Centre for Internet and Society

Letter from Civil Society Organizations to CII

pranesh — 2011-04-02T15:15:44Z

A total of 29 groups and individuals expressed their concern about the drive by CII to introduce TRIPS-plus enforcement standards in India.

Original report in Business Standard

Govt accepts panel report against narrowing of Indian patent law

BS Reporter / New Delhi August 18, 2009, 1:14 IST

The central government has accepted the recommendations of an expert committee headed by former Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) chief R A Mashelkar on patent laws. The committee had concluded that limiting the grant of patents for pharmaceutical substances to new chemical entities will be a violation of the TRIPS agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In effect, the committee endorsed the current position taken by India, in allowing patenting of known medicines if they have substantial new therapeutic uses.

The Mashelkar committee was formed after the government got passed the Patent Bill in 2005. It was assigned to see if the demand for narrowing the patent laws would breach India’s obligations under the WTO agreement. Mashelkar had presented the committee report in 2007, only for it to be withdrawn due to complaints of “technical errors”. The revised copy, submitted to the government few months ago, was accepted recently.

The move has come as a setback to many civic groups who were hoping to see a a constriction of Indian patent laws. The domestic lobby groups were heartened after a committee of Parliamentarians recently recommended changes in the existing rules to limit patenting of medicines to just “new chemical entities”.

In a letter to commerce minister Anand Sharma, the National Working Group on Patent Laws asked for the “recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee to take precedence over those of the Mashelkar committee.” It wanted the Mashelkar committee recommendations to be disregarded and appropriate amendments introduced in the Patents Act, 1970.

The civil society groups are stepping up protest against the “alleged” move to link “counterfeit” issues with intellectual property protection. In an open letter to Confederation of Indian Industry today, 21 groups have protested against the intellectual property enforcement initiatives of the CII.

“It is disheartening to note that the CII, being an Indian industry organization, is hosting the Third International Conference on Counterfeiting and Piracy from 19-20th August 2009 in partnership with American Embassy and the Quality Brand Protection Committee (QBPC), China, a body that comprises over 80 multinational corporations”, Linu Mathew Phillip, acting director of the Delhi-based Centre for Trade and Development said. “It is of immense concern to all of us, since higher norms of intellectual property enforcement necessarily undermine various other rights of the people at large, including the right to access to medicines and access to knowledge,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/letter-from-civil-society-organizations-to-cii

Presentation at TIFR: 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons'

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:42:49Z

CIS Distinguished Fellow Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam will give a talk titled 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons' at TIFR, Mumbai, on Friday, 24 July 2009.

Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, Scholarly communication in the age of the commons, 24/07/09, 1600Hrs, AG-66

Abstract

Scholarly communication plays a central role in the creation and assimilation of new knowledge, especially in the sciences. In its turn scholarly communication depends on developments in technology. Unfortunately, scientists who do cutting edge science often follow communication practices of a bygone era and are therefore holding back the development of knowledge. In this talk we will look at state-of-the-art developments in scholarly communication and literature-based evaluation of science and see how we in India can benefit by adopting them.

About Dr.Subbiah Arunachalam

Subbiah Arunachalam is an information scientist. He has been an editor of scientific journals, teacher of information science, librarian, and a science writer. As Secretary and Editor of publications of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, during 1973-75, he reorganised the publications of the Academy and helped enlarge its Fellowship. Currently he is actively promoting open access to science and scholarship. His interests include scientometrics, science journalism and ICT-enabled rural development.

-----

See the original posting at the TIFR website here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/presentation-at-tifr-scholarly-communication-in-the-age-of-the-commons

CPOV: Critical Point of View

nishant — 2009-07-13T09:07:42Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, Netherlands) seek to bring together ideas, experiences and scholarship about Wikipedia in a reader that charts out detailed user stories as well as empirical and analytical work to produce.. The organisations will jointly host two separate conferences aimed at building a Wikipedia Knowledge Network and charting scholarship and stories about The Wikipedia from around the world.

CPOV: Critical Point of View

Wikipedia and the Politics of Open Knowledge

Proposal for a research network, two conferences and a reader

Organized by Centre for Internet & Society (Bangalore, India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Introduction: It would be no exaggeration to state that Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference of dynamic knowledge. The highly visible clashes amongst opinion leaders, university professors, Web 2.0 ‘evangelists’ and publishers over accuracy, anonymity, trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of Wikipedia and its user base. In this respect, what does it mean to now say that Wikipedia has become “mainstream”?

The accelerated growth and scope of Wikipedia as a knowledge reference of universal ambition is unheard of. The Google search engine gives preferential treatment to Wikipedia in an attempt to beat search engine optimizers and to provide a more fruitful experience to its users. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty's Wen-hsien ta-ch' eng, and the key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie.

Wikipedia owns a whole set of characteristics – including number and automation (bots) of contributors, regularity of updates, fluidity, ease of search, number of languages, and growing user base. In doing so, this online encyclopedia might be cited as the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture. Those of us who believe in pluralism, and the possibility of another world have reason to celebrate and defend Wikipedia from intellectual- property-right-maximalists and promoters of proprietary models of knowledge production and dissemination. However, such celebration and defense should contain critical insights, informed by the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia project in particular.

The Wikimedia Foundation has recently employed its first research analyst and provides spaces for “Wikipediology”, including projects such as the Wiki Project on vandalism studies. Nonetheless, critical Wikipedia research should also be done outside the self-reflexivity of the Wikimedia Foundation and its community. There is an urgent need for quantitative and qualitative research from an Humanities and Arts perspective that could benefit both the wider user base and the active Wikipedia community itself.

More than this though, as one of the largest if not the largest self-contained general knowledge reference of our time, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function, and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution and power (re-)constitution. New strategic and tactical operations of knowledge/power are clearly at work. The concept of the open remains ambiguous in this formation, serving as both a rallying concept and masking new agonistic encounters.

By permanently (re)formulating the open and inclusive as the guiding Wikipedia principle being formulated by the community itself, one might also look at this norm as a narrative or even call it a founding myth. For example, the demographic profile of the Wikipedia editor as a white male geek with a limited mono-cultural worldview based on Western rationality remains a concern. However, the question of (non)diversity being formulated in Wikipedia discussions needs also to be posed beyond existing stereotypes and at the general level of discourse. The question of (post)identity and representation is not necessarily resolved via the discursive construction of 'inclusion', if such inclusion may require leaving competing knowledge histories and practices at the door and if it puts a culture of editing not next to a culture of listening/hearing.

In the most material and perceptional way, every new technology modifies conditions of possibility for knowledge. The logic of technologies bleeds into the very structures and organizing principles of knowledge and today, both medium and message may reflect the ideas of the (organized) network, multitude or the Deleuzian machine. It is through a selected mix of technological and normative conditions – the distributed architecture of the net, the Wiki software platform, commons-based property licenses and the FLOSS zeitgeist – that Wikipedia as the encyclopedia of the information age emerges, both continuing and transforming the Enlightenment encyclopedic impulse or will to know.

The authors of these proposal are aware of the seemingly conflicting overarching research agenda: At one level is a philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of knowledge artifacts and social, culture construction in terms of , authority and politics. At the other level the research agenda is an empirical, anecdotal, sociological investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia. This has been done on purpose so that the learnings from theoretical research activities can inform practice oriented research and vice-versa.

Overall the conferences and reader may include the following areas inviting theoretical, empirical, practical and art-based contributions:

WikiTheory (opening session)
Wikipedia and Critique of Western Knowledge Production
Encyclopedia Models-- from 18th to 21th Century
Wiki Art
Designing Debate
Critique of Free and Open
Global Politics of Exclusion
The Place of Resistance
Wikipedia and Education
Wiki-analytics, Wikipedia as Platform and Software Studies
Wikipedia and Conditions of Knowledge Production

Descriptions of the Sessions/Fields of Interest

1. WikiTheory – Mining for Concepts (opening session)

Besides providing a general overview of the topics to come, and with an emphasis on diverse global approaches, the aim here is develop concepts that could be used in further research and that could fit into larger projects on Internet culture and the critique of the free and open. Is it possible to develop a counter-hegemony of critical practices that situates itself in the midst of technological cultures? What kind of critical lessons does Wikipedia provide in the face of overwhelming Web 2.0 hype and P2P utopianism? How can a radical Wikipedia critique be developed that does not present itself as the cynical ‘I told you so’ outsider or mimic the neo-conservatist position of Andrew Keen? What kind of insight can Wikipedia offer regarding the continuing tension between knowledge and information?

2. Wikipedia and Critical Histories of Western Knowledge Production

This session may include topics like: western vs. non/post-western knowledge production, textual vs. oral tradition, visual vs. textual knowledge, Wikipedia and language diversity, and indigenous knowledge.

The persistence of almost buried master-narratives: The Western tradition of Enlightenment tends to permeate both common and official understandings of knowledge on Wikipedia. Mirroring the Enlightenment itself, Wikipedia both offers a very particular type of knowledge and simultaneously makes claims upon the universal - e.g. in the formulation of visionary goals, structure of articles, author positions, writing style, categorization of entries, conflict resolution models and so on. The ways in which such ideals persist and continue to bear their mark on the present in often subtle ways requires further attention. Indeed, the 'grand narratives' of the Enlightenment that Jean-Francis Lyotard claimed had retreated with the emergence of 'computerized societies' continue to inform the popular imaginary in ways largely untouched by the deconstructive moment. Frederic Jameson once referred to this as the 'persistence of buried master-narratives', a 'political unconscious' that guides decisions irrespective of philosophical status. Likewise, this resonates with Foucault's urge 'to reveal a positive unconscious of knowledge' as that which performs the task of subjugation but operates beyond contention. What matters here is not truth or belief, but operation.

The predominance of textual or even linguistical cultures: The current system of Wikipedia citation prejudices textual systems of knowledge over oral and visual systems of knowledge. This under-values the knowledge systems of cultural memory and related technique such as mnemo techniques or oral poetry on the one hand, and illiterate populations on the other hand.

3. Encyclopedia Models-- from 18th to 21th Century

The word made durable: In this session we want to give an overview of various attempts to create a collection of global knowledge. In order to get a better understanding of the cultural specificity of the underlying code on which Wikipedia is built, this topic seeks to dig further into the histories of the encyclopedia. D' Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie is often described as the most succinct statement of European Enlightenment, and the Encyclopedie itself as the material project of Enlightenment. It is through the Encyclopedie that the Enlightenment becomes durable, tangible and disseminated. What can be learned by examining such historical precedents?

Encyclopedias have been said to be sources of national images and stereotypes of the self and the other within Europe. In Wikipedia image construction tends to be both disembogue and masked in favor of a cosmopolitan, global self-understanding. This session might interrogate to what extent knowledge production’s construction of national images is shifted from a discursive to an automatic georeferencing system of construction.

As machines think (or maybe Knowing Machines or The Machinic Intellect): This session may also look to historical attempts to revolutionize knowledge through the creation of new technologies and to what extent these alternate histories resonate with Wikipedia specifically and the technologies of the Net as driven by knowledge imperatives more generally. Examples include the Mundaneum, the Memex, the Galactic Network and project Xanadu.

4. Wikipedia Art

Art at the gates: Wikipedia Art is understood both as artwork and intervention. Taking place largely on Wikipedia itself, the project Wikipedia Art was considered controversial and was quickly removed (see recent debate on nettime-l). What does this project reveal about this type of knowledge production? What is the threshold of legitimacy for this type of knowledge and how are the boundaries policed? What is at stake in the rejection of art?

5. Models of Disambiguation and Designing Debate

May include topics like: Dissent made visible, After Talk / Alerts / Mailing Lists, the role of forum software, technical opportunities for discontent, barnstars/award culture.

The paradox of neutrality: The Neutral Point of View policy of Wikipedia does not always accurately depict the state of debate on topics: The view held by a corporate lobby, using funded research, will find equal space as the opinions of thousands of disadvantaged persons who might be impacted by the actions of the corporate lobby. Would it make sense to replace the NPoV policy and think about Wikipedia as a space of open political agonality; as a battle for meaning underpinned by the desire for reason?

New crises of authenticity: As Wikipedia gains the status of default reference for other printed textual knowledge artifacts – there are emerging challenges of representation; longevity born digital references; digital manipulation of sources; and circular referencing. Shuddhabrata Sengupta of CSDS/Sarai says “Wikipedia encouraged in its community the active exercise of a critical and skeptical attitude towards any received form of knowledge”. In this context the evolving notions of authenticity has to be further interrogated given the rise of peer-produced knowledge and the diminishing cult of the expert.

6. Critique of Free and Open

May include topics like: the parasite model of free culture (“You work for free, others will make the money from your free labour.”), governance, the role of developers, economy of Wikipedia, the beliefs of the founders as the political foundation of Wikipedia, critical interrogation of knowledge in relation to 'the open'.

Vacuous collaboration: Master concepts like freedom and openness are at constant risk of remaining empty or constituting an ‘empty signifier’. The failure to fill such concepts has lead to many descriptions of Wikipedia as 'collaborations' or even 'ad hoc meritocracies' (Alex Bruns). Both these second-tier notions also tend to mask the reconfiguration of the political and new forms of closure.

Paid and voluntary community manipulation: Many Wikipedians hold strong opinions on range of sensitive areas including identity, religion, science, politics, culture, and use sophisticated techniques such as astro-turfing on Wikipedia. Additionally, some states, corporations and organized religious groups sometimes pay specialists to engage in astro-turfing in order to remove critical opinions and rewrite information from Wikipedia.

7. Global Politics of Exclusion

May include topics like: non-western, language, connectedness, oral histories, women, non-geeks.

Tyranny of the connected: In societies which are compounded by digital and participation divides, the connected usually always win over those who don't have access and time to spare.

Gendered Knowledge: While women are strongly represented among readers, globally, they are hardly represented among contributors. In offlist chats, women express that they do not feel comfortable when contributing to Wikipedia conversations. They even felt silenced by the perception of Wikipedia as a masculine tech culture. Some women have already created an alternative space of discussion at wikichix.org. Does the separation of discussion spaces and the marginalization of domestic issues and social impacts on Wikipedia turn back time?

Morality laundering: Moral standards that exist in one country are being exported to other countries via Wikipedia. For example, photo-realistic images of human bodies on pages dealing with sexuality and anatomy are being replaced with drawings. Does this type of common denominator approach undermine the pluralism of global sexuality? The call and eventual refusal of image censorship for the entry on Mohammad represents a similar scenario.

Language diversity: Despite the self-imposed normative claim of language diversity and the self-description of Wikipedia as a truly multi-lingual project, English is the Lingua Franca in translingual meta projects and policy discussions. Also, on the level of content, is the English Wikipedia the 'Leitmedium' in terms of (content) synchronization. In what other ways does the language divide operate on Wikipedia?

Global governance: Governance of Wikipedia has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated to match its phenomenal growth and the attention it has garnered. While these changes in governance have managed to sustain the growth of Wikipedia and prevent its credibility from being undermined, there is a need to understand the impact that various governance mechanisms have on the different incarnations of Wikipedia throughout the world. Such analysis should consider separately (and compare) different national chapters, plus extend beyond Wikipedia projects to the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Form and format: As the Wikipedia becomes a standard of documentation and knowledge archive, it becomes important to focus on traditional, oral and ephemeral knowledges which might die because of the limitations of technologised platforms to capture them. Oral histories, community knowledges, incipient systems of documenting personal and collective memories, etc. start getting lost as the logo-centric, ‘objectively verifiable’ structures of knowledge production come into being. Rather than a critique of Wikipedia, analysis needs to concentrate on ways by which such knowledge systems are not lost and further tools which need to be developed in order to make them accessible and visible.

8. The Place of Resistance

Why do people resign from Wikipedia? Are critical voices silenced by the majority of the mass? Does the exclusion of the Wikipedia Art project reveal that within Wikipedia is no place for contesting forms, repertoires, styles that go beyond linguistic approaches? Rituals and mechanisms of exclusion offers critical insights into the contemporary status of resistance formation in an paradigmatic age of diversity and inclusion. Going beyond and extending the thinking of social movement scholars such as Touraine or Melucci the study of Wikipedia might inform culture and identity approaches of social movement studies and vice versa.

Can Wikipedia said to be a social movement and/or how do social movement actors appropriate the Wikipedia to built alternatives?

9. Media Literacy and Education

Knowing about knowing: While technologies like newspapers, television, radio and cinema have given birth to educational institutions that engage in media studies, thereby providing tools for the discerning citizen-consumer and future professional, there is still much work required to develop similar critical models for emerging projects like Wikipedia. The common institutional (non)response to warn against the ‘dangers’ of Wikipedia-like projects and discourage or ban their use seems grossly inadequate. The rise of 'prosumers' suggests a need for new 'production literacies' in addition to the traditional 'consumption literacy'. Furthermore, there is also a growing number of meta projects on Wikipedia that seek cooperation with schools and academia. But is the Wikimedia foundation and select national bodies the legitimate actors to teach media literacy or is this rather a public relations effort? What would Wikipedia literacy entail?

10. Wiki-analytics, Wikipedia as Platform and Software Studies

Possible Topics: Protocological Knowledge, Knowledge vs. Information, Cultural Analytics, Cybernetics in the present, (Un)dead labour and the posthuman bot.

Knowledge in the neighborhood of software: Can we start thinking of Wikipedia as an interplay of editors and technology, since software and notification systems are such an important part of the Wikipedia project? Indeed, whilst humans argue over knowledge statements, 'bots' do much of the dirty work and general knowledge housekeeping – a kind of (un)dead labour. The presumption here, of code as politics, is that the wiki principles themselves need to be debated from a perspective of software studies. To what extent has bot politics triumphed over vernacular expertise or lead to an empowerment of the e-tech geeks in knowledge projects? Related to this is the question of the cultural history of Wikipedia as a platform. What is the relation between policy formation and technical protocols? Is Wikipedia knowledge Cybernetic?

Wikipedia as a data set: Besides the automation participation in the form of the bot, Wikipedia is an information artifact through and through. What kind of data analysis techniques can contribute to a radical critique or illuminate network regularities beyond human interpretation? What additional anonymised data sets of edit and use history should be released by the Wikimedia Foundation to promote media literacy and education.

11. Wikipedia and Conditions of Knowledge Production

Possible Topics: Politics of knowledge production, question of authority, The fallacy of objectivity, Wikipedia and the Public Sphere.

The alarm that traditional bastions of knowledge production and consumption (like universities and publishing houses) raise against Wikipedia, brings into sharp relief, the fact that the Wikipedia is a part of a much larger knowledge production industry. With the Wikipedia’s integration into more ‘mainstream’ usage, it becomes necessary to focus on how the emergence of such a space (and the principles it embodies) also affects the much larger and global politics, aesthetics and mechanics of knowledge production. Wikipedia has substantially changed academic trends of publication, citation, classroom pedagogy and research. It has also been central to many debates about who produces knowledge and who has the ‘right’ to be an Authority on the knowledge thus produced.

Moving beyond the class-room and questions of plagiarism or teaching, there is need to investigate the pre-conditions and the contexts within which Wikipedia emerges, and the kind of questions it poses to processes of knowledge production, consumption and verification.

Production Details

Besides setting up a network for critical Wikipedia research with its own mailing list and organizing two events early 2010 in Bangalore and Amsterdam (to start with), the aim is to gather materials for a Wikipedia Research Reader that will be published in the INC Reader series around September-October 2010.

Research and editorial group: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne), Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nishant Shah (Bangalore).

Contact info:

Sunil Abraham: sunil@cis-india.org

Nishant Shah: Nishant@cis-india.org

For more information on how to apply to the Bangalore WikiWars conference, please click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/Wikiwars

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

pranesh — 2009-07-07T16:49:37Z

Another draft (labelled "version 2", dated May 26, 2009) of the draft national policy on open standards for e-governance was made available to Fosscomm, while many software companies were speaking out against NASSCOM's position on the policy. CIS drafted a second response addressing both the allegations against NASSCOM as well as the few shortcomings we perceive in the draft policy.

To
Shri Shankar Aggrawal
Joint Secretary (e-Governance)
Department of Information Technology
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Dear Sir,

Sub: Comments on Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance (version 2)

I am writing on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, which is a Bangalore-based civil society organization involved both in research and policy advocacy. Public accountability and digital pluralism are two of our core concerns, and it is for this that we are writing to you today. As a natural corollary of our mission, we aim at representing the concerns of citizens and consumers. You would recall that we had submitted comments to the call for comments you had put out for the draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance last year (archived at <http://cis-india.org/advocacy/os/iosp/the-response/>).

We have recently received what appears to be a newer draft (version 2) of the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, dated May 26, 2009. We are yet again very pleased to note the progressive nature of this document and wish to congratulate the government on its decision to promote the interests of the citizens of India over the narrow partisan interests of a few companies which wish to promote proprietary standards.

It has brought to our notice by some in the software industry that the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has argued for the dilution of the definition of open standards by including standards licensed under “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms to be considered “open”, and has also called for multiple standards in the same domain to be considered valid as a rule under the policy. We believe both these demands go against the interest of consumers of standards — which in this case is the Indian government — and are thus against the interest of citizens as well, since the Indian government handles data on behalf of its citizens.

Even “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms of licensing of standards are in fact discriminatory as they prevent the development of free/libre/open source software based on those standards. And while having multiple implementations of a standard is beneficial as it increases consumer (i.e., governmental) choice, having multiple incompatible standards is detrimental to the government's interest as the policy itself recognizes in paragraph 4.2, and the very purpose (as enumerated in paragraphs 1, 3, and 4) of having standards is defeated. Even if the multiple standards are bi-directionally interoperable, additional costs are incurred in having concurrent multiple standards.

Thus, one hopes that the the threshold of “national interest” mentioned in paragraph 6.4.1 is set to a high level. Lastly, the views put forth by NASSCOM seem not to be truly legitimate as it has been the complaint of some that NASSCOM did not hold an open consultation with its own members before formulating its views. There are software giants, including IBM, Sun, and Red Hat, that have openly criticized the NASSCOMM position on open standards. More importantly, NASSCOM's position does not concur with what we believe is in the best interest of small and medium software enterprises, which constitute the bulk of the Indian software industry. We pray that you shall keep this in mind while considering NASSCOM's views.

We believe that apart from the technical reasons to favour open standards, there are many public interest reasons as well. We believe that the adoption of open standards is a step towards the promotion of equitable access to knowledge to all the people of our country. We further believe that public accountability will be served greatly by adoption of an open standards policy by the Central and State governments. While even developed countries (such as those of the EU) are mandating open standards in all governmental departments, processes, and interactions, it is developing countries that stand to gain most from open standards. Proprietary standards place a larger burden on developing economies than developed as developing economies have a greater need to participate in the global network by using standards, but do have lesser capabilities than developed economies in terms of paying for royalties.

On the document itself, while there are many reasons to hail it, we believe there are still a few shortcomings which we wish to bring to your notice.

Issue 1: Possibility of following letter of policy while violating its spirit

Explanation
Sometimes private companies can interfere with the standardisation process by exerting undue influence on the members of the standard setting body. That such undue influence have been sought to be applied even in India recently shows that this is not mere conjecture or idle speculation. Given this background, the document should note this as a problem and note that remedial measures could be undertaken in the event such undue influence comes to light.

Resolution
Introduce language, such as that used in the EU EIF, stating:
“Practices distorting the definition and evolution of open standards must be addressed immediately to protect the integrity of the standardisation process.”

Issue 2: Patenting and licensing of government-developed standards

Explanation
Paragraph 6.3 of the draft policy allows the government to opt for the development of a new standard by a Government of India-identified agency in case no standard is found to meet the government's functional requirements. However, it is not clear under what terms this standard will be available.

Resolution
Introduce a paragraph 6.3.1 stating:
“Any standard developed by or on behalf of the government shall be patent-free and the specifications of such a standard will be published online and will be available to all for no cost. Along with the standard, the government shall also provide, or shall cause to be provided, a free/libre/open source reference implementation of that standard.”

Issue 3: No framework provided for review or phasing out interim standards

Explanation
Paragraph 6.2 permits the government to adopt a non-open “interim” standard (one which does not fulfil all the mandatory requirements of open standards as laid out in 5.1) if no open standard exists in the specific domain for which the standard is required. This however does not have a clause necessitating the phasing out of such an interim standard.

Resolution
A review mechanism should be provided for periodic evaluation of all standards selected by the government, especially those designated as interim standards. A new paragraph 7.1.1 could be added:
“All standards selected through the processes outlined in this policy shall undergo an annual review by the Apex Body on e-Governance Standards, and all those designated as interim standards shall be reviewed biannually.”

Issue 4: Problematic definition in the glossary

Explanation
In Appendix A, the definition of “patents” (A.12) states: “The additional qualification 'utility patents' is used in countries such as the United States to distinguish them from other types of patents but should not be confused with utility models granted by other countries. Examples of particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents.” Many of these references are U.S.-specific and are not valid forms of patents in India (e.g. biological patents, business method patents, and software patents).

Resolution
Delete the last two sentences in A.12

We once again wish to compliment the government on developing such a strong policy on open standards, and hope that our suggestions are incorporated into the text of the final version. We further hope that the policy will be notified at the earliest, as there has already been considerable opportunity for the public and industry to comment on the draft versions of the policy.

Yours sincerely,

Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society

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

Open Access

admin — 2009-07-07T09:49:12Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/homepage/access

Presentation at IDRC: ‘Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons -- A Southern Perspective’

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:59:03Z

Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, CIS Distinguished Fellow, will give a talk titled 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons -- A Southern Perspective' at IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, on 13 July 2009.

Brown Bag Presentation: ‘Scholarly communication in the age of the commons - A southern perspective’ by Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Date: July 13, 2009

Time: 1400 hr

Location: IDRC

150 Kent Street

Ottawa, ON, Canada

Room 950

RSVP: Nicole Leguerrier nleguerrier@idrc.ca

The toll-access journal system that was set up some 350 years ago and which has served well till a few decades ago evolved, for historical reasons, largely to serve the needs of North-North knowledge exchange and has failed to take cognizance of the aspirations of the South. The need for science to be performed everywhere and take roots in all countries is now well recognized. If OA is so very important to the South, why is the progress slow? While computers, internet access and bandwidths continue to pose problems in a number of southern countries, in general the situation is improving. The more important factor is scientists' apathy. Scientists in the South, by and large, do not exercise their rights to the full; often they give away on a platter copyright to their research papers to journal publishers. The publishers themselves indulge in practices that would entice publishing scientists and librarians to act in ways that would benefit the publishers. Funding agencies and governments of southern countries are not as proactive as they should be.

Focused advocacy on the advantages of the public commons approach can bring about some revolutionary changes. Such advocacy should be aimed at all levels of stakeholders. Some examples of what is being done in India will be presented.

Biography

Subbiah Arunachalam (Arun) is a Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, a research and advocacy organization that was founded in August 2008. Before then, he was a volunteer for 12 years with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, a Chennai-based NGO, promoting the use of information and communication technologies to empower the poor and the marginalized and bring about holistic rural development.

Arun is an advocate of open access to scientific and scholarly literature and has conducted several workshops on knowledge management, electronic publishing, open access archiving, science communication, and South-South Exchange for sharing knowledge among development workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Arun has been a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, University of Calcutta, Annamalai University, National Institute of Advanced Study, Bangalore, and Asian Collegeof Journalism, Chennai. Immediately after returning to India Arun will join the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, as a visiting scientist. Arun has been a member of the Executive Committee of Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) for two terms, and is currently a member of the International Advisory Board of IICD, The Hague, and a Trustee of both the Voicing the Voiceless Foundation, New Delhi, and the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Causerie-midi: La communication scientifique à l’ère des biens communs – perspectives du Sud, par Subbiah Arunachalam, chercheur associé de marque au Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (Inde)

Date: le 13 juillet 2009

Heure: 14 h

Lieu: CRDI

150, rue Kent

Ottawa (Ont.) Canada

pièce 950

RSVP: Nicole Leguerrier (nleguerrier@idrc.ca)

Pour des raisons historiques, le système des publications scientifiques payantes mis en place il y a trois siècles et demi et qui a produit des résultats satisfaisants jusqu’aux dernières décennies sert maintenant, en grande partie, l’échange de connaissances Nord-Nord et ne prend pas en compte les aspirations du Sud. La nécessité de favoriser partout l’activité scientifique et de conforter son enracinement dans tous les pays est aujourd’hui généralement admise. Si le libre accès revêt une telle importance pour le Sud, pourquoi les progrès sont-ils si lents ? Bien que les ordinateurs, l’accès Internet et la bande passante continuent de poser problème dans un grand nombre de pays du Sud, la situation a somme toute tendance à s’améliorer. Le facteur qui joue le plus est dès lors l’apathie des chercheurs. De façon générale, les scientifiques du Sud n’exercent pas pleinement leurs droits : ils cèdent les droits d’auteur sur leur article à l’éditeur de la revue. Et les éditeurs se livrent à des pratiques qui incitent les auteurs et les bibliothécaires à agir à leur avantage. Les bailleurs de fonds et les gouvernements des pays du Sud, quant à eux, ne sont pas aussi proactifs qu’ils le devraient.

Un plaidoyer axé sur les avantages des biens communs pourrait produire des changements révolutionnaires. Ce plaidoyer doit viser toutes les parties prenantes. M. Subbiah Arunachalam livrera des exemples d’initiatives en cours en Inde.

Notice biographique

Subbiah Arunachalam (Arun) est chercheur associé de marque au Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) de Bangalore, un organisme de recherche et de plaidoyer fondé en août 2008. Il a été auparavant bénévole, pendant 12 ans, à la Fondation de recherche M.S.Swaminathan, une ONG de Chennai ayant pour vocation d’encourager le recours aux technologies de l’information et de la communication afin de rendre les populations pauvres et marginalisées plus autonomes et de favoriser un développement rural global.

Arun est partisan du libre accès aux publications scientifiques et savantes et a animé plusieurs ateliers sur la gestion des connaissances, l’édition électronique, l’auto-archivage, les communications scientifiques et les échanges Sud-Sud afin de favoriser la mise en commun des connaissances parmi les professionnels du développement d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Amérique latine. Il a été professeur invité à l’Institut indien de technologie de Chennai, à l’Université de Calcutta, à l’Université Annamalai et au National Institute of Advanced Studies de Bangalore. Il a siégé au comité exécutif de l’Alliance mondiale pour le savoir (GKP) pendant deux mandats et siège actuellement au comité consultatif international de l’Institut international pour la communication et le développement (IICD), à La Haye, ainsi qu’aux conseils d’administration de la fondation Voicing the Voiceless de New Delhi et de l’Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, au Royaume-Uni.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/idrc-scholarly-communication

Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report

sachia — 2011-08-20T22:28:55Z

Zainab Bawa reports on the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi.

In recent times, there has been an upsurge in the use of ICTs to provide information to people and to elicit participation. Individuals, corporate organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations, collectives, municipalities, political parties and politicians have been using the internet and other mediums to communicate with people. The round table was organised primarily to discuss two issues:

What is the effectiveness of the initiatives introduced in recent times?
How do we move forward in terms of partnerships/collaborations in the areas of data gathering, sharing, dissemination and architecture of information?

Given the constraints of time, however, we were only able to discuss a few issues with respect to efficacy of initiatives, rather than come up with a concrete action plan on how to measure effectiveness of many of the existing initiatives. This remains an agenda for subsequent meetings.

This round table was the first meeting of its kind. It brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues involved in leveraging ICTs towards various ends, and to collaborate with each other on ongoing initiatives. Participants included researchers, persons who have developed information platforms and databases, individuals working in the area of leveraging technology for streamlining processes in society and people who have been studying usage patterns of social media tools. Most of the participants were using ICTs to improve information access related to health issues, education, budgets, development of rural areas and recently, elections and governance. In the subsequent sections, I will briefly elaborate on some of the key themes around which discussions took place during the round table.

Building on Ideas: In the morning and pre-lunch sessions, one issue that featured prominently was the importance of developing ideas rather than trying to work out a perfect model that we believe will solve what we perceive to be people’s problems. Two of the participants explained that they started implementing ideas as they came to them, rather than trying to come up with a framework that they thought would work for the masses. They worked towards evolving their ideas, exploring what works and what does not. One of them further pointed out that such evolution cannot be observed as it happens; it only becomes apparent in hindsight. Hence, discussions such as the current round table are useful.

It is also important to note that we are still in a nascent stage of understanding how ICTs can impact people’s lives and deploying them accordingly. As a result, many efforts are likely to be in the stage of trial and error.

Key areas of interest and concern: Based on the input from participants in the morning session, we arrived at a list of areas that require more understanding and discussion.

Information gathering, dissemination, access – including information architecture, technology design: Here, three issues were discussed:

Who are we talking about when we refer to information access? It was pointed out that information is crucial particularly for people who do not have computers and for whom internet is not a priority. The intensity with which they seek information is remarkable. One of the participants argued that we undervalue the potential of information to make a difference to people’s lives.
How do we deliver information? Providing information is not enough.
Representativeness of the information for those who it is provided for.

Another issue that was referred to was whether language is a problem, i.e., most information is available only in English. One of the participants suggested that this is not the case because Google has found that a very small percentage of the population actually refers to material on the web in languages other than English.

Community mobilization: During the deliberations, we referred to the problem of replication of initiatives. Two observers of social media pointed out that replication happens because people are trying to create their own unique communities around their initiatives. This is an important insight for future efforts and also indicates the need to share databases and information that individuals and organisations have compiled. They also suggested that it is important to discover existing communities and spaces where conversations around issues of governance, education, health and development are taking place. This helps to plug into existing resource pools and to extend outreach.

Citizens’ participation: Initiatives that work and why they succeed - We briefly discussed the Jaagore campaign and India Vote Report, which were launched before the 2009 national elections in India to enable people to register on the electoral rolls and to report irregularities during elections respectively. Some people found it difficult to register themselves on the Jaagore website and some had difficulties in finding the local offices where they needed to follow-up with the process. It was also pointed out that Vote Report did not connect with the end user because it would have been easier to report irregularities and anomalies via SMS rather than trying to report them by logging on to the site. If one looks at the case of the Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) developed by Praja, the availability of the telephone hotline service through which citizens could register their complaints helped in widening usage. Thus, it appears that two issues are pertinent:

Whether the initiative connects with the people who are likely to use it;
Simplicity of design/system that enables more users.

Target Audience: One of the participants pointed out that some initiatives do not work because they are targeted towards the wrong audiences. For example, when it comes to voting and elections, poor groups are the ones who go out and vote in large numbers. Hence, information systems need to be tailored to provide them with the data that they need most. Access also has to be configured accordingly. In some instances, the target is too broad to reach out effectively.

It appears that there is a need to develop strategies on how platforms and databases that have been created to enhance access to information can be made known among the masses and how people can be made aware to use them. It is equally important to understand what constitutes ‘information’ and for whom. Here, the other issue to explore is how information links back to the people for who it is provided.

Technology: In this area, a key concern was the high costs involved in developing technologies and whether we could learn from each other’s experience of developing technologies instead of reinventing the wheel. We also discussed whether open source software helps to reduce costs of development. The other issue with respect to open source is whether there is enough assistance and support available to resolve problems that may crop up during use of technology from time to time.

Sharing of Data: Discussions also veered around the issue of whether appropriate technology and applications could be created to help with sharing existing databases and information pools. We did not discuss this issue in depth, but it remains relevant for subsequent meetings.

Back end integration: According to some of the participants, one of major problems is the interface between government and citizens, which remains weak. Technology can be used to enhance the interactions. Participants also pointed out the difficulty in obtaining data from government bodies that is important to create the interface between government and citizens. A participant involved with the Jaagore campaign referred to the problem of back-end integration during their efforts to help citizens register themselves with the election commission (EC) offices. A participant from Google similarly reported that they faced problems in obtaining election results from the EC’s offices as a result of which, they had to rely on their partners for this information. Here too, we could not deliberate on how to resolve this problem, but this could be a major theme for a subsequent meeting.

Performance (monitoring, evaluation): One of the themes that participants zeroed in on was the evaluation of the performance of elected representatives and making this evaluation available for people to see. Here, the debate was around the problem of evaluation being carried out according to the criteria we set which may not seem relevant to other sections of society. One of the suggestions that came up was to develop a matrix for evaluation and put out information accordingly. People can then use it to make their own judgments.

In the post-lunch session, some of the participants shared their experiences with implementation and also the work they and their organisations are currently engaged with. Towards the end of the round table, each one of the participants explained their respective projects and how they may wish to collaborate with other participants (who were present) in their initiatives. An e-group called “CIS-Info-Access” has been created to take these conversations and collaborations further.

Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:

When invitations were sent out to people to participate in the round table, many of the invitees expressed a genuine and enthusiastic interest in being part of this effort. As mentioned above, one of the reasons for this enthusiasm was because this was the first meeting of its kind, bringing together individuals from the fields of technology, research and implementation. We invited a total of 35 people out of which 27 finally attended the meeting. The diversity of the participants was an asset in that a variety of issues were brought to the table. The drawback was that there was not enough time to discuss some of the pertinent issues in depth. Future meetings can be tailored to discuss one or two specific themes such as back-end integration and sharing of information, technology issues, ideas for mobilising citizens and communities, etc.

The possibilities of collaboration between participants in this meeting are immense and we hope that some of the synergies will materialise into concrete outcomes. Further, a few participants have expressed an interest in organising similar meetings in their cities/towns, perhaps focusing on a few issues instead of bringing people together under a broad theme. Of some of the issues discussed, participants have indicated that back-end integration with government and ideating on different ways of disseminating data can be further deliberated on in future. One of the participants also suggested that there is a need to make ‘data’ more relevant to people’s lives.

While the meeting was fruitful in many respects, one issue needs to be underlined. This concerns the imagination of internet and ICTs as mediums that can resolve all existing problems with respect to citizen-government interface, streamlining of processes and provision of information. Such an overarching imagination of technology overlooks the cultural, economic, social and political specificities of communities and contexts. Technology can also have negative implications in some circumstances. It also needs to be reinforced that technology is embedded in society and culture. Therefore we need to view technology as one of the avenues among others available which will facilitate interactions between people and their governments and the state. Democratisation is more likely to be realised through such a perspective.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy

Letter on South Africa's IPRs from Publicly Financed R&D Regulations

pranesh — 2011-08-04T04:42:15Z

Being interested in legislations in developing nations styled after the United States' Bayh-Dole Act, CIS responded to the call issued by the South African Department of Science and Technology for comments to the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Regulations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/letter-on-south-africas-iprs-from-publicly-financed-r-d-regulations

WIPO Broadcast Treaty and Webcasting

pranesh — 2011-08-04T04:42:10Z

On Friday, 8 May 2009, at Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting held a stakeholders' briefing meeting on the Broadcast Treaty that has been on the table at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The purpose of that meeting was to inform the relevant stakeholders of the developments in Geneva, as well as to garner input from them regarding the stance to be adopted by India at the WIPO. Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society participated and made a presentation on webcasting, highlighting the differences between webcasting and broadcasting, and arguing that webcasting should not be part of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty.

First, we wish to applaud the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for holding this stakeholders' meeting, which is a definite step towards greater transparency, and are grateful for having been invited to provide our input. The meeting was attended by representatives from various government offices and ministries, including the Ministry of Human Resource Development (which administers the Indian Copyright Act), broadcasters, broadcast associations, law firms, and civil society organisations. The Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting inaugurated the session by talking of how the Broadcast Treaty involved the assessment and balancing of various interests while keeping 'public interest' foremost. This was followed by Mr. N. P. Nawani, Secretary General of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), presenting on the concerns of the broadcasting industry. After this Prof. N. S. Gopalakrishnan, head of the School of Law, Cochin University of Science and Technology, spoke.

Prof. Gopalakrishnan covered many areas of relevance: the concept of broadcasting and the legal rights involved; the scheme of legal protection over broadcast signals and over the content of the signals, and the difference between the two; gaps in the international law covering broadcasting; details of the proposed broadcast treaty; the implications of the broadcast treaty and concerns of the Indian government; and unresolved issues.

Amongst the unresolved issues mentioned by Prof. Gopalakrishnan was that of webcasting and the problems related to that. The discussion below aims to shed some light on some of the problems created by the inclusion of webcasting in the broadcast treaty.

Legal regimes for broadcasting

At the national level, the law governing broadcasting is the Indian Copyright Act, 1957. Broadcasting is covered by many sections of the Indian Copyright Act, including: ss. 2(dd) (definition of "broadcast"), 2(ff) (definition of "communication to the public"), 37 (the section granting a special "broadcast reproduction right"), and 39A (containing exceptions to s.37). At the international level, broadcasting is covered by the Rome Convention, 1960 (which India has signed, but hasn't ratified); the Brussels Convention, 1974 (only pre-broadcast satellite signals); the TRIPS Agreement, 1994 per Article 14 (which doesn't mandate that broadcasting rights be granted directly to the broadcasters); the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, 1996 (WPPT) in Articles 2(f) and 15; and the proposed WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations ("Broadcast Treaty"). In May 2006, provisions for webcasting were brought back into the Broadcast Treaty as part of the non-mandatory Appendix after having been excised in 2004 owing to protests by many countries on their inclusion. The current draft (SCCR/15/2 rev.) was prepared in September 2006 as an attempt to put together an all-inclusive document (with alternative versions of proposed provisions present in the document), and a diplomatic conference was planned to push the treaty through. In August 2007, WIPO released a 'non-paper' (SCCR/S2/Paper1) and dropped plans for the diplomatic conference, as there was still significant disagreement about the treaty. In November 2008, the WIPO chair released an informal paper (SCCR/17/INF/1), which advocated technological neutrality, and hence, presumably, that webcasting to be covered by the treaty.

Meaning of broadcasting and netcasting

Broadcasting is generally taken to be a point-to-multipoint transmission of audio-visual content. Hence, cable transmissions and Internet/Web transmissions (which are point-to-point) are usually not included when one uses the term "broadcasting". But there is no one common definition of "broadcasting". As things stand in the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, the definition of broadcasting (Art. 5(a)) does not cover cablecasting, which is separately defined in Art. 5(b), neither does it cover webcasting. However, the definition of "retransmission" as provided in the draft treaty is broad enough to cover Internet-based transmission, and hence could provide a backdoor via which webcasting is included. The rights covered by the all-inclusive draft WIPO Broadcast Treaty include the rights of and over: retransmission; communication to the public; fixation; reproduction; distribution; transmission following fixation; making available of fixed broadcasts; and pre-broadcast signals. The treaty also mandates legislative protection to systems of digital rights management (DRM) and technological protection measures (TPMs). This, coupled with post-fixation rights, grants broadcasters the rights to dictate what one can and cannot do with a broadcast, thus negating all fair dealing rights and possibly restricting the public domain as well. It may be noted that even content creators are not provided such rights in the vast majority of the world, and that fair dealing rights are much better safeguarded by copyright law. The latest proposal by the U.S. on the term "netcasting" is to be found in an informal paper presented at SCCR 15 [MS Word document], and has been criticised as overly expansive by civil society organisations such as Consumer Project on Technology (now Knowledge Ecology International).

Non-justifications for webcasting's inclusion

Webcasting is sought to be included within the Broadcast Treaty for a number of reasons, all of which are problematic. Firstly, there is the argument of technology neutrality, which advocates say is to ensure that the treaty is relevant into the future as well. However, adopting technology neutrality as the basis for doing so amounts to wilful blindness to technological advancements, and the benefits that such advancement provides, including lowered costs of infrastructure. Secondly, advocates argue that thanks to media convergence, the same content (which is usually digital) can be delivered through various communication networks. This disregards the need to establish the requirement for a new right to be created, and simply assumes that just because the function that the two (broadcasters and webcasters) perform are similar means that they operate in similar economic and social environments. In fact, webcasters work in a very different environment from broadcasters.

This is an environment where intense innovation and competition already exist, and don't need to be artificially created by means of a new property right in an international treaty. Furthermore, the United States, a country with extremely large and hugely profitable broadcasting networks, does not have a specific statute to protect broadcasters’ rights. Even it only has laws protecting the conditional-access regime. Second, much less investment is required to reach a set number of people through webcasting than through broadcasting -- and these people can be spread throughout the globe. Typically, a computer with a fast internet connection is all that is required. Given this, anyone can become a 'broadcasting organisation'. Additionally, IP addresses (in IPv6) are not limited, unless one considers 340 undecillion addresses to be 'limited'. This is a big difference from terrestrial broadcasting, where Hertzian frequencies are limited, and hence one has to pay a premium for them. Lastly, signal appropriation does not happen for sake of the signal, but for the content. Protection, thus has to be given to the content (and already is given, in the form of copyright law). Copyright owners who object to such appropriation, and who are often large multinational corporations, have proven more than willing to pursue those who appropriate their works – broadcasters are not necessarily in a better position to do so. This situation is aggravated with webcasting. Indeed, on the Web, something akin signal appropriation is not only not frowned upon, but often encouraged: embedding of audio and video from other servers on your own website is prevalent.

Problems if webcasting is included

Apart from the lack of justifications for going ahead with the treaty, especially when it seeks to create a separate property right over signals instead of merely providing for signal protection and includes webcasting (at least upon 'retransmission'), there are many problems that the treaty creates. Firstly, transaction costs will increase vastly, leading to a tragedy of the anticommons where no one ends up using the content because clearing all the surrounding rights is too difficult. On top of clearing and making payment for rights from the copyright holders, a person wishing to use parts of any content that has been broadcast/webcast would have to get the rights cleared from the first broadcaster/webcaster as well. This is inevitable if property-like rights are bestowed upon the act of distributing signal in the form of a broadcast or hosting audio and visual content for webcasting.

Secondly, materials in the public domain and openly-licensed content will become more difficult to gain access to, and the exercise of fair dealings with copyrighted content will be hampered. Since rights over signal are independent of rights over content, a copy of the public-domain work will have to be procured from an archive, which negates the very purpose of broadcasting and webcasting, which is to make content more easily accessible to a large number of people located over great distances. Additionally, limitations and exceptions are extremely difficult to negotiate and are of the 'ceiling' kind, limiting the limitations and exceptions that national legislatures can prescribe. Thus, the fair dealing rights over the signal will probably end up being more limited than the fair dealing rights over content. This makes the situation akin to anti-circumvention measures, which (in countries where they are legally recognised) have fewer limitations and exceptions than the content they protect.

Thirdly, public benefit and access will seriously be harmed. It is conceivable that this treaty might hamper the Indian legislature's ability to pass statutes such as the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act, 2007, which mandate sharing of certain kinds of signals. Lawyers will claim that such statutes go against India's international obligations.

Differences between webcasting and broadcasting

To sum up, there are a large number of differences between broadcasting and webcasting.
Infrastructure: The expenditure required to establish the infrastructure for a webcasting unit is much less than that required for an equivalent (in terms of reach in terms of listeners). Even traditional broadcasting is not that expensive: fixed-frequency radio transmission kits have been known to cost as little as Rs. 50 (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4735642.stm>. Thus, one of the biggest arguments for protection ('to recover investment') is taken away. The content producers' 'investment' is protected by copyright law.
Competition: Providing incentives to increase competition and hence public benefit is often a reason cited as a reason for introduction of a new property-like right. However, such incentives seem utterly redundant in the online market where becoming a webcasting organisation is trivial, and immense competition already exists.
Broadcasting vs. Uni- and Multicasting: The notion of 'broadcasting' does not exist in IPv6. The closest that a webcaster can come to broadcasting is 'multicasting' to a specific range of IP addresses. What one sees on the Web today is "unicasting", which is initiated by a request from the recipient and not by the webcaster.
Temporal limitations: Unlike traditional broadcasting (which does not include cable), content on demand is possible over the Web. By this, the temporal limitations faced by traditional broadcasting, which is ephemeral, are overcome. This opens up many possibilities that should not be hampered by creating an excessive legal regime (and that too a property regime) over webcasting.
Geographic limitations: While terrestrial broadcasting is limited in geographic scope (which satellite and cable-casting are less susceptible to), webcasting knows no geographic limitations. As long as an Internet connection is present, the content can be viewed anywhere. Additionally, granting a separate webcasting right will open up a jurisdicational can of worms.
Marginal costs of subscribers: While in terrestrial broadcasting, adding an additional receiver does not cost the broadcaster anything, in satellite television (direct-to-home), cable television and webcasting, each additional receiver means either additional infrastructure (cables and set-top boxes) or additional server load. In the case of webcasting, this marginal cost is small enough to ignore, especially given all the other reasons mentioned previously.

Conclusion

There are still a number of uncertainties surrounding the inclusion of webcasting in the Broadcast Treaty. Michael Nelson of the Internet Society points out that questions such as who the broadcaster is in a download grid, in distributed gaming, for webcasts of surveillance videos, etc., are unanswered. As the example of the download grid (a situation where the 'casting' is multipoint-to-point) shows, many Internet-specific scenarios have not been contemplated by the treaty negotiators. Situations which might soon be reality, such as peer-to-peer relaying of webcasts are also not contemplated, and the treaty would become a policy document preventing such technological innovations. Whether IPTV would be included within webcasting is also unclear. The WIPO chair in his informal paper noted, 'Finally, if after consideration of the options above (A/B) and possible other options, it will not in the present situation be possible to decide on the establishment of a new treaty, the SCCR should end these discussions through an express decision in order to avoid further spending of time, energy and resources to no avail. Such a decision could include a timetable for later revisiting and reconsidering the matter.' (SCCR/15/2 rev) SCCR should end these discussions which have gone on for more than a decade without any progress.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-and-webcasting

Seminar on Exceptions and Limitations in Copyright

sachia — 2011-08-17T08:50:52Z

This is a report on a seminar organised by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and Government of India on 14 and 15 May 2009, in Kochi, Kerala, to look at exceptions and limitations in copyright. Programme Manager Nirmita Narsimhan, of the Centre for Internet and Society, attended the seminar.

CIS Programme Manager Nirmita Narsimhan attended a seminar on exceptions and limitations in copyright, organised by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and Government of India on 14 and 15 May 2009, in Kochi, Kerala. The seminar was intended to bring up key issues affecting access to knowledge, which are to be taken up by the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) later this month. Resource persons identified for different topics were eminent scholars, academicians and practitioners across India. The seminar covered eight topics. On each topic, a paper was presented by a resource person with commentary by an expert in the field, after which there was an open discussion.

The first day featured, amongst others, a paper presented by Lawrence Liang, Distinguished Fellow, CIS. He spoke at length on the exceptions and limitations for education.

The second day featured a paper by Mr. Madhukar Sinha, former Registrar of Copyright. Mr. Sinha presented on the topic 'Use of works by visually impaired and other miscellaneous exceptions of use of works under Indian Copyright Act: Section 52(1) (q), (r), (s), (t), (u), (v), and (x), (y), (z)'. His paper went into great length on definitions of visual disability and tried to evolve an economic model to support conversion of books into accessible formats for the visually challenged. The paper drew parallels with existing laws and best practices in different countries, made a detailed analysis of exceptions for the blind in the light of the Berne three-step test and the TRIPS agreement, and concluded by recommending that the Copyright Act should be amended to include exceptions and limitations which would permit conversion of books into formats in certain special cases. Mr. Sinha also recommended that India should look at solutions which go beyond the limits of the Copyright Act to solve such problems.

The response to this was prepared by Mr. Rahul Cherian of Indo Juris Law offices. The response paper drew attention to the fact that half of the total blind population of the world is in India and that amounts to a population of more than a crore. In the light of the economic and logistic considerations of our country, the Copyright Act should

Expressly include a limitation to permit conversion of books into accessible formats for visually challenged persons;
Permit conversion by stakeholder organizations as well as interested family members and friends of beneficiaries;
Adopt a functional definition of disability and not a medical one as is currently the case in the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995, and extend the benefit of the exception to all persons, who by reason of any disability are unable to access the work in its original format;and
Not restrict conversion only to those formats which are exclusively for the use of blind persons. Visually challenged persons should be able to make use of available mainstream formats like PDFs or Word as well.

The paper also dealt extensively with the Treaty for Improved access for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled, which was proposed by the World Blind Union in WIPO last year and is coming up again for discussion later this month.

Please click here to see the complete text of the paper.

The seminar was extremely productive because there was a strong recommendation and support for the inclusion of a limitation for conversion into accessible formats for persons with disabilities in the Indian Copyright Act. All the members present came to a consensus that the Indian Government should take a supportive stand towards the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the WBU at the SCCR this month. A representative of a leading publishing house committed himself to working towards providing books to certain organizations for the blind, if they could assure him that those books would be circulated only to blind persons and not to others.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/seminar-on-exceptions-and-limitations-in-copyright

Letter to Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Advocating Adoption of FOSS in State IT Academies

sachia — 2011-08-23T02:55:16Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is a signatory to a letter being sent to the Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of FOSS at state IT academies.

The state of Karnataka has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft under which three IT academies have been established in the state, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga, in 2004-05. Government school teachers are being trained at these academies. As per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum at these academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught to the teachers. This MOU will expire in the coming academic year. Therefore, Gurumurthy Kasinathan and members of the FOSS community in India are sending a letter to the Education Secretary for the state of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of a FOSS-based curriculum in these IT academies, and explaining why this would be a useful move.

The Centre for Internet and Society is one of the signatories to this letter, which is reproduced below.

-----

The Education Secretary

Government of Karnataka

MS Building

Bangalore, Karnataka.

Sub – Microsoft IT Academies in Karnataka

Dear Sri Nadadur,

Karnataka has a MOU with Microsoft under which three 'IT Academies' have been established in the State, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga during 2004-05. Government school teachers are being trained in these academies. As per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum in these academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught to the teachers.

There are a couple of issues with this program.

Firstly Microsoft does not allow the teaching of software other than their own proprietary products. This deprives the teachers from learning alternative Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platforms. There are compelling pedagogical, economic, social and political reasons why the education system needs to adopt and promote FOSS. Free software is software which gives the users the freedom to use, study, modify and share, while in the case of proprietary software, the vendor prevents the study, modification and distribution of the software. The freedoms of FOSS provide users and the rest of society with several important advantages, which are briefly listed below:

a. With proprietary software, the teachers only learn be superficial 'users'. This is because, proprietary software companies prevent access to the “source code” that goes into the creation of software. With FOSS, students can learn not only how to use software, but also how create and modify the software applications. Hence with FOSS, students will not just be passive users but will actually construct knowledge. As we know, 'Constructivism' is a key feature of the National Curriculum Framework 2005.

b. FOSS supports the creation of local language versions of the software. For example, Kerala has locally created software in Malayalam for its IT@School program. Similarly the Kannada community Sampada has created a complete Kannada distribution by customising existing FOSS software.

Though Microsoft has provided Windows and Microsoft Office gratis at these academies, it does not provide the same software to the teachers who are trained at the centre. Hence the teachers who intend to purchase computers would need to shell out considerable amounts for the software which they have become used to in the schools. However, if the teachers are trained on FOSS alternatives to Windows and Office, at at negligible price (the cost of a CD which is around Rupees ten), each teacher can be a given a copy of the software. The training can also cover the installation of the software, if required. In this way, the teacher training can lead to the actual use of computers in the schools and teachers homes and make the training meaningful and lead to the greater dispersion of ICTs. Currently, most teachers learn to use these products but have no continuity of learning which makes the training futile.

Of course, the issue of FOSS is not only one of cost. Even if proprietary software were offered free of cost, our nation will eventually have economic losses, due to permanent dependency on software monopoly.

These are some of the reasons why Karnataka has chosen FOSS in its own ICT@Schools program. The computers in Karnataka schools run on GNU/Linux platform under this program. We would like to submit that the teacher training in the IT Academies at Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga also need to be aligned to the IT@School program, and hence teachers should be taught on the same FOSS software platforms as well.

We had a meeting with Ms Vandita Sharma last November, along with Dr Richard Stallman, the founder of the global Free Software movement, and explained these issues. She was sympathetic to these arguments on the public benefits from FOSS and mentioned that the department would take appropriate action in this regard as is consistent with the public interest and those of the teachers and children in our government schools. She mentioned that the MOU with Microsoft is expiring in the coming academic year and and requested us to formally write to her in this regard, hence this letter.

We request that the Government take a firm stance in favor of adopting and promoting FOSS and chose FOSS in its software procurement to align the department to the government schools.

A few months back, organisations that are working to promote FOSS came together to establish a 'Coalition of the FOSS Community in India' whose goal is to collaborate with governments and other organisations to promote the adoption of FOSS, specially in the public sector. Several of the member of this coalition are based in Bangalore, including the Centre for Internet and Society, Sampada, Swatantra Malayalam Computing, Deeproot Linux, IT for Change etc. Faculty from IIM-B, Bangalore University as well as other academic institutions are also members of this coalition. Members of this coalition are willing to provide any technical support or guidance that the government may require in this regard. For eg, FOSS curriculum for both schools and for teacher training is available in Kerala and can be adapted to Karnataka schools. It should be noted that FOSS is already being used in many institutions in Karnataka, including IISC, IIIT-B, IIIT-H, IITK and many engineering colleges.

We hope our submission will be considered by the education department as well as by the government and we look forward to working with you to help bring these ideals into reality. If you think it would be useful, we could plan a small workshop / interaction, or even a series of workshops for different stakeholders, to discuss the issue in more detail and look at the implications of the choice of the software platforms for the ICT programs in the department.

We look forward to your response.

Yours truly

Gurumurthy Kasinathan and members of the FOSS community in India (list of signatories is provided overleaf)

May 9^th 2009.

Copy - Commissioner for Public Instruction, Sri Kumar Naik

Copy - State Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, Sri Selva Kumar

Copy - Principal Secretary, DPAR (Dept of Personnel and Administrative Reforms) e-Governance

Copy - Principal Secretary, Department of IT

enclosed:

Why Government of Karnataka should adopt and promote FOSS

Kerala IT@Schools project

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/letter-to-education-secretary-may-2009

Metaphors and Narratives

sachia — 2011-08-20T22:47:52Z

A course designed for Christ College, Bangalore

Status of Course: Basic, Semester II

Duration: 4 credits, 45 hrs.
Course Objectives

The course will serve as an introductory study of Internet technologies and the various social phenomena associated with them to investigate how the Internet becomes a catchall word for contemporary times. Students will explore the several layers of internets to look at the basic debates around questions of identity, subjectivity, gender, and governance, as they have emerged in the last four decades of cybercultures theory. The course will try and initiate new pedagogic practices of thought and research, looking at the several narratives of the internets available to us – from online communities, gaming and pornography to the wider debates around censorship, surveillance and privacy. The emphasis of the course is to de-mystify and consolidate the various narratives of the internet that are available to us from different disciplines and to provide a comprehensive and pedagogic frameworks to make meaning of the digitally inflected world that we live in.

Course Evaluation: Individual assignments from a list of topics or a topic worked out in consultation with the course instructors, depending upon the individual choice of the student.

Course Pedagogy: Contact session class room teaching, film screenings, seminars and discussion groups.

Course Content:

Module 1: Surfing the internets

The ‘Internet’ has become one of the most persuasive and prevalent metaphors of our times. As more and more sections of life and being get inflected by Information and Communication Technologies, more narratives of the ‘Internet’ are produced. These narratives often mystify the Internet – through misnomers or through frameworks from earlier technological paradigms which fail to understand or explain the ‘Internet’ – and are not in synchrony with one another. The first Module introduces the internets in their plurality and looks at the various disciplinary approaches to disentangling the internets.

A brief history of the internet technologies

· Origin and intentions

· The principles that built the internet

· The emergence of the WWW

Internet - Cyberspace

· Understanding Cyberspaces

· Convergent Histories of earlier technologies

· Bridging the virtual-real divide

Pre-Lecture Readings:

Gibson, William. Neruromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.

Huston, Geoff. “A Decade in the Life of the Internet”. The Internet Protocol Journal. Volume 11 No. 2. 2008.

Lyon, Katie Hafner and Matthew. Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New york: Simon and Shuster, 1996.

Robbins, Kevin. "Cyberspace and the World We Live In." In The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. London: Routledge, 1992.

Manovich, Lev. “The Database as a Symbolic Form” in The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2001.

Michael L. Benedikt, 1991, Cyberspace: First Steps, Cambridge: MIT Press

Module 2: The body in the digital paradigm

One of the most significant debates, across disciplines trying to engage with internet technologies, is on the site of the body. With cyberspaces providing multiple conditions within which the narratives of the body can be produced, there has been a radical revisiting of what it means to be human, to be gendered, to be sexual, and to be subject to various kinds of regulation and processes of censorship. This module looks at some of the seminal debates around these issues, by exploring various sites of cyberspatial identity and networking.

The body in the cyberspace

· The real body and the virtual body

· Spaces of regulation and bodies of surveillance

· Anthropomorphisation and the need to be human

Gender and Sexuality Online

· Obscenity, pornography and the sexual body

· The gendered being and the cyborg

· Subject to punishment: Role playing and fantasizing online

Pre-lecture readings:

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1996.

Balsamo, Anne. "The Virtual Body in Cyberspace." In The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Dibbell, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitan Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society." The village voice (1994).

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Social-Feminist in the Late 20th Century." In The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. London: Routledge, 2000.

Shah, Nishant. "Material cyborgs; asserted boundaries" European Journal of English Studies 12.2 .2008.

Sengupta, Suddhabrata. Signatures of the Apocalypse”. Mute: Culture and Politics after the Net. (2003)

http://www.metamute.org/en/Signatures-of-the-Apocalypse 5th July, 2005

Module 3: Circulation, Regulation and Intellectual Property

The economics of being online is closely related to the circuits of transmission, the viral networking and the questions of ownership and possession. As the boundaries between the State and the Market blur, there is an increased public and legal discourse on Intellectual Property, the processes of piracy and the need for regulation and intervention. The third module in the paper brings to the fore, the questions of freedom, of open access and equality, and the conditions of regulation that restrict a free flow of information online.

The value of Information

· Knowledge and Copyright

· Notions of possession and value of information online

· Digital Commons and the freedom of expression

Intellectual Property and the law

· Theft and piracy online

· Ownership and usage rights

· IPR and the role of digital technologies

Pre-Lecture Readings:

Lawrence Lessig. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Penguin. 2005.

Liang, Lawrence and Mayur Suresh. “Copyright/Copyleft : Myths about Copyright”.

(2006) http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-suresh010205.htm 21st August, 2008.

Rosemary J. Coombe. The Cultural Life of Intellectual Property. Duke University Press.

1998.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/curricula/courses-taught-and-designed-by-cis/metaphors-and-narratives

Access India Meet-Up, May 2009

sachia — 2011-08-31T10:50:37Z

Meet-up of members of Access India mailing list (open to invitees only)

Access India is an informal mailing list for the visually impaired community in India, in which subscribers primarily discuss technology and various aspects of its accessibility. Although the Access India mailing list, originally started in 2002, was intended to be a forum for discussing technology-related issues for the blind, it has over the years expanded to cover a whole range of social, educational, cultural, political and other issues of significance to the visually impaired community in India. It is one of the largest mailing lists of blind persons in India and has roughly 500 members from all over the country. Members of the Access India community in various cities hold informal gatherings from time to time. An annual national meeting of Access India members is also held, where various issues affecting the community are discussed in detail.

Agenda

2 PM: Welcome address by CIS, hosts of the meet.

2:05 PM: A round of introduction by participants.

2:30 PM: Presentation by representatives from AreaPal, a Bangalore-based social networking group founded by students. areapal allows users to locate and connect with people on the basis of their area and neighborhood. It is a genuine neighbourhood networking service. Apart from that, they also provide user-generated news, events and marketplace based information about a user’s area. For further information, please visit www.areapal.com.

2:40 PM: Question time.

2:50 PM: Presentation by representatives from 3I Infotech, a company which recently launched e-Mudhra, an initiative to roll out digital signatures. The main focus of the discussion will be the accessibility of their product. For additional information, please visit http://www.e-mudhra.com/

3:00 PM: Question time.

5. 3:10 PM: Presentation by representatives from iVolunteer, an organization that matches volunteers seeking volunteering opportunities
with organizations and individuals looking for volunteers in Bangalore. To learn more about the organization, please visit www.ivolunteer.in

3:20 PM: Question time.

6. 3:30 PM: Introduction to Inclusive planet. Inclusive Planet is in the process of building the largest online portal for disabled persons in India. It is intended to be a comprehensive portal containing various resources including employment resources, educational resources, a match-making
channel, accessible books section, discussion boards, resources for medical facilities, sports and entertainment center, etc. We hope to have a
representative from Inclusive Planet demonstrate the site for us, inform us about its scope and expansion plans, and tell us about how we can contribute toward making the site totally accessible. Please visit http://www.inclusiveplanet.org/

3:50 PM: Question time.

4:00 PM: Tea followed by open discussion on technology.

4:45 PM: Vote of thanks and conclusion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/access-india-meet-up-may-2009

Does India need its own Bayh-Dole?

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:58:46Z

Article by Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at Centre for Internet and Society in the Indian Express, 24 April 2009

Across the world battlelines are being drawn in the normally quiet areas of academia and research. The opposing sides: those in favour of open and collaborative research and development as a means to promote innovation, and those in favour of perpetuating the profits of big pharma companies and academic publishers. Currently before a Select Parliamentary Committee is a controversial law that will deny basic healthcare to millions by making medicines much more expensive, lock up academic knowledge, and help privatise publicly-funded research. The law titled the Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008 (“PUPFIP Bill”, http://bit.ly/pupfip-bill) was tabled last December in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister for Science and Technology. It was created in utmost secrecy by the Department of Science and Technology, without so much as a draft version having been shared with the public for comments.

The PUPFIP Bill is an Indian version of a 1980 US legislation, the Bayh-Dole Act, and as per its statement of objects and reasons, it seeks to promote creativity and innovation to enable India “to compete globally and for the public good”. It aims to do so by ensuring the protection of all intellectual property (meaning copyright, patent, trade mark, design, plant variety, etc.) that is the outcome of government-funded research. The IP rights will be held by the grant recipient, or by the government if the recipient does not choose to protect the IP. This might seem like a good way to enable technology transfer from research institutes to the industry, but that would be a very myopic view, disregarding all evidence related to the failure of the Bayh-Dole Act. Last year Prof. Anthony So of Duke University co-authored an extensive analysis of the Bayh-Dole Act, and warned of the consequences of such legislation in developing countries.

First, such a law will shift the focus of research. Researchers will be inclined to to concentrate their efforts on issues of interest to industry, and which can have immediate benefit. This would force vital fundamental research into neglect since it cannot be commercialised with ease. Research by Saul Lach and Mark Schankerman shows that scientists are influenced by royalty rates, and will thus tend to work on industrial research rather than fundamental research. This creates, or at least exacerbates, what is popularly known as the “90/10 gap”: the fact that ninety per cent of medical research money goes into problems affecting ten per cent of the world’s population, since that ten per cent is richer.

Secondly, this law will have chilling effects on scholarly communications and promote secrecy. The Bill has requirements of non-disclosure by the grantee and the researcher to enable the commercialisation of the research, and requires researchers and institutions to inform the government before all publication of research. Such bureaucratisation of research publications will stultify intellectual pursuits. Such secrecy and permission-raj culture is anathema to intellectual and academic pursuits, where knowledge is sought to be freely disseminated, to be criticised and further revised by others. In South Africa, academics affected by the recent passage of a PUPFIP-type legislation there are questioning its constitutionality as it restrains freedom of speech.

Thirdly, this will lead to our pillars of learning and research becoming like businesses. US universities like Columbia and Duke have found themselves at the receiving end of criticism for their brazen commercialism, encouraged by the Bayh-Dole Act. Instead of promoting greater access to health for the poor, and spending money on research, the universities were spending money on patent litigation in court. The outcome of one of these cases was the rejection of Duke University’s research exemption defence (universities are generally not bound to observe patents when they wished to conduct research). The court held that the university had “business interests” which the research unmistakably furthered. This points at a fundamental divide between universities as places of learning and as places of profiteering. The Open Source Drug Discovery (OSSD) project that the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is currently pursuing is a good attempt at promoting a culture of openness and transparency and collaboration, and thus ensuring cheaper and more efficient drug discovery. Even the US government is currently seeking to clear the way for generic versions of biotech drugs. In such an environment, it is counter-intuitive to bring in a regressive law, and goes against innovative efforts such as the OSSD, and will harm the generics industry.

Fourthly, the Bill assumes — erroneously, as an ever-growing amount of research demonstrates (Boldrin & Levine, Bessen & Meurer, etc.) — that intellectual property is the best and only way to promote creativity and innovation. All forms of intellectual property are state-granted monopolistic rights. At a basic level, competition promotes innovations while monopoly retards it. Much of modern science developed without the privilege of patents. Surely, Darwin and Newton were not encouraged by patents. And even whole industries — like the software industry — flourish without patent protection in most of the world.

The commendable aim of ensuring knowledge transfer can be accomplished much better if we refrain from giving away to private corporations (whether pharmaceutical manufacturers or publishers) exclusive rights to the product of publicly-funded research. Scientists and researchers can be encouraged to be consultants to various industrial projects, thereby ensuring that their expertise is tapped. Importantly, open access publishing which helps to ensure wide distribution and dissemination of knowledge is surely more desirable. That is the trend being followed the world over currently. The US president recently signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Bill which makes permanent the National Institutes of Health’s open access policy. By doing so, he symbolically rejected calls (such as the much-criticised Conyers Bill) to privatise publicly funded research outputs. Thus, there are many ways by which the government can encourage innovation and creativity, and further public interest. The PUPFIP Bill, which will have deleterious unintended consequences if it is passed, is not one of them.

-----

To read the article at the Indian Express website, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/does-india-need-its-own-bayh-dole

An Interview With Arjen Kamphuis

sachia — 2011-08-18T05:01:53Z

In an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Dutch open source activist Arjen Kamphuis discussed his experience of successfully working with the government for a policy mandating open standards for all government IT in the Netherlands.

In 2002 Arjen Kamphuis co-authored a parliament motion to mandate open standards for all government IT in the Netherlands. The motion was unanimously accepted and, in 2007, became policy. The Netherlands thus became the first western country to make the use of open standards in public sector IT mandatory. Arjen is now working to e xport this set of policies to other European countries with the help of local political parties and business partners.

Arjen discussed his experience of lobbying for this policy change and some other questions related to his work as a consultant on IT strategy and the implications of nanotechnology and biotechnology in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society.

The Centre for Internet and Society: What is the Dutch government's policy on FOSS and Open Standards specifically and intellectual property rights in general? Provide some history, name the main lobbying factions in the Netherlands and their policy positions. What was your role in the formulation of these policies?

Arjen Kamphuis: The national action plan 'The Netherlands in Open Connection' is the government's answer to a unanimous vote in parliament in November 2002. The parliament stated that the market for desktop software was not functioning as it should and that significant vendor lock-in effects were harming both individual citizens and society as a whole. It requested maximum efforts from the government to change this situation. The suggested method for changing was mandating open standards in all public sector IT and actively supporting the adoption of open source software wherever functionally and technically feasible.

I was one of the people who got this process started by contacting a member of parliament from the Green Party. This was triggered by my inability to access the website of the national railway on 1 January 2002. The website had been redesigned and only allowed access to visiters with Internet Explorer. As a Linux user, I had previously had comparable problems with local government websites and electronic tax forms (usage of which was mandatory for small businesses like my consulting start-up).

After the unanimous vote in parliament, several people in the Dutch open source community, including me, kept the pressure on the government by monitoring major procurements and writing questions for the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to ask the government. In 2004 this led to a breakthrough when the Justice Ministry ran a project to procure 147 million euros' worth of desktop software without going through a proper multi-vendor selection process. They only talked to one vendor, and that is against European Union regulations. Since some of the civil servants working on this project were gagged, we can conclude that some people were aware they were breaking the law, yet went ahead anyway.

When the news broke we made sure the MEPs were armed with the proper questions the next day, and the contract was dropped. In reply to questions asked to the government by the MEPs, the responsible ministers admitted that the government was very dependent on Microsoft for basic functioning of its office environments; that this was a problem; and that the government would take active steps to remedy this situation by moving forward with the requests made in 2002 by parliament.

Two-and-a-half years and an election later, a new under-Minister for Economic Affairs, Frank Heemskerk, took up the challenge and promised a comprehensive policy. I gave input for this plan in mid-2007 and it was formally published and adopted later that year as a national policy for all government and public-sector (i.e. tax funded) organisations.

The policy has three objectives:

improving interoperability between public sector organisations;
lowering the vendor-dependence of the public sector;
improving the functioning of the software market and supporting the Dutch knowledge economy

Some of the practical measures are the mandating of the use of open standards in all public sector organisations. Whenever software is procured, open source should be considered and preferred whenever functionally adequate. These two very basic rules change the entire market for IT in the Dutch public sector (40% of the entire market) and is having a profound effect on the way software vendors offer their products as well as the negotiating power of the client organisations.

I continue to advise both the decision makers and the civil servants overseeing the implementation of the policy.

CIS: What is the current status on the implementation of these policies?

AK: After a slow start the government organisation that is responsable for overseeing the implementation is now up and running. The basic problem is lack of awareness about both the practical value that open standards and open source software can contribute and the underlying political reasons for making it the preferred option for government information processing.

Thus a lot of the work for the next few years will be communicating these ideas to civil servants (be they IT professionals or managers who have other jobs). The policy helps a lot because it puts some serious weight behind the whole process. The fact that government organisations have to support Open Document Format for instance significantly heightens their interest in the technical subject matter!

So the policy gives the drive needed to get things moving and now it is up to us to communicate the how and the why in a way that is understandable for people who are new to these concepts. I have no doubt it will be a long process, we have over 20 years of proprietary legacy built up in our public institutions. Replacing those systems with open alternatives will take many years. All the greater a reason to proceed with some urgency.

The complete policy document has been translated into English and released under Creative Commons Licence:
http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf

In December 2007 I gave a talk in Berlin. Here a summary, slides and video are available:
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2387.en.html

CIS: What can a country like India learn from the Dutch government's experience in eGovernance and ICT in Education?

AK: I am not familiar with the Indian political process but these are some of my lessons learned:

- The government will not do anything unless constant and significant pressure is applied by citizens. Politicians and civil servants only act if the pain of acting is less than the pain of not acting. Change is achieved by citizens standing up and working on these problems without guarantee of any reward or even achieving any results (it took us five years to get from a unanimous vote in parliament to an actual policy).

- Big IT companies may be your friend or your enemy. But even if they are your friends they generally will not be at the forefront of political action that could be seen as controversial. Once policies are pushed beyond the controversial stage and have been adopted as official policy some of them will support it. Others, with much to lose, will fight you and the policy every step of the way. The more money or loss of market share is involved the more radical the methods that are employed. Massive lobbying, applying political pressure through foreign governments, bribery and all kinds of other activities are well-funded, well organised and very common.

- In moving forward with these policies it's the lack of knowledge and vision with the the management of institutions that is by far the biggest bottleneck. Without a clear policy from the top it is impossible to get things moving in most organisations.

- Another big problem in switching over local governments and other smaller organisations is the fact that many of the advantages of such a switch is national and/or macro-economic in nature while the initial cost and risk is micro-economic in nature. Hence again the need for a national policy.

- The funding required to make significant improvements is often not that large compared to the existing operational budgets. Investing in the smart use of IT in education for instance is something that can pay for itself very quickly. This is generally also true for adoption of open source and open standards in general. By just reducing the yearly spend on software licences by 1% the entire government program can be funded.

- Simply stopping the procurement of new licences (while continuing the use of those already paid for) can often free up enough money to finance a migration process. This has been the case in the city of Amsterdam and the French Gendarmes.

- The actual value of better government services or education is hard to quantify in monetary terms. How do we value improved responsiveness, transparency, national sovereignty in information processing and supporting local service companies instead of foreign software companies?

- IT education should focus on understanding methods and principles, not products. The product life-cycle is 18-36 months, the educational process takes many years and the length of a career is decades. Any education with a focus on products leads to knowledge that is irrelevant by the time the degree is finished. Teach people to drive a car, not just a Volkswagen or Tata.

- The cost of physical books per student per year in the Netherlands is now greater that the cost of a laptop. This is insane since the content of those books is generally written by teachers who get paid very little for it. Using the funds to pay those teachers instad of the publishers and releasing the content under a free licence will free up resources to develop better educational programs and provide all students with computational tools to use them. All without increasing the total cost compared to our current situation. The financial numbers will be different for India but the basic principle is the same and works even better given the larger scale of India. The cost of producing and distributing electronic educational content will drop practically to zero when compared to physical on a per-student basis. Using funds to support teachers in the use of e-learning with open content is the way forward.

CIS: How can a local support environment for open technologies be created? Can local SMEs ever substitute for the transnational proprietary giants?

AK: Whether SMEs can supplant multinationals depends on the product being replaced. CPU manufacturing requires a very high upfront investment in R&D and manufacturing capability. This is usually far beyond any but a handful of companies. With software development and services things are very different. Software development only requires a human with programming skills, a good idea and a computer. The Free Software Movement has shown clearly that distributed methods of software development can lead to high quality products with excellent local support systems. Local organisations (or communities that are not even organisations) can often understand local needs and respond to local changes much better, faster and cheaper than large, lumbering corporations. If local organisations work together globally to share knowledge (and code) for those parts they all need they can beat any centralised system.

What many senior business and government leaders are struggling with is the realisation that many of the 'truths' they have learned while studying economics or business management or some such subject turn out to be empirically incorrect. For example: it has become clear there is no causal relationship between the cost of software and its quality or utility. This must be a fact that is difficult to truly understand and accept if you have been brought up believing the gospel of the Anglo-Saxon economic worldview. The current economic crisis is a great help in questioning some of those beliefs and opens up room for new ideas about economic vs. societal value of technology and its relationship to businesses trying to earn a living.

CIS: Could you tell us about the Dutch government's rollback on electronic voting machines? What is your opinion on the use of electronic voting machines in the upcoming elections in India?

AK: From the mid '80s onward, voting computers were introduced in the Netherlands. By 2006, the vast majority of all elections were being performed by proprietary computer systems. Citizens would press a button and then go home to watch TV. Some software that no-one could control, monitor or properly audit would spit out a result and that would be it -- new government. Only a handful of engineers (all working for the companies that made the voting computers) actually knew what the software did and could make the computer system say anything they wanted.

When the city of Amsterdam (the last holdout using paper ballots) announced in 2006 that it was moving to voting computers, a group of activists organised a campaign to ban voting computers. We felt that the very nature of democracy was under attack by running the election process in a way that makes it impossible for ordinary citizens to check the validity of the election. It also makes fraud a lot harder to detect. Detectability of fraud is the one of the primary properties any election process should have. We all know election fraud is also possible with non-electronic means but keeping it a secret is much harder in such cases (as we saw in the US and Zimbabwean election over the last years). There was a actual case of suspected voter fraud in a Dutch municipal election and the judge concluded that while the fraud seemed likely it could not be proven. Regrettably for the suspected council member the fraud could also not be disproven. This shows very clearly that such a method is wholly unsuitable for application in real democratic processes.

Through lots of media attention, a few spectacular hacks showing the technical insecurity of the systems, and legal pressure, we forced the government in 2007 to reverse the approval of the voting computers and go back to an all-paper balloting system. This reversal is part of a global backlash against electronic voting systems. Comparable changes have been going on in many US states and all over Europe.

I think India should have voting process that can be understood and monitored by its citizens. This understanding and monitoring should be possible without requiring advanced degrees in computer science, software engineering and electronics. The only way to have such a process is when there is a paper ballot involved. Such a ballot could be printed by a computer to increase the ease of use but all-electronic solutions are ruled out by the basic demands of what a democracy is.

India should move to either all paper systems or voting computer backed-up by a voter-verified paper trail.

Are more extensive telling of the tale can be found here: http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English

This is a link to the Berlin CCC conference of Rop Gongrijp's 2007 presentation (with video): http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html

http://www.blackboxvoting.org has a wealth of information on this subject.

CIS: What are the services provided by Gendo? Could you describe some of the projects that you have undertaken?

AK: My company (gendo.nl) also provides consulting services in the area of IT strategy, development of open IT architectures and implementing those in mixed open source/proprietary environments. We are currently advising both national and local government organisations in the implementation of policies and plans to move to open standards and open source software. We are also involved in projects where we do the actual development and implementation of new systems to enable innovation and lessen the dependance of our client on proprietary systems. Currently we are involved with a healthcare organisation where we are assisting in re-architecting their entire IT environment to allow service innovation, lower cost and increase information security.

We have also been involved in information security work and other auditing in the financial services and government sector. Here our activities focus on the grey area between technology and process.

Outside the field of IT we also do other consulting work such as scenario planning and strategic future studies, mostly for large corporate clients. Most of the big Anglo-Dutch multinationals such as Shell or Unilever are on our client list. We also have a large number of clients in the financial services and insurance sector.

For all of these clients we organise presentations and brainstorming sessions, often preceded by research. This helps the leaders in those organisations think about the nature of rapid, technology-driven changes in their markets and the world in general. These insights are then translated into new products, services and ways of delivering them.

Forgive me if this all sounds a bit vague but with many of these clients there is some confidentiality agreement involved.

CIS: Could you tell us more about yourself? Maybe you would like to share some formative experiences.

AK: Writing my first paper on black holes at age 11 showed me that grown-ups usually also don't know what is going on in the universe either. Despite rumours to the contrary parents, teachers, senior managers and politicians are not all-knowing and are stumbling about just like most two-year-olds where complex issues are concerned.

Over the last quarter century I've had this intuition reconfirmed again and again. In a world that is changing faster and faster experience becomes obsolete rather quickly and wisdom is no longer the sole purview of older, more senior, people. We need young smart-asses who have not yet learned what is impossible, so they go out there and do it.

-----

Arjen Kamphuis (born 1972) studied Science & Policy at Utrecht University and worked for IBM as Unix specialist, Tivoli consultant and software instructor. As IT-strategy consultant at Twynstra Gudde he was involved in starting up Kennisnet, the Dutch educational network. Since 2001 he is operating as an independent adviser of companies and governments. He co-authored, in 2002, a motion in parliament that ultimately turned, in 2007, into a full-fledged policy of the Dutch government mandating the use of open source software in all government and public sector IT operations.

Arjen at present divides his attention between IT-policy and the convergence of IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology and its social and economic implications. His customers include: Shell, Unilever, Pfizer, Stork, and various hospitals, governmental institutions and insurance companies. Arjen guest lectures on technology policy at various universities and colleges.

When not consulting Arjen is actively involved in (digital) civil liberties, the open source movement and criticizing the war on terror.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis

Centre for Internet and Society

Letter from Civil Society Organizations to CII

Govt accepts panel report against narrowing of Indian patent law

Presentation at TIFR: 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons'

Abstract

About Dr.Subbiah Arunachalam

CPOV: Critical Point of View

CPOV: Critical Point of View

Wikipedia and the Politics of Open Knowledge

Descriptions of the Sessions/Fields of Interest

Production Details

Contact info:

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

Sub: Comments on Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance (version 2)

Issue 1: Possibility of following letter of policy while violating its spirit

Issue 2: Patenting and licensing of government-developed standards

Issue 3: No framework provided for review or phasing out interim standards

Issue 4: Problematic definition in the glossary

Open Access

Presentation at IDRC: ‘Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons -- A Southern Perspective’

Biography

Notice biographique

Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report

Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:

Letter on South Africa's IPRs from Publicly Financed R&D Regulations

WIPO Broadcast Treaty and Webcasting

Legal regimes for broadcasting

Meaning of broadcasting and netcasting

Non-justifications for webcasting's inclusion

Problems if webcasting is included

Differences between webcasting and broadcasting

Conclusion

Seminar on Exceptions and Limitations in Copyright

Letter to Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Advocating Adoption of FOSS in State IT Academies

Metaphors and Narratives

Status of Course: Basic, Semester II Duration: 4 credits, 45 hrs. Course Objectives

Access India Meet-Up, May 2009

Agenda

Does India need its own Bayh-Dole?

An Interview With Arjen Kamphuis

Status of Course: Basic, Semester II

Duration: 4 credits, 45 hrs.
Course Objectives