverty Elimination and Food Security, Overseas Development Institute, London.
Good examples of environmental goods are handicrafts made from locally available material (plant or mineral-based material) and organic products.
Qualcomm is a US-based multinational that designs and make chips for telecom equipment. Tata Teleservices is a leading mobile service provider, and Astute Systems Technology is a software company writing applications for the chips.
Jensen, R. (2007) The digital provide: Information (technology), market performance, and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122 (August), p. 879-924.
An economic law which states that in an efficient market, all identical goods must have only one price. In other words, variations in fish prices caused by differences in demand and supply at different locations disappeared once both buyers and sellers started using mobile phones.
Turner, B. (2007) Cellphones & Development — Evidence, not anecdotes.
blogs.nmss.com/communications/2007/02/cellphones_deve.html
Syngenta is a multinational company. One of its corporate goals is to help farmers maximise the potential of their resources. Towards this end it provides technological solutions, as well as information relating to agronomy, land use, etc. Skymet provides weather-related services that allow clients to adapt to a changing environment.
Quitney Anderson, J. and Rainie, L. (2008) The Future of the Internet III, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Washington.
www.future-internet.eu/fileadmin/documents/prague_documents/oc-meetings/PIP_FutureInternet3.pdf
Turner (2007) op. cit.
LabourNet matches the skills sets of people available for work with the needs of those who use their services, similar to headhunters who match the skills of executives and managers and place them in the right companies at the right levels, Only LabourNet deals with the poor.
Chapman, R. (2005) ICT enabled knowledge centres and learning in the global village, in The Third MSSRF South-South Exchange Travelling Workshop (MSSRF/PR/05/59), M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai..

Link to the article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/information-and-livelihoods

Control shift?

radha — 2011-04-02T14:35:22Z

USA might have ceded the control of the Internet, but only partially - An article by Pranesh Prakash in Down to Earth (Issue: Nov 15th ,2009)

After dominating operations of the Internet for decades Washington has said it will relinquish some control. On September 30, the US department of commerce decided to cede some of its powers to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann), the body which manages the net’s phone book—the Internet’s Domain Naming System (dns).

The system deals with online addresses: human understandable names (like google.com) are made to work with computer understandable names (81.198.166.2, for example). Managing this is critical because while Madras can be a city in both Tamil Nadu and Oregon, everyone wishing to go to madras.com must be pointed to the same place. For the Internet to work, everyone in the world must use the same telephone directory.

The Internet is not a single network of computers, but an interconnected set of networks. What does it mean, then, to control the Internet? For those wishing to access YouTube in late February 2008, it seemed as though it was controlled by Pakistan Telecom—the agency had accidentally blocked access to YouTube to the entire world for almost a day. For Guangzhou residents, it seems the censor-happy Chinese government controls the Internet. And for a brief while in January 1998, it seemed the net was controlled by one Jon Postel.

Postel was one of the architects of the Internet involved from the times of the net’s predecessor arpanet project, which the US department of defence funded as an attack-resilient computer network. He was heading the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (iana), an informal body in de facto charge of technical aspects of the Internet, including the domain network system. But iana had no legal sanction. It was contracted by the department to perform its services. The US government retained control of the root servers that directed Internet traffic to the right locations.

On January 28, 1998, Postel got eight of the 12 root servers transferred to iana control. This was when the defence department was ceding its powers to the commerce department. Postal soon received a telephone call from a furious Ira Magaziner, Bill Clinton’s senior science adviser, who instructed him to undo the transfer. Within a week, the commerce department issued a declaration of its control over the dns root servers—it was now in a position to direct Internet traffic all over the world.

Soon after, the US government set up icann as a private non-profit corporation to manage the core components of the Internet. A contract from the department of commerce gave the organization in California the authority to conduct its operations. iana and other bodies (such as the regional Internet registries) now function under icann.

Right from the outset, icann has been criticized as unaccountable, opaque and controlled by vested interests, especially big corporations which manipulated the domain name dispute resolution system to favour trademarks. Its lack of democratic functioning, commercial focus and poor-tolerance of dissent have made icann everyone’s target, from those who believe in a libertarian Internet as a place of freedom and self-regulation, to those (the European Union, for instance) who believe the critical components of the Internet should not be in the sole control of the US government.

The department of commerce has from time to time renewed its agreement with icann, and the latest such renewal comes in the form of the affirmation of commitments (AoC). Through the AoC, the US government has sought to minimize its role. Instead of being the overseer of icann’s working, it now holds only one permanent seat in the multi-stakeholder review panel that icann will itself have to constitute. But two days after the AoC, icann snubbed a coalition of civil society voices calling for representation; the root zone file remains in US control. It is too early to judge the AoC; it will have to be judged by how it is actualized.

Pranesh Prakash is with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/control-shift

Managing Spectrum

radha — 2011-08-18T04:54:56Z

The Empowered Group of Ministers' goal should be nothing short of a broadband revolution - Shyam Ponappa / New Delhi, November 5, 2009 (Business Standard)

In communications services, the high demand for spectrum compared with limited supply is well established. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) estimates demand in five years at 580 MHz, with current assignment to commercial operators at about 160 MHz. In this limited amount, fragmented spectrum holdings reduce efficiency, and broadband
growth and availability have been abysmal. Therefore, the policy alternatives evaluated should include ways to maximise utility through conserving resources and facilitating broadband Internet. The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) needs this analysis to make informed decisions. The related issue of maximising utility from facilities, i.e., sharing networks for maximum benefit while conserving capital, thereby resulting in lower prices, likewise deserves serious consideration. For this, they need inputs on the benefits and costs of coordinated policy reform to promote broadband through incentives and penalties.

Having said that, it is for the officials providing support to the EGoM to structure, analyse and prioritise issues and provide the requisite information to facilitate informed decisions on complex choices. This requires appropriate inputs on technology as well. Efforts on all these aspects seem inadequate, with the EGoM being simply not adequately informed.

Trai recently began a consultation process, addressing a host of issues relating to 3G, Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) and licensing. A major deficiency is that no purposive goals and objectives are indicated, nor is there a facilitating logic to the structuring of issues (57 wide-ranging questions, with roughly three weeks for comments).

This is because Trai has posed issues built up over the years in one burst, resulting in the equivalent of a “flash flood”. Instead, structured consultations on discrete sets of questions, as in the indicative example below, are likely to yield better results. However, given where we are — the usual how-far-to-go-in-how-little-time — an organised, logical presentation with relevant inputs would improve the chances of good decisions and outcomes. Here is a suggested road map.

GOALS & OBJECTIVES
The first requirement for the consultation process is clear objectives based on needs. As Trai has not provided this, here are indicative constructs:

Our policies for infrastructure should be in public interest. In communications, these are:

Ready access anywhere in the country to: (a) good services and (b) at reasonable prices.
The services can be thought of as “Broadband Internet” and “Voice and SMS”.

(Note: There are very different objectives for broadcasting, which is outside the scope of these comments.)

DECISION TREES & ISSUE MAPS

A decision tree is an alternative to wading through a welter of unstructured questions, starting with fundamental objectives, using a logical decision map/issue map as a framework (see graphic). This requires judgment in selecting, organising and prioritising issues. The example assumes that the least capital and operating costs (while maintaining high quality) are appropriate criteria for services in public interest.

These decisions will determine how issues of licensing and consolidation/acquisitions pan out. Questions on pricing remain, e.g., per cent of revenues for licences and spectrum charges, and the timing of fees (i.e., cash flow from a fiscal perspective). If the decision is to pool spectrum, there are critical questions on Administered Incentive Pricing. The same principles of concessions and incentives (i.e., subsidies) as for sectors like power and highways need to be applied. Finally, there needs to be rationalisation in non-commercial uses, e.g., governance and defence.

SPECTRUM & NETWORK EFFICIENCY=LOWER COSTS

Given our fragmented spectrum holdings, perceived scarcity and economic efficiencies of limited competition in networks, there is reason to explore an approach to conserving spectrum and consolidating facilities. Spectrum can either be given or licensed for exclusive use in bands to separate operators as is done now, or be made available in large (at least 20 MHz) blocks to all operators for common use. Alternatively, operators can be given incentives to pool licensed spectrum to create a common capacity. The same approach can be explored for networks (facilities that use spectrum); these too can be pooled and shared if individually owned. Operators do this in a limited way, e.g., sharing towers, but pooling can be organised and extended much further.

Ill-considered policies that increase competition for its own sake because of the predominance of doctrinaire “free-market” notions have displaced more appropriate market structures. In India, this has resulted in 12-14 operators per service area, compared with the global average of three-five. The economics of networks favour limits to competition, because networks lend themselves to a limited-player (monopolistic or oligopolistic) market.*

Interestingly, an economist at the US Federal Communications Commission has this to say: “…For what should competition be promoted? Promoting competition for particular services can have major implications for the evolution of regulation and the long-term competitive structure of the industry. Unfortunately, the ‘competition for what?’ question has not received adequate consideration.”**

The benefit of using contiguous bands of spectrum is that costs could be significantly lower for equivalent voice and data capacity because of less advanced technology and less density of towers and equipment. Likewise for shared networks. With competition and good regulation, the likely result is lower costs, both for Broadband Internet and for Voice and SMS.

CONCLUSION

An inter-disciplinary consultation with stakeholders and specialists is essential to consider spectrum and sharing of facilities. Companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Qualcomm as well as Google, Intel and possibly cable companies (Liberty Global?) should be invited. The EGoM’s goal should be nothing short of a broadband revolution. We need this for
education and vocational training, health care, governance and economic productivity across the board.

shyamponappa@gmail.com

*A rational spectrum allocation policy, BS, July 2, 2009

** Douglas A Galbi, Senior Economist, US FCC

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/managing-spectrum

Control Shift?

pranesh — 2011-08-02T07:22:12Z

The USA has ceded control of the Internet over to Icann, but only partially. (This post appeared as an article in Down to Earth, in the issue dated November 15, 2009.)

After dominating operations of the Internet for decades Washington has said it will relinquish some control. On September 30, the US department of commerce decided to cede some of its powers to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body which manages the net’s phone book—the Internet’s Domain Naming System (dns).

Soon after, the US government set up ICANN as a private non-profit corporation to manage the core components of the Internet. A contract from the department of commerce gave the organization in California the authority to conduct its operations. iana and other bodies (such as the regional Internet registries) now function under ICANN.

Right from the outset, ICANN has been criticized as unaccountable, opaque and controlled by vested interests, especially big corporations which manipulated the domain name dispute resolution system to favour trademarks. Its lack of democratic functioning, commercial focus and poor-tolerance of dissent have made ICANN everyone’s target, from those who believe in a libertarian Internet as a place of freedom and self-regulation, to those (the European Union, for instance) who believe the critical components of the Internet should not be in the sole control of the US government.

The department of commerce has from time to time renewed its agreement with ICANN, and the latest such renewal comes in the form of the affirmation of commitments (AoC). Through the AoC, the US government has sought to minimize its role. Instead of being the overseer of ICANN's working, it now holds only one permanent seat in the multi-stakeholder review panel that ICANN will itself have to constitute. But two days after the AoC, ICANN snubbed a coalition of civil society voices calling for representation; the root zone file remains in US control. It is too early to judge the AoC; it will have to be judged by how it is actualized.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/icann-control-shift

Internet sceptic? Go get a life

radha — 2011-04-02T14:49:11Z

Fifty years down the line, generations will laugh off the paranoia about the Internet - an article by Nishant Shah in the magazine Down To Earth

If there is one thing the Internet can claim uniqueness for, it will be for the fact that never in human history has a technology been charged so much with being the object of obsessions, compulsions or psychological disorders. We have never really heard of a print addict. We do have bibliophiles and cultural gurus. The camera has been duly appointed the most effective form of preserving memories. Its presence at all occasions, or even in the ordinarily mundane, has been accepted as a protocol. Photographers might spend days in dark rooms and morphing memories for posterity but we haven’t yet heard of a camera addict who needs a rehab.

How does the Internet, then, achieve this dubious status of being heralded for generating the Internet Addiction Disorder? The term, coined as a hoax by Ivan Goldberg as a satirical comment on the easy ‘disorder-isation’ of practices by contemporary psychiatry, has unfortunately ended up becoming what it critiqued: pointless, devoid of meaning, and backed by questionable research and studies by groups with vested interests.

What is the Internet Addiction Disorder? The first set of answers that list physiological descriptions such as dry eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injury shall be summarily dismissed because these are not specific to the Internet. They are associated with lifestyles, postures and lack of awareness among the users about their physical engagements with technology but cannot, in any way, be a part of the psychological disorder under scrutiny.

So, ask the question again. The answers we get are: gambling, watching pornography, inappropriate time spent on social networking and email, chronic dependence for information, shopping beyond limits, excessive gaming and recreation online and neglecting different parts of life, and work. The list continues, but leaves us slightly baffled.

Surely critiques must know people used to gamble—we have made a nation of TV audience watching people gamble their lives, dignity and relationships on the camera—way before the Internet. Are they naive enough to think pornography and adult sex industries were lying low before the Internet came into play? In the increasingly urbanized spaces that we occupy, the need for social networking is inversely proportional to the reduced mobility, time and spaces of social interaction. In such cases, social networking is a tool that fulfils the human need to know we are not alone.

Anybody who is making claims about the Internet leading to excessive shopping is confessing they haven’t been around since plastic money was invented. And if somebody is avoiding responsibilities, it is a problem that will persist with or without the Internet.

The Internet is only a gateway to these and other interesting (and sometimes disturbing) cultural products, trends and fashions. We have never called for banning print as a technology because people use it to publish sexual material. The TV is going strong with celebrities gambling their lives and choosing spouses in front of an audience. Digital cinema and portable media devices have ensured that movies can be seen almost anywhere.

The fact is we depend on technologies of the time. These technologies, like the Internet, offer us possibilities and potentials for expression, cultural production and dissemination, information and communication, and each technology has its own inherent potential for abuse. The anxiety about technology is not new. Carolyn Marvin’s fascinating account, When Old Technologies Were New, shows how the telephone was supposed to make our children more furtive, our women more gossipy, our men more promiscuous and our society more detached and less civil.

The editor of a Philadelphia newspaper in 1894 had cautioned his readers “not to converse by phone with ill persons for fear of contracting contagious diseases.” Ridiculous as it sounds to us who have grown up with universal telephone technology, these concerns were grave and important to the people in those early days of telephones. Fifty years from now, generations are going to look at the contemporary paranoia around Internet addiction in a similar way and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Link to the article in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-sceptic-go-get-a-life