Centre for Internet and Society

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର: ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ପାଠାଗାର ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନର ନୂଆ ମୁହଁ

subha — 2016-01-28T07:25:34Z

Many would be searching for Odia-language books on the internet. Many would feel like correcting typos and other mistakes when found while reading a book, even online. Odia Wikisource is as a platform all those book lovers who want to read Odia books online and want to make more books available online.

The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Your Story on January 12, 2016.

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଅନେକେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହି ଖୋଜୁଥିବେ । ପୁରୁଣା ବହିରେ ପ୍ରକାଶନ ବା ଛାପା-ଜନିତ ଭୁଲ ଭଟକା ଆଖିରେ ପଡ଼ିଲେ ଯେମିତି ଆମେ ବହିରେ କଲମରେ ଗାର ମାରିଦେଉ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ସେମିତି ଭୁଲଟିଏ ଦେଖିଲେ ଭୁଲଟି ସୁଧାରିବାକୁ ହାତ ବଳିବ । ଏ ସବୁ ପ୍ରକାର ଦ୍ୱନ୍ଦର ସମାଧାନ ଏଣିକି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପାଠାଗାର "ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର" ଦ୍ୱାରା ସମ୍ଭବ ।

ଭାଷାଟିଏ ବଢ଼ିଲେ ବଢ଼ନ୍ତି ବ୍ୟବହାରୀ । ବଢ଼େ ସେ ଭାଷାର ଅଭିଲେଖ । ଆଉ ଆମ ଭାଷାଟି କେଇ ଶହ-ହଜାର ବର୍ଷ ଭିତରେ ଶାଖା ପ୍ରଶାଖା ମେଲି ଯେ କେଡ଼େ ବିଶାଳ ହୋଇଛି ତାହା ଆମେ ଜାଣୁ । ଭାଷା ନଈଟି ବହୁ ଜାଗା ଦେଇ ବହୁ ବହୁ ଅନେକ ବହି ମଧ୍ୟ ଉତୁରିଉଠିଛି । ସେ ବହିମାନଙ୍କ ଭିତରୁ ଜଣାଶୁଣା ଲେଖକଙ୍କ ବହିଗୁଡ଼ିକ ଭଲ ଭାବେ ସଂରକ୍ଷିତ ହୋଇ ପୁନଃମୁଦ୍ରଣ ହେବା ସହିତ ପିଢ଼ି ପିଢ଼ି ଧରି ପଢ଼ାହେଉଛି । ହେଲେ ଗୁରୁତ୍ତ୍ୱପୂର୍ଣ ତଥ୍ୟ ଥାଇ ମଧ୍ୟ ଅନେକ ବଣମଲ୍ଲୀ ସମ ଉପାଦେୟ ବହି ପ୍ରଚାର ପ୍ରସାର ଅଭାବରୁ ଲୋକଲୋଚନକୁ ଆସିପାରିନାହିଁ । ତା ଛଡ଼ା ଅନେକ ବହି ପ୍ରକାଶକ ଓ ଲେଖକଙ୍କ ସମ୍ବଳ ଅଭାବ ହେତୁ ବା ପାଠକଙ୍କ ଅନାଗ୍ରହ ଯୋଗୁ ସାରା ଓଡ଼ିଶା ବା ଓଡ଼ିଶା ବାହାରକୁ ଯାଇପାରନ୍ତି ନାହିଁ । ଏମିତି ଅବସ୍ଥାରେ ଆମ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ ପିଢ଼ି ସବୁଯାକ ବହି ନ ହେଲେ ମଧ୍ୟ କିଛି ବହି ପାଇବେ ତ?

ଆଗରୁ ଆମର କୋଠକାଠିଆ ସମାଜ ଥିଲା । ଏକାଠି ବହୁଲୋକ ବସି ଆଳାପ ଆଲୋଚନା କରୁଥିଲେ । ବହି ପଢ଼ାଠୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରି ନ୍ୟାୟ ବିଚାର ଯାଏ ସବୁ ହେଉଥିଲା ସେଇଠି । ଆମ ବଡ଼ବଡ଼ୁଆମାନେ ସବୁ ଗୁରୁତ୍ତ୍ୱପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ସିଦ୍ଧାନ୍ତ ସେଇଠି ନେଉଥିଲେ । ଅନେକ ସ୍ଥାନରେ ବୁଦ୍ଧଙ୍କ ଛବି ଖୋଜିଲେ ଏବେ ବି ଗଛ ତଳେ ଚଉକିପରେ ଏକାଠି ହୋଇ ଲୋକେ ବିଚାର କରୁଥିବା ଦେଖିବାକୁ ମିଳେ । ପରେ ଭାଗବତ ଟୁଙ୍ଗିରେ ଆମର ଭାଗବତ ପଢ଼ାହେଲା । ସେ ଥିଲା କେଇଘଣ୍ଟା ପାଇଁ ପାଠାଗାର ଆଉ ବାକି ବେଳ ପାଇଁ ଚଳଣି ଆଉ ନ୍ୟାୟଘର । ପରେ ବହିର ଆଲୋଚନାଠାରୁ ସଂଗ୍ରହ ଓ ସଂରକ୍ଷଣ ଲୋଡ଼ା ପଡ଼ିବାରୁ ପାଠାଗାର ଆରମ୍ଭ ହେଲା । ତେବେ ଧୀରେ ଧୀରେ ଲୋକେ ବହି ପଢ଼ାଠାରୁ ଦୂରେଇ ଯିବାରୁ ପାଠାଗାର ବଣମଲ୍ଲୀ ସମାନ ହୋଇପଡ଼ିଲାଣି ।

ଆଜିର ପିଢ଼ି ଯେବେ ପୂରାପୂରି ଡିଜିଟାଲ ମୁହାଁ ହୋଇସାରିଲେଣି ଆମକୁ ବିଚାରିବାକୁ ହେବ ଏ ରାଶି ରାଶି ପୋଥି କାହା ପାଇଁ । ସମାଜଟିଏ ତା'ର ଆଗାମୀ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତର ଆଖିରେ ସପନ ଦେଖେ । ତେଣୁ ଅଧୁନାତନ ପିଢ଼ିର ଆବଶ୍ୟକତାକୁ ଅଣଦେଖା କରି କେବଳ ବହି ଛାପିଲେ ପାଠାଗାର ଯେ ଅଳିଆଗଦାରେ ପରିଣତ ନ ହେବ କିଏ କହିବ?

ଆଗାମୀ ପିଢ଼ି ପାଇଁ କଣ ଲେଖା ହେବ କଣ ଲେଖା ନ ହେବ ଆଉ କିପରି ଲେଖା ହେବ ତାହା ଏକ ଜଟିଳ ବିଷୟ । ଭାଷା କହିଲେ ଖାଲି ସାହିତ୍ୟକୁ ବୁଝାଏ ନାହିଁ ବରଂ ସାହିତ୍ୟ ଭାଷାର ଏକ ଅଂଶ ବୋଲି ଅନେକଙ୍କୁ ବୁଝିବାକୁ ପଡ଼ିବ । ବିଭିନ୍ନ ଧରଣର ରଚନା ଓ ସେସବୁ ସାଇତା ହେବାର ଆବଶ୍ୟକତା ବହୁ ଭାବେ ରହିଛି । ଆମେ ଆଗକୁ ବଢ଼ିବା ବେଳେ ଆଉ ନୂଆ ଭାବିବା ବେଳେ ଆଗରୁ ଘଟିଥିବା ଘଟଣା ଆମ ପାଦ ତଳର ନିଅଁ ଭଳି କାମ କରେ । ତେଣୁ ନୂଆ ପିଢ଼ି ବହିଠାରୁ ଦୂରେଇ ଯାଉଛନ୍ତି ବୋଲି ଚୋରକୁ ମାନ ମାରି ଖପରାରେ ଖାଇବା ବୋକାମି ହେବ । ବେଳେବେଳେ ତାଙ୍କୁ ଅଣଦେଖା କରି କେବଳ ଛପା ବହି ପଢ଼ୁଥିବା ଲୋକଙ୍କ ପାଇଁ ବହି ଛପାହେଉଛି ବୋଲି ବୋଧହୁଏ । କାଗଜ ପରେ ଛପା ବହି ଯେତେ ନିଜର ଲାଗିଲେ ମଧ୍ୟ ଦିନେ ନା ଦିନେ ଚିରିବ କି ଉଇଙ୍କ ଆହାର ହେବ । ଆଉ ଆଗତ ଦିନ ପାଇଁ ତାକୁ ସାଇତି ରଖିବାର ସଳଖ ବାଟଟିଏ ହେଲା ତା'ର ଡିଜିଟାଲ କପି ତିଆରିବା । ଇଂରାଜୀ, ଫ୍ରେଞ୍ଚ, ସ୍ପାନିସ, ଜର୍ମାନ, ଜାପାନୀ ଆଦି ଭାଷାରେ ଲେଖା ପୋଥିପତର ସବୁ ସେଠାର ପାଠକ ଆଜି ବି ଆମ ଭଳି ବହି ଧରି ପଢ଼ିବାକୁ ଭଲ ପାଆନ୍ତି ।

ଲଣ୍ଡନରେ କିଛି ଦିନର ରହଣି କାଳରେ ଦେଖି ଅଭିଭୂତ ହେଲି ସେଠା ଲୋକଙ୍କ ବହି ପଢ଼ାର ସଉକ । ଟ୍ରେନ ଷ୍ଟେସନ ବାଡ଼ାକୁ ଆଉଜି କିଏ ପଢ଼ୁଛି ତ କିଏ ଜନଗହଳି ଥାନରେ କଣଟିଏ ବାଛି ଫରଦ ପରେ ଫରଦ ଲେଉଟଉଛି । କିନ୍ତୁ ସେଠାର ପାଖାପାଖି ସବୁ ନୂଆ ବହି ଉଭୟ ଛପା ଓ ଇ-ବହି ବିକ୍ରୀ ହେଉଛି ।

ନୂଆ ଟେକନୋଲୋଜି ଆସିଗଲା ବୋଲି ପୁରୁଣା ପୂରା ଫୋପାଡ଼ିଦେବା କେବଳ ମଝିମଝିଆ ସମାଜର ଲକ୍ଷଣ । ହେଲେ ଉଚ୍ଚତର ସମାଜରେ ପୁରୁଣା ଓ ନୂଆର ବିଭା ସବୁଠି ଦେଖିବାକୁ ମିଳେ । ତେଣୁ ଆମ ବହିମାନଙ୍କ ବିକ୍ରି କମିଯିବ ବୋଲି ହାଉଳି ଖାଇ ଆମେ ଏକ ପିଢ଼ିକୁ ଆମ ବହିର ବାସନାପାଣିରୁ ବଞ୍ଚିତ କରୁନୁ ତ? ଯଦି ସତରେ ଆମ ପର ପିଢ଼ି ଅମା ବହିଯାକ ନ ପଢ଼ନ୍ତି ତାହେଲେ ଏ ଜାତିର ଇତିହାସରେ ଆମେ ଲାଙ୍ଗୁଡ଼ଜକା ଆଉ ଚିରକାଳ ଦୋଷୀ ହୋଇ ରହିହେବୁ ।

ଆଉ ବହି କିଣି ହାତରେ ଧରି ପଢ଼ୁଥିବା ଲୋକଟି କେବେ ହେଁ ମୋବାଇଲ-ଟ୍ୟାବଲେଟ-କିଣ୍ଡିଲ-କମ୍ପୁଟରରେ ପଢ଼ିବାକୁ ସୁଖ ମଣିବ ନାହିଁ । କିନ୍ତୁ ଫ୍ଲାଇଟରେ ଯିବା ବେଳେ ଲୋଡ଼ା ପଡ଼ିଲେ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ମାଧ୍ୟମରେ ପଢ଼ିବ । ଆଉ ବିଶାଳ ଗ୍ରନ୍ଥର କେଉଁ କୋଣରେ ଲେଖାଟିଏ ଖୋଜିବାକୁ ଚାହିଁଲେ ସବୁ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ନ ଖୋଜି ପାଠକଟିଏ ସଳଖେ ସଳଖେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଖୋଜିପାରିବ ।

ବହିର ଡିଜିଟାଲ ରୂପ ତିଆରିବାରେ ସୃଜନିକା ନାମକ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନର ଅବଦାନ କାହିଁରେ କେତେ । ପାଖାପାଖି ଦେଢ଼ ଲକ୍ଷ ପୃଷ୍ଠା ସ୍କାନ କରି ସେମାନେ ଅନେକ ଇ-ବହି ତିଆରି କରିସାରିଲେଣି । ୧୮୫୦-୧୯୫୦ ଭିତରେ ଛପା ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପତ୍ରପତ୍ରିକାସବୁ ପ୍ରାୟ ଏଥିରେ ସାମିଲ । odia.org ନାମକ ଆଉ ଏକ ୱେବସାଇଟ କିଛି ନିଜ ଉଦ୍ୟମରେ ଆଉ କିଛି ବାକିମାନଙ୍କ ସହଯୋଗରେ କିଛି ଓଡ଼ିଆ ବହି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଇଛନ୍ତି । ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଆରକାଇଭ (archive.org) ସାଇଟରେ ବହିସବୁ ପିଡ଼ିଏଫ ଭାବେ ଅପଲୋଡ଼ କଲେ ତାହା ମୋବାଇଲ ଓ ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ଆକାରରେ ଦେଖିବାକୁ ସୁବିଧା । ହେଲେ ଲୋଡ଼ାଥିଲା ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ପାଠାଗାରଟିଏ । ହେଲେ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ଯେତେବେଳେ ଖାଲି ପାଠକ ରହିଲେ କି ମଉଜ? ଦିଆନିଆ ନଥାଇ ସେ କି ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ? ପାଠକ ଯଦି କେଉଁଠି ଭୁଲଟିଏ ଦେଖିଲେ ତାକୁ ବଦଳାଇ ପାରୁଥିବେ ତାହେଲେ ସିନା । ଅନେକେ ହୁଏତ ଜାଣିନଥିବେ ଏ ସମାଧାନର ବାଟଟିଏ ରହିଛି ।

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/b13b21b3cb3fb06-b09b07b15b3fb2ab3eb20b3eb17b3eb30-b13b21b3cb3fb06b30b47-b21b3fb1cb3fb1fb3eb32-b2ab3eb20b3eb17b3eb30-b06b28b4db26b33b28b30-b28b42b06-b2eb41b39b01

Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of ‘Jihadi’ Content

subha — 2015-02-10T02:43:17Z

The article on online censorship by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Global Voices on January 6, 2015.

Click to view the article on Global Voices here.

Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of ‘Jihadi’ Content · Global Voices


Mock-up of a blocked URL (Image: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-by-SA 3.0)

The Government of India in the last week of 2014 asked Internet service providers (ISPs) to block 32 websites including code repository Github, video streaming sites Vimeo and Dailymotion, online archive Internet Archive, free software hosting site Sourceforge and many other websites on the basis of hosting anti-India content from the violent extremist group known as ISIS.

The blanket block on many resourceful sites has been heavily criticized on social media and blogs by reviving the hashtag #GoIblocks that evolved in the past against internet censorship by the government.

Nikhil Pahwa at MediaNama notes that this time many ISPs published the list of the blocked sites:

Typically, users are not informed about which websites are blocked, so this was a welcome move from the ISP.

“Say No to Censorship. #GOIBlocks” (taken from Facebook page of Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu)

In 2012, opposition party leader Narendra Modi (who is now India's Prime Minister) tweeted against the URL blocks by the earlier ruling of India's National Congress when then-Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal ordered to block 300 websites. Many eyebrows were raised when Modi repeated the move this time around.

Internet censorship in India has been increasingly prominent since 1999 when Pakistani newspaper Dawn was blocked by the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited for post-Kargil War views against India. These caught heavy criticism from netizens, often under the hashtag #IdiotKapilSibal. Since then there have been many instances of government-mediated censorship, particularly with the enactment of India's Information Technology Act of 2000.

Arvind Gupta, head of Information Technology for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, tweeted to clarify that the sites were blocked as advised by the Anti-Terrorism Squad.

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi
Follow

The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. 1/2

3:11 PM - 31 Dec 2014

362 Retweets 82 favorites

After agreeing to remove anti-India content posted by accounts that appeared to have some association with ISIS, weebly.com, vimeo.com, Pastebin, dailymotion.com and gist.github.com were unblocked.

These websites have undertaken not to allow pasting of such propaganda information on their website and also work with the government to remove such material as per the compliance with the laws of land.

- Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India (posted in Business Standard)

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi
Follow

Action has been initiated to unblock -- http://weebly.com , http://vimeo.com , http://dailymotion.com and (1/2)

12:36 AM - 1 Jan 2015

63 Retweets 25 favorites

Arvind Gupta ✔ @buzzindelhi

gist.github.com :: http://wap.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/government-decides-to-unblock-four-websites-out-of-32-114123101162_1.html … (2/2)

12:36 AM - 1 Jan 2015

39 Retweets 12 favorites

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-january-6-2015-subhashish-panigrahi-indian-netizens-criticize-online-censorship-of-jihadi-content

India's Supreme Court Axes Online Censorship Law, But Challenges Remain

subha — 2015-03-27T02:38:20Z

The Supreme Court of India took a remarkable step to protect free expression on March 24, 2015, striking down controversial section 66A of the IT Act that criminalized “grossly offensive” content online. In response to a public interest litigation filed by Indian law student Shreya Singhal, the court made this landmark judgement calling the section “vague”, “broad” and “unconstitutional”. Since Tuesday's announcement, the news has trended nationally on Twitter, with more than 50,000 tweets bearing the hashtags #Sec66A and #66A.

The blog entry by Subhashish Panigrahi was originally published by Global Voices Online on March 25, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Section 66A allowed police to arrest any person who sent online communications deemed “grossly offensive” or known to be false. This has enabled the government take down many websites with allegedly objectionable content. Among various cases since the law was updated in 2008, two people were arrested for making comments on Facebook regarding India's prime minister Narendra Modi and one man was arrested for commenting on public service closures following the death of political leader Bal Thakrey.

The now-defunct Section 66A reads as follows:

66-A. Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc.
—Any person who sends, by means of a computer
resource or a communication device,—
(a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or
(b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal
intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device; or
(c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or
recipient about the origin of such messages, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine.

Internet rights advocate and lawyer Pranesh Prakash, who works with the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, has been one of the law's most outspoken critics in recent years. Immediately following the ruling, he tweeted:

Nikhil Pahwa, independent journalist and founder of the MeddiaNama blog, offered his take on the ruling:

This is a great decision for freedom of speech in India…66A is far too vague, and lends itself to arbitrary implementation by the police, especially phrases like “grossly offensive”, annoyance, inconvenience, ill will. Remember that even the right to offend is an integral part of free speech.

Journalist and author Sagarika Ghose sarcastically wondered if the government of India would retroactively offer recompense for all of the actions taken against citizens for violating 66A.

Some were playful in their response to the decision. Siddharth Sing set out to “test” the efficacy of the ruling with a tweet mocking prominent public figures in Indian politics:

Section 69, which provides authorities with the power to censor websites that “create communal disturbance, social disorder, or affect India's relationship with other countries” was upheld however. The Court has yet to clarify this decision. CIS India's Pranesh Prakash tweeted:

Unfortunately 69A (website blocking) has been upheld despite many issues, incl lack of transparency. Need to read full judgment to see why.

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) March 24, 2015

Tuesday's decision comes after the government of India was heavily criticized in January 2015 for blocking 32 websites in the country.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-march-25-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-indias-supreme-court-axes-online-censorship-law-but-challenges-remain

South Asia's Largest Wikimedia Conference Kicks Off in India

subha — 2016-08-08T01:39:25Z

Wiki Conference India 2016, the largest gathering of the contributors of Wikipedia (the multilingual online encyclopaedia) and its sister projects called Wikimedia projects, begins August 5 in Landran, in the Indian state of Punjab.

The blog post was published by Global Voices on August 5, 2016.

The conference returns five years after its first iteration in 2011. This year's event is focused on bringing the contributor communities of South Asian and English-language Wikimedia projects from the Indian subcontinent under one roof.

A few hundred participants including 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will meet at the Chandigarh Group of College campus, where the conference is being held. Organizers have planned a series of presentations, talks and workshops—related to major topics like gender bias in Wikipedia, technology, global reach, education, volunteer leadership building and engagement and program design—to occupy participants for all three days.

For the separate technical sessions, a pre-event needs assessment survey was conducted widely to collect input about the technical challenges that volunteer contributors are facing. A hackathon is in the works to address some of the major technical challenges of different language communities.

The Wikimedia community in South Asia as a whole and the Wikipedia community, both of which rely on volunteers, are creating a massive repository of freely licensed content in the Indian languages on the Internet. Currently Wikipedia itself is available in about 293 languages. Other Wikimedia projects—Wikisource, a free library; Wiktionary, a multilingual online dictionary; and Wikimedia Commons, the world's largest media repository housing hundreds and thousands of images, audio, video and other media files—will add a few hundred more projects to this list.

Some of the noted guests who are addressing the gathering include Wikimedia Foundation's board member Nataliia Tymkiv, the organization's newly promoted Executive Director Katherine Maher, Punjabi-language poet Surjit Patar, and Internet freedom advocate and Centre for Internet and Society's Executive Director Sunil Abraham.

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon has been running for about a month prior to the conference in 12 Indian language Wikipedias and one European language Wikipedia (Ukrainian Wikipedia). The main languages in this edit-a-thon are Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The focus of this sprint is to expand the content reach of Wikipedia on Punjab, Punjabi people, and their language and culture as a symbolic gesture to show gratitude to Punjab where the event is happening. Articles about Punjab or Punjab people in other local languages will help many local readers of Wikipedia learn about Punjab in their own language. So far, more than 1,900 article have been created by about 100 Wikipedians. The edit-a-thon will be also running during the conference so that the participants can also contribute to this activity.

Konkani language is the official language of the Indian state of Goa and is spoken along the western coast of India. In an interview, The Discoverer, an active contributor to the Konkani-language Wikipedia, explained how Wikipedia can unite native speakers who speak different variations of the same language and write in different scripts:

For Konkani Wikipedia to succeed, it is not just a ‘good idea’ for Konkani speakers writing in various scripts to work together on one Wikipedia, but it’s also a necessity and a challenge at the same time. It’s a necessity, because as things stand, no one script has a strong enough community to run a Wikipedia by themselves. It’s a challenge because not everyone can read every script, and it’s important for all the users of a Wikipedia to be able to understand all the content on that site.

The full interview is here.

A team of dedicated organizers who are primarily volunteers and represent several Wikimedia communities from India and three Wikimedia-affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

More details about the event could be found in the event page, and on Facebook and Twitter.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-voices-august-5-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-south-asia-largest-wikimedia-conference-kicks-off-in-india

The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off

subha — 2016-08-06T17:11:39Z

Wikimedia Conference 2016Wiki Conference India 2016 (WCI), the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia, will be held during August 5-7 this year in Chandigarh, India.

This was published Opensource.com on August 5, 2016

The first iteration of this event was five years ago in 2011. The event is focused around South Asian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects. Hundreds of participants, including over 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, will participate in this three-day event. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

Several Wikimedia project and program-related talks, meetups and thematic workshops, focused on technology, program design, volunteer leadership building and engagement, gender gap in Wikipedia, global reach, and education, will keep the participants occupied. There will be separate technical tracks, which were chosen from the results of a pre-event needs assessment survey to ensure that community needs are met. Prior to the conference, a month-long edit-a-thon has been running in twelve South Asian language Wikipedias, and one European language Wikipedia (Ukrainian Wikipedia). The focus of this sprint was to expand the content reach of Wikipedia on Punjab, Punjabi people, and their language and culture as the event is happening in Punjab. So far, more than 1900 articles have been created by about 150 Wikipedians, and the edit-a-thon will be also running during the conference to keep the option of creating more articles open to the participants. Some of the guests includes Wikimedia Foundation's board member Nataliia Tymkiv, the organization's newly promoted executive director Catherine Maher, Punjabi-language poet Surjit Patar and Internet freedom advocate and Centre for Internet and Society's Executive Director Sunil Abraham.

As compared to the last WikiConference India, this conference has more thematic focus, especially on challenges like the gender bias on Wikipedia, and emerging projects like the Wikipedia Education Program. There are as many as six presentations related to gender gap, and six more related to education program.

There has been constant engagement on both on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #WCI2016. Some of the most-used basic phrases in the Punjabi language have been recorded and shared to the participants from outside the region to communicate with the locals.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-august-5-2016-largest-wikipedia-gathering-in-south-asia-kicks-off

Community digest: Konkani language speakers are separated by scripts but unite by Wikipedia; news in brief

subha — 2016-08-07T03:11:06Z

Konkani-language Wikipedians on what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers who speak in different variations of the same language and write in different scripts.

This was published on Wikimedia Blog on August 4, 2016

I reached out to a few Goan Konkani Wikipedians to learn about their experience with the project, especially after it went live in 2015. In the interview they share what they think of Wikipedia as a binding factor for native speakers that are currently dispersed in many states, speak in different variations of the same language, and write in different scripts.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Hi The Discoverer [a long time contributor to Wikipedia who is actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia], you have been actively contributing to the Goan Konkani Wikipedia since 2006 even before it went live in 2014. What potential do you see in the Goan Konkani Wikipedia bringing Konkani speakers from the states of Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala?
User:The Discoverer (TD): Even though my first contributions were in 2006, I have been moderately active on Wikipedia all these years.

I do agree with you that Konkani Wikipedia has the potential to bind people across borders. As you have rightly pointed out, Konkani is remarkable in that, for the small geographical area where it is a native language, it has developed a large number of dialects, in addition to being used in multiple scripts. Unfortunately, in the offline world, we see that there are disagreements over certain Konkani scripts being favored or not favored in terms of official recognition. Konkani Wikipedia can not only be a platform in bringing together Konkani speakers from many regions but can also be the unifying factor among the Konkani people.

SP: How do think Wikipedia could be a good platform to help unifying the Konkani people?
TD: For Konkani Wikipedia to succeed, it is not just a ‘good idea’ for Konkani speakers writing in various scripts to work together on one Wikipedia, but it’s also a necessity and a challenge at the same time. It’s a necessity, because as things stand, no one script has a strong enough community to run a Wikipedia by themselves. It’s a challenge because not everyone can read every script, and it’s important for all the users of a Wikipedia to be able to understand all the content on that site.

SP: Very rightly spotted. And how do you think the Wikipedia community and the CIS-A2K program should work together to tackle this challenge?
TD: We need an automatic script converter (see the script converter resource page for Konkani on Meta and task on Phabricator) that could make the lives of the editors easier. Most people cannot read more than two scripts. Most users are currently depending on an external site for transliteration when the user cannot read the script used in a Wikipedia article. That’s painful and a user might also would not know about a third party converter. An automatic script converter on Wikipedia would enable people to read any page in the script of their choice in a single click. This is where CIS-A2K can really help Konkani Wikipedia, by helping to implement the script converter. In addition to the script converter, CIS-A2K could also study various multi-script Wikipedias in existence and prepare a list of such features that are used in these Wikipedias to deal with multiple scripts, so that Indian multi-script Wikipedias can consider implementing such a feature as well.

Konkani Wikipedia is facing another challenge right now in growing the community as there are only handful of active editors. And we need contributors from varied walks of life to add more diversity to the community. The boost that was needed initially to make Konkani Wikipedia live—thanks to institutions like Goa University (GU) and Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) and CIS-A2K for bringing in many student-editors—needs more intensity now. Students from GU and NIE were mainly from the Konkani language and teaching disciplines. If you consider other larger Wikipedias, like the English Wikipedia, they owe their success to editing by people from a diverse backgrounds, and also to the fact that the people are comfortable with the basics of markup and coding and were able to build templates, etc. Today, there is almost no one who is working on templates and other similar technical stuff for Konkani Wikipedia. Here too, CIS-A2K can help by reaching out to Konkani speakers with a background in computing—for instance, students of Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA), Master in Computer Application, Computer Science and engineering. This will help build a community that is technically adept at creating templates and dealing with more advanced types of content for the Wikipedia.

The Konkani Wikipedia can also take advantage of software extensions like VisualEditor and Flow that the knowledge of markup and other technicalities that the user needs to have, so that users who are uncomfortable with editing markup can focus on just adding content with a much more simple and user-friendly interface.

In these ways, participation of people from different regional and vocational backgrounds can form a vibrant editing community leading to the growth of the Konkani Wikipedia.

In brief

WikiConference India 2016 to be held at Chandigarh during August 5–7: The second WikiConference India (WCI) will be held on August 5-7 in Chandigarh, India. After the first WCI in 2011, this will be the largest gathering of the Wikimedians from the Indian subcontinent. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success. Over 100 scholarships have been offered to noteworthy contributors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Various talks, meetups and workshops are planned for the three-day event, and a needs assessment survey has been put in place for ensuring any hackathon needs are addressed.
Punjab edit-a-thon: A month-long edit-a-thon has been running in 12 Indic language Wikipedias and one European language Wikipedia (the Ukrainian) to enrich the content related to Punjab, the Punjabi people, and their language and culture. So far, more than 1000 articles have been created by about 100 Wikipedians. As we have already surpassed the dream target of 1000 articles, we are planning to extend the edit-a-thon through WikiConference India so many can participate during the event.
Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses: A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several noted authors from “all rights reserved” to a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) license. This campaign was started on June 19 and copyright migration process is complete for 17 books so far. Once the copyright migration is over the books—ranging from historical figures and popular personalities to regional history—are going to be digitized on Wikisource. “I don’t want these works to be in bookshelf and get wasted by termites. My wish as an author and researcher is to make these works available to future historians who can make use of it, so that our people get to know the local history” shares Kanuri Badarinadh, a historian, novelist and journalist who has donated some of his books.
Train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training program for capacity building of community leaders from Indian subcontinent: After two iterations of the Train the Trainer in 2013 and 2015, CIS-A2K organized the third program during June 15-17 at Bengaluru. The Mediawiki training was designed to help groom technical leadership skills of the technical contributors of the communities. A total of 45 participants, that were selected by a collaborative consultation with the community, took part in these events. The trainers for both the events consisted of subject experts from the Wikimedia community, the free knowledge movement, the free and open source software community and CIS-A2K program staff. A series of small Mediawiki trainings will follow soon that will be led by the trained participants.
Indian women in Science edit-a-thon: Organized by IndiaBioscience, a not-for-profit working for research and advocacy on the life sciences in India, this edit-a-thon began with an introduction to the series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that have been running to expand Wikipedia’s reach on Indian women with contribution to Science. There was a Q&A session Professor Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan followed by introduction to Wikipedia editing, its policies and guidelines, and brief on copyright, and Creative Commons licensing. 11 new articles were created and 11 existing articles were expanded in English, Hindi and Odia-language Wikipedias.
Indigenous South-Asian language gets a new open Unicode font: A new font for the Ol chiki script (used to write the Santali language) along with input tools are getting ready to be released soon. Santali is spoken by over 6 million people in South Asia over Bangladesh and Nepal and six states in India. This project, supported by the Centre for Internet of India, will help native language speakers type in Unicode across platforms, and also using Universal Language System in all Wikimedia projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-digest-konkani-language-speakers-are-separated-by-scripts-but-unite-by-wikipedia-news-in-brief

WikiConference India 2016 Submission: How to better tell your Wikimedia Community Story using Media as a Tool

subha — 2016-08-17T02:24:19Z

The Wikimedia community has constantly struggled to a) reach out to masses and tell them about their contribution, and motivate people to contribute to the Wikimedia projects. Media plays a very important role in spreading the word about Wikimedia projects and the contributor community, and at times, encouraging the audience to contribute.

A presentation was made at the WikiConference India 2016. This was one of the submissions which was accepted.

This has not been a very successful trend in the movement so far that a large number of people have engaged on Wikimedia projects because of a media shoutout. But there is no doubt about media being a great tool to engage with a large number of people. Apart from the mainstream media, social media has also been a gamechanger in mobilizing masses. The audience in both these kinds of media demand a certain kind of content and storytelling. And it is not easy to create relevant content for an audience that is hungry for new stories. Also, dealing with mainstream media has a lot to do with interpersonal skills.

This workshop would cover a few best practices from lessons learned from several media-related exercises in the recent years. Some of these exercises come with success and some with failures with some specific learning. And these important takeaways will hopefully lead a path in creating some kind open education resources (OER) for the Wikimedia community. However, none of the methodologies that are going to be discussed here are going to be ready solutions to change the awareness about the Wikimedia movement overnight. But these will certainly help the participants map their own community stories. The interactive workshop will help the participants to make some roadmap for a regular and sustained engagement on media.

Those who are keen on learning about using different media tools and take their Wikimedia stories to a wider world should consider participating this. It would be beneficial if they come prepared with a list of challenges that they are facing in media outreach.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiconference-india-2016-submission-how-to-better-tell-your-wikimedia-community-story-using-media-as-a-tool

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପାଇଁ ଓସିଆର: ଛପା ଲେଖାର ଛବିରୁ ଡିଇଟାଲ ଲେଖା

subha — 2016-08-23T15:16:00Z

Though not an open source solution, Google's OCR works really well for Odia and other Indian languages. My column in the Odia daily the Samaja that was published last Saturday briefs about how the OCR works and has a step-by-step process to use it. There is also a little bit of background of Tesseract-based OCR that Debayan Banerjee worked in the past and Nasim Ali from the Odia Wikimedia community is currently working.

This was published in the Samaja on August 21, 2016:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/samaja-subhashish-panigrahi-august-21-2016-ocr-works-and-using-it

Preserving Languages and Cultures in India: The Birth of the Tulu Wikipedia

subha — 2016-09-07T15:35:43Z

After eight years of effort and outreach, the Tulu language Wikipedia has gone live. Wikimedia contributors play a key role in preserving languages and cultures, and tools like the Wikimedia Incubator help new projects like the Tulu Wikipedia get started.

The blog post was published by Opensource.com on August 26, 2016. This got mentioned in Wikipedia's newsletter "The Signpost".

Tulu is a language spoken by three to five million people in the states of Karnataka and Kerala in the southwest and south India respectively, and by some people in the US and in Gulf countries. Tulu Wikipedia is the 294th Wikipedia and the 23rd South Asian language Wikipedia.

The Tulu Wikipedia grew in the Wikimedia Incubator for about eight years before going online. So far, 198 editors have contributed 1285 articles, and the active editors that have more than 5 edits in the project number between 5-10.

Tulu Wikipedia started back in 2008 with just one or two editors. But neither the project nor the community remained active except for sporadic edits. Without any meetups or outreach it was difficult for those editors to work as a community to bring the project live. The Centre for Internet and Society—Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program, a catalytic program funded by the Wikimedia Foundation to support and grow the Indian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects in the Indian subcontinent, started work on building a community for Tulu in 2014. It all started with an informal meetup, and then more community meetups started happening. The community also conducted Wikipedia editing training workshops, and two major educational institutions came forward to help grow the community and the project.

These institutions, St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College in Mangaluru in the state of Karnataka, introduced the Wikipedia Education Program where students started editing Wikipedia as part of their syllabus. Vishwanatha Badikana, assistant professor of the Kannada language department at St. Aloysius, became an active Tulu Wikipedia editor himself and led the outreach activities in the institution. Similarly, many students from both the institutions also contributed articles of diverse subject areas.

However, the community is still fairly small and has to grow outside of the institutions. "A series of eight how-to video tutorials have been created to help editors to learn about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, manual of style and overall editing. Many students have contributed in creating these tutorials", says Dr. Badikana. The current set of editors are doing their best in spreading the word about the project while safeguarding the core values of Wikipedia. In an interview to media portal Daijiworld, Bharathesha Alasandemajalu, an active editor based in Oman said, "Anyone can write or edit articles on Wikipedia Tulu, but it should not be plagiarised. The photos should be one's own or uploaded with valid permission from the owner. This will help the future generation to know more about the language and act as a source of information on Tulu language and culture."

One of the biggest challenges, apart from the limitations in attracting new contributors, is the lack of Unicode support. Unicode is a global standard for scripts, and the Tigalari script that is used to write in Tulu is not encoded in Unicode. At the moment, all the articles in the Tulu Wikipedia are written in the Kannada script as the speakers are mostly based in the state of Karnataka, and speak Kannada as a second language.

With its great and long linguistic heritage, Tulu is still struggling to be widely used, especially in its native script. The lack of promotion is also evident as the official body, the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, that is set up by the Karnataka government uses Kannada and English in the official portal. However, Dr. Badikana shared in an interview to the author that he is hopeful to see more Tulu speakers contributing to Tulu Wikipedia, as he feels that growing language content online would be the best thing to do along with working in a conventional classroom.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/preserving-languages-and-cultures-in-india-the-birth-of-the-tulu-wikipedia

Meet the Newly Born Tulu Wikipedia, the 23rd in a South Asian Language!

subha — 2016-08-30T02:14:13Z

The Tulu language Wikipedia became the latest entrant in the family of 294 world-language Wikipedia projects after the project went live from Wikimedia Incubator earlier this month.

The post was published in Global Voices on August 28, 2016.

The project waited as long as eight years in the Incubator before becoming the 23rd South Asian language Wikipedia. Available at https://tcy.wikipedia.org, the Tulu Wiki space has a total of 1,285 articles contributed by 198 editors, about 5-10 of which are active with over five edits every month.

The announcement about the project going live was made by Katherine Maher, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation during the WikiConference India.

Wikimedia Incubator is a sister project of Wikipedia and before any new language Wikipedia is created, an Incubator project is created and grown by volunteer editors. Once the project gains momentum with more editors developing more content more often, the project goes live as a new Wikipedia project.

The Tulu language is spoken by about three to five million people in the Indian states of Karnataka and Kerala, and there is a sizeable diaspora living in US and the Gulf countries.

Eight years back in 2008, Tulu Wikipedia was created in Incubator with just a handful of editors. But apart from a few sporadic edits every so often, there was little impetus to take the project forward.

A community in a real sense is one that engages in discussion, consensus and collaboration. This never existed for Tulu Wikipedia as individual editors were working in isolation from each other.

There was therefore a need for them to meet and form a strategic plan to grow the community and the Incubator by brining in more active contributors.

In 2014, the need to connect the Tulu Wikipedia editors and foster an interactive editorial group was discussed and a meetup was organized in Mangalore by the Centre for Internet and Society—Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program, a catalytic program funded by the Wikimedia Foundation to support and grow Indian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects in the Indian subcontinent.

As an offshoot of that meeting, more community meetups started to happen. A few workshops were organized in Mangalore to provide hands-on training to participants and the city's St. Aloysius College opened its door to include Wikipedia editing as part of its syllabus.

A Wikipedia Education Program was promptly organized for the undergraduate students in this college where students started editing Wikipedia as a classroom assignment and the faculty was involved both in providing training and evaluating the articles.

Vishwanatha Badikana, assistant professor of the Kannada language department at St. Aloysius College, became an active Tulu Wikipedia editor himself and led outreach activities at the institution. His students have enriched the Tulu Wikipedia with articles across a broad range of topics.

However, what has been achieved so far is still only the tip of the iceberg. The community is still fairly small and has to grow beyond one supporting institution. The larger Tulu language community also has to take ownership and become stewards in growing Tulu Wikipedia.

Despite its long, rich linguistic heritage, Tulu is still struggling in terms of achieving wider usage in written form, especially in its native script. The lack of promotion is also quite evident as the Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, an official body set up by the Karnataka government uses Kannada and English for its official portal.

The biggest challenge of all is the lack of Unicode support. Unicode is a global standard for scripts, and the Tigalari script that is used to write in Tulu is not encoded in Unicode. At the moment, all the articles in the Tulu Wikipedia are written in the Kannada script as most of the speakers are based in the state of Karnataka, and speak Kannada as a second language.

The only possibility of using Tigaliri script is tied to standardizing the script on Unicode, releasing a freely licensed typeface so that it can be bundled as a web font to display the script in the case of any mobile or desktop user not having the font installed on their device.Finally the script for existing content must be converted from Kannada to Tigaliri.

There is a series of eight how-to video tutorials that have been created to help new and existing editors to learn more about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, style and the editing process.

“Many students have contributed by creating these tutorials,” says Dr. Badikana.

The current set of editors are doing their best to spread the word about the project while safeguarding the core values of Wikipedia.

In an interview to the media portal Daijiworld, Bharathesha Alasandemajalu, an active editor based in Oman said, “Anyone can write or edit articles on Wikipedia Tulu, but it should not be plagiarised [..] Photos should be one's own or uploaded with valid permission from the owner. This will help the future generation to know more about the language and act as a source of information on Tulu language and culture.”

Dr. Badikana moreover shared in an interview with this author that he is hopeful of seeing more Tulu speakers contributing to Tulu Wikipedia, as he feels that growing language content online, combined with work in conventional classrooms, is the best approach to preserving the language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-voices-august-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-meet-the-newly-born-tulu-wikipedia-the-23-in-south-asian-language

3 Copyright Tips for Students and Educators

subha — 2016-10-07T00:42:06Z

Copyright is a really complicated topic, and when it comes to online use of creative works, accidentally crossing the line between fair use and a copyright violation is easy. How do you know what is copyrighted? Recently Frederico Morando (Creative Commons, Italy) and I presented a training session on understanding copyright policies at Wikimania 2016, which was originally proposed by Wikipedian User:Jim Carter. We covered topics such as fundamentals of copyright, exclusive rights, Berne convention, copyleft, Creative Commons licenses, Public Domain, fair use, and copyfraud.

The blog post was published by Opensource.com on August 16, 2016. This got mentioned in Wikipedia's newsletter "The Signpost". This was mirrored by Wiki Edu on October 5, 2016. The post republished can be read here.

In this article, I'll look at three copyright tips to keep in mind when you're thinking about using content—even for academic purposes— you find online.

1. Most of what you find on the Internet is copyrighted.

Except content that clearly indicates the work is released under a free license, or that the copyright has lapsed and the work is in the Public Domain, you can assume content is not freely/liberally licensed. A few popular free and open licenses include GNU General Public License (GPL), BSD licenses, Apache License, Mozilla Public License, and SIL Open Font License. If a work mentions the license, usually the license is explained or links to terms for using the work. Spending a little time to find out what license the work is under beats spending time and money on a copyright infringement case later.

2. Fair use can be your friend, but not always.

Fair use means you might be permitted to make limited use of a copyrighted work without prior permission from the copyright holder. The fair use policy varies from country to country. As explained in the Stanford University Libraries site, commentary/quotes and criticism, and parody are cases that often fall under fair use.

Wikipedia article images related to recent music albums, movies, and even people who are deceased are used under fair use policy. Click on a recent movie poster appearing in a Wikipedia article and check the copyright section for an example explanation of why the use on Wikipedia qualifies as fair use.

^{Example Wikipedia explanation for fair use of an image.}

Fair use also gives some freedom to scholars to use copyrighted work for academic research. To be in a safe side if you are not sure your use falls under "fair use," reach out to the copyright holder and get formal permission before using their work.

3. search.creativecommons.org helps streamline Creative Commons content searches.

Where do you go to search for images, illustrations, and other content with Creative Commons licensing? Most images turned up using a search engine are copyrighted and not licensed liberally, for example. A better way to search is using search.creativecommons.org.

You can choose Creative Commons-licensed content from several sites, such as Flickr, Google Images, Wikimedia Commons, and Europeana. You can also specify whether you want to use the content for commercial purposes, or to modify, adapt, and build upon work.

^{Image credit likeaduck. CC BY 2.0}

Note that you still will need to check which Creative Commons license the content uses. As explained in an article by Richard Fontana:

The Creative Commons suite includes licenses that implement various policies. Some, like CC BY and CC BY-SA, are normatively consistent with corresponding permissive and copyleft families of free software licenses. Others, however, particularly its “NC” (no commercial use) and “ND” (no derivative works) licenses, are in conflict with basic principles of free software and free culture. I am not alone in lamenting the application of the Creative Commons umbrella brand to cover licenses with such disparate qualities. One consequence has been a general confusing dilution of the meaning of “openness” in the context of cultural works. A more specific problem is the evidence of confusion on the part of content authors interested in applying Creative Commons licenses to their works, and resulting confusion by those interested in making use of such works. Too often a work is labeled as being licensed under “a Creative Commons license”, without specifying accurately, or specifying at all, which free or nonfree policy the author sought to apply.

If you still cannot find content—images, for example—with free licenses, but you find copyrighted content that fits your academic need, you can reach out to the content creator or copyright holder for permission. Often copyright holders allow usage of their work for non-commercial purposes, such as academic research and publication.

Do you have other sources you recommend for finding Creative Commons or Public Domain content? Let us know about your favorite resources in the comments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/3-copyright-tips-for-students-and-educators

Indians Ask: Is Visiting a Torrent Site Really A Crime?

subha — 2016-09-06T14:09:26Z

India has banned various large-scale torrent sites for a long time — this is old news. But under a new federal policy in India, one can be jailed for three years and fined 300,000 Indian Rupees (~US $4464) for downloading content on any of these blocked websites.

The blog post was first published in Global Voices on September 5, 2016.

Netizens who regularly use these and similar services have become anxious about what the rule may mean for them. Last week, a new legal notice concerning copyright violations sparked widespread rumors that users could be penalized for simply viewing torrent sites.

The notice now appears when one visits any of the banned websites. It reads:

This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto Rs. 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at urlblock@tatacommunications.com who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance.

Soon after news of the notice began to circulate, the Chennai High Court – one of the oldest courts in India — issued a John Doe order to block as many as 830 websites, including several torrent websites such as thepiratebay.se, torrenthound.com, and kickasstorrents.come.in.

Indian tech news portal Medianama published a blog post arguing that it is the downloading of pirated content from certain banned websites and not accessing those website that should lead to the legal issues. The problem, it seems, lies in the poor wording of the notice. Medianama described this as “bizarre by any rational standard” and noted that, taken literally, it does not comply with the Indian Copyright Act. Digital piracy legislation in India has been modified quite a lot in the recent times in general and over last five years in particular (Sections 63, 63A and 65 of the Indian Copyright Act of 1957 in particular.) But it has not been implemented with such force in the past.	What is a torrent? A torrent is part of a system that enables peer-to-peer file sharing (“P2P”) that is used to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet. Known as BitTorrent, this file distribution system is one of the most common technical protocols for transferring large files, such as digital audio files containing TV shows or video clips or digital audio files containing songs. Within this system, files labeled with the .torrent extension contain meta data about files — e.g. file names, their sizes, folder structure and cryptographic hash value for integrity verification. They do not contain the content to be distributed, but without them, the system does not work. (via Wikipedia)

This is not the first time India has put a blanket ban on such sites. In December 2014, 32 websites — including including code repository Github, video streaming sites Vimeo and Dailymotion, online archive Internet Archive, free software hosting site Sourceforge — were banned in India. They were later unblocked after agreeing to remove some ISIS-related content.

As they have in the past, tech-savvy netizens began suggesting hacks to mask or fake one's IP address. Sumiteshwar Choudhary, a practicing criminal and matrimony lawyer, described on Quora how the law had existed for quite some time but the government had never fully enforced it:

[..] The only reason that India has not been able to successfully ban these services is because the servers rest outside India and we don’t have any law to extend our jurisdiction to that extent today. As an end user if you download a pirated version of things you are not entitled to, you can be booked criminally under this Act and can face prison for up to 2 years…

Twitter user Prisma Mama Thakur criticized the ban, arguing that it should be a low priority in a moment when India has many other important problems to solve:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-voices-september-5-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-indians-ask-is-visiting-a-torrent-site-really-a-crime

Odia Wikisource to Celebrate Its First Anniversary in Bhubaneswar

subha — 2015-12-15T08:19:56Z

Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia and a free online Odia-language library is celebrating its first anniversary in Bhubaneswar tomorrow i.e., 25th October, 2015.

The blog post was originally published by Mybhubaneswar.com on October 24, 2015.

Available online at or.wikisource.org, the project finally went live in last year on October 20 after being incubated over two years.

In a nutshell, it not just provides free and open access to readers to access text that are out of copyright or available under free license, but also allows them to contribute in either digitizing copyright-free text or correcting mistakes made by others.

All the contributors to the project are volunteers and are fondly called “uikiali” in Odia. These volunteers follow certain guidelines to check through the content digitized by others to make sure there is no copyrighted text posing copyright violation, correct typos and other grammatical mistakes and incorrect attribution.

Authors and copyright holders are also encouraged to provide permission in re-licensing their work under free licenses like CC-BY/CC-by-SA licenses so that some of their content becomes available online and fill the large gap of the Odia books online to some extent.

Last year, the Wikimedia community in Odisha did a remarkable job in bringing as many as 141 books from multiple authors relicensed under the above mentioned licenses where we, the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program, as an institution, could play a role in reaching out to many authors and convincing them for a small contribution to the society.

Pankajmala Sarangi, the most active contributor to the project elaborated saying, there is a great dearth of Odia books online. I try to buy some time from personal and office time to continue my contribution. After all, I started from an all-time Odia classic “Cha’mana Athaguntha” by Fakir Mohan Senapati”.

“The Odia language classics could now be read from phones, tablets and of course from computers”

Many important books that are out of copyright are making their appearance on the Odia Wikisource. “Wikisource is different than Wikipedia as the former is published writing republished online whereas on Wikipedia it is more of aggregating information published elsewhere in an encyclopaedic manner”, says Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, a long time Wikimedian.

Odia Wikisource’s administrator Mrutyunjaya Kar welcomes everyone taking interest in Odia library movement in particular and Odia language in general to join this event that is being held at the Institute on Management of Agricultural Extension (IMAGE), Siripura, Bhubaneswar at 5 pm tomorrow.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mybhubaneswar-october-25-2015-subhashish-panigrahi-odia-wikisource-celebrates-its-first-anniversary-in-bhubaneswar

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad

subha — 2013-01-22T03:09:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.

As part of the soft skill development training program, RKGIT, an engineering college is working on a series of activities to empower the students with practical approach and competence for their professional life. We were invited to conduct a workshop for the students of mechanical engineering and help them understand the real reasons for contributions to Wikipedia as a volunteer.

Some of the focus areas we set for the workshop were:

Number of students not to exceed 60 to make sure that we get enough time and space to interact actively and pay individual attention.

Number of coordinators to support with logistics to conduct the workshop smoothly.
Active participation of teachers.
Arrangement of internet labs with multiple IP addresses for smooth user account creation.

Around 65 mechanical engineering students from second and third year participated in this workshop. We began the workshop with an interactive discussion about their practical relation with Wikipedia as students and the usability and difficulties that they face. I presented about some important facts about Wikipedia and voluntary contribution in different ways. During and after the presentation students asked a lot of questions about the notability and authenticity of articles, collaboration vs. fights among editors, references and its significance, etc.

There was a short break to make way for students to settle in the internet lab for a hands on training session. We faced problems with the LAN and 3G network for mobile broadband which made this session longer than expected. There were problems for creating accounts because of the Internet explorer and X based systems and the students couldn't create their user accounts. So, we had to manage with them contributing anonymously from IP addresses. Despite these unexpected technical problems all of them edited various articles. Some of them tried to vandalize and observe the quick reversal of the vandals.

Subhashish presenting about Wikipedia to the participants

I had a discussion with the director about conducting more such workshops, especially technical workshops where students can code and contribute to MediaWiki.

Quick links:

Presentation used for this workshop: www.slideshare.net/psubhashish/you-can-also-wikipedia
English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org (Click here to create an account on Wikipedia)

Presentation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-workshop-at-rkgit-ghaziabad

8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias

subha — 2016-03-29T17:05:15Z

After more than 10 years in existence, the Indian-language Wikipedias still are not known to many Indian language speakers. Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in history as a result of thousands of volunteer editors.

The article was originally published in the Wire on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.

Whereas native-language Wikipedias are becoming game changers in other corners of the world, the scenario in India is skewed. While speaking at the "BHASHA: Indian Languages Digital Festival," a day-long discourse at New Delhi on Indian languages and their state in the new media (especially on the digital platforms), I shared challenges that Indian language Wikipedias are facing.

1. Language communities

Many native Indian language speakers do not know how to search online using language typed in their script. Because Google's home page does not display their language script as an option, people often think that their language does not exist on the Internet. Google now has nine Indian languages. But this does not stop a Santali or Manipuri speaker from searching in Unicode Ol chiki (script for Santali) or in Unicode Meithei (script for Manipuri). Google and other search engines will display content in any script on the Internet, but not knowing this keeps many people off the Internet, which also means off of Wikipedia.

2. Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia is created by people like you and me. From writing to editing, everything happens voluntarily. Many people do not understand that they can correct mistakes and help improve Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. Although these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful of editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages. As of January 2016, the Hindi Wikipedia had only 89 editors, whereas Hindi falls right behind English on the list of top languages by number of native speakers.

3. Language input in computer

A majority of people in India do not know how to type in their own language. Also, there is little documentation for users to learn about language input. Even though many government-run schools in India are seeing more computers and have Internet access, native language input and several other basic computer training are not widely taught in schools in all states. Free software for language input is available, and the challenges of typing in Indian languages (PDF) that existed in the past are mostly resolved.

4. Language input in mobile devices

With more than 1 billion people in India (PDF) with mobile phones, the 15% Internet penetration rate will soon grow at a faster pace. This growth and tough competition is compelling telecom service providers to drop data charges, which will help more Indians get access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input, then they will be stuck inside an English-centric Internet rather than being able to navigate in their own languages. Many Indians who have smartphones need full Indian language support—and especially built-in input methods—to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

Lack of native language content on the Internet is a barrier to accessing knowledge. For example, let's look at my state Odisha. The Kerala (Indian state) government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, but the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in the Odia language today. Our languages are largely neglected in our own states.

6. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional media houses still use non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. As a global standard, Unicode can help unify the world and has been available for Indian languages for almost 25 years. But many of our print media have failed to adopt this, and many popular Indian-language newspapers still aren't available in Unicode.

7. Lack of open access

Much information online, including content created by the government, is under copyright licensing. The pay-wall gardens and copyright restrictions keep information closed and prevents people from sharing content. Wikipedia content, on the other hand, is available under Creative Commons Share-Alike licensing, which allows anyone to use the content (and even distribute commercial copies of it). The idea of opening up content under free licenses can help information reach countless additional people.

8. Accessibility

India has more than 60-million people with hearing impairments. Many people with physical disabilities need good text-to-speech and speech-to-text engines. And these software solutions must be free, so that anyone, regardless of their finances, can contribute to Wikipedia in their own languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-source-march-28-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-8-challenges-for-improving-indian-language-wikipedias

Centre for Internet and Society

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର: ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ପାଠାଗାର ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନର ନୂଆ ମୁହଁ

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The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off

Community digest: Konkani language speakers are separated by scripts but unite by Wikipedia; news in brief

In brief

WikiConference India 2016 Submission: How to better tell your Wikimedia Community Story using Media as a Tool

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ପାଇଁ ଓସିଆର: ଛପା ଲେଖାର ଛବିରୁ ଡିଇଟାଲ ଲେଖା

Preserving Languages and Cultures in India: The Birth of the Tulu Wikipedia

Meet the Newly Born Tulu Wikipedia, the 23rd in a South Asian Language!

3 Copyright Tips for Students and Educators

1. Most of what you find on the Internet is copyrighted.

2. Fair use can be your friend, but not always.

3. search.creativecommons.org helps streamline Creative Commons content searches.

Indians Ask: Is Visiting a Torrent Site Really A Crime?

What is a torrent?

Odia Wikisource to Celebrate Its First Anniversary in Bhubaneswar

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad

Quick links:

Presentation

8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias

1. Language communities

2. Wikipedia's editor community

3. Language input in computer

4. Language input in mobile devices

5. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

6. Mismatch of conventional and new media

7. Lack of open access

8. Accessibility