Centre for Internet and Society

Open letter from CIS to PM Modi on Intellectual Property Rights issues on his Visit to US

praskrishna — 2015-09-24T02:48:32Z

Centre for Internet and Society, through its Policy Director Mr. Pranesh Prakash and Programme Officer Nehaa Chaudhari has addressed an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the intellectual property right issues concerning his visit to the United State of America in September, 2015.

The article by Apoorva Mandhani was published by LiveLaw on September 23, 2015. CIS Open Letter here.

The letter makes a two-fold request: first, that the Government of the USA be requested to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty for visually impaired persons and second, that the Indian Government should not enter into any negotiations around the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

The letter relies on the statistics released by the World Blind Union, according to which 90% of all published material is not accessible to blind or print disabled people. The severity of the ‘book famine’, it says, was highlighted by India in its Closing Statement at the Diplomatic Conference convened to conclude the Marrakesh Treaty.

India was the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty in June, 2014. However, the Marrakesh Treaty will come into effect only after 20 Member States have ratified it or acceded to it. As per information available from the World Intellectual Property Organization, only 9 countries have ratified or acceded to the treaty and USA is not one of it. The letter therefore requests Mr. Modi to request USA ratify the Marrakesh Treaty at the earliest.

It says, “The USA is home to some of the largest publishers of both academic and other/leisure material including Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, John Wiley & Sons, the RELX Group, McGraw-Hill Education, Scholastic and Cengage Learning to name a few. It accounts for a large volume of the world’s book and other print material export. The active participation of the USA through the ratification of the Marrakesh treaty is critical if the treaty is to be truly effective.”

With regard to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the letter communicates its concern regarding the secrecy of negotiations as well as the content of the chapter on intellectual property in the TPP.

Provisions sought to be imposed through the TPP mandate the inclusion of TRIPS plus provisions in national laws, envisage possible extensions in term of protection on patents, restrict copyright exceptions and limitations, extend copyright protection terms and impose a higher liability on intermediaries. All these provisions, it says, “would be disastrous for an emerging economy such as India’s, which is a heavy user of intellectual property and not a heavy producer of the same.”

Highlighting CIS’s concerns, the letter requests that any engagement in TPP negotiations be preceded by national consultations on the same, soliciting input from various stakeholders with diverging interests, including academia, civil society, industry associations, large Indian corporations, small and medium enterprises and multi- national corporations, rights holders associations and other interest groups.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/live-law-apoorva-mandhani-september-23-2015-open-letter-from-cis-to-pm-modi-on-intellectual-property-rights-issues-on-his-visit-to-us

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS

praskrishna — 2014-02-25T09:15:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is celebrating 5 years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its activities and accomplishments. The exhibition will be held at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi from May 20 to 23, 2013.

Download all the posters exhibited during the recent exhibition here.

As a move to promote transparency, CIS is inviting the general public to be its auditors by throwing open its account books and contracts which show how it has spent the Rs. 13.13 crores received from its donors. The four-day event will see renowned artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas and Abhishek Hazra featuring their work and also giving live demonstrations.

Agenda

Open exhibition on all the 4 days from 10.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m., in Bangalore and Delhi. The evening programmes will be held in Bangalore. Dinner will be served right afterwards.

Evening Programmes

May 20, 2013

18.00 19.00	Why did I buy a set-top box?: What we know, don't know and need to know about Digitalisation — A Talk by Vibodh Parthasarathi Why are we being asked to install set-top boxes? How will this change what we want, and pay for, on TV? Grappling with these questions, the talk will evaluate the rationale of the digital migration in cable currently underway, and the less talked about digital migration being planned for the public broadcaster. These scarcely debated and often contentious issues form the core of a recent Country Report on the Media in India, anchored by the speaker. The India Country Report, the first inter-sectoral and policy oriented study of our electronic media landscape, finds the ongoing digitalisation of cable, the infusion of digital tools in the press and the proposed digital switchover of the public broadcaster, posing varied challenges not only to journalism but to public interest at large. This report is part of a global initiative, Mapping Digital Media, examining opportunities and risks amidst the transitions to a digital media ecology across 50 countries. Video
19.00 19.30	Film Screening on Cyber Cafes of Rural India by Video Volunteers Video Volunteers in partnership with CIS have been documenting the cyber cafes of rural India. Kamini Menon and Christy Raj will do the screening of seven 2-minute films: Cyber Cafe Trends Slowly Changing in Imphal by Achungmei Kamei (Manipur) Transgender Interaction with Cyber Cafes by Christy Raj (Karnataka) Cyber Cafes Prevail Over Mobile Phones in Nagaland by Meribeni Kikon (Nagaland) Mobile Technology Threatens Cyber Cafes in HP by Avdhesh Negi (Himachal Pradesh) Cyber Cafe Visit - A Day's Journey by Saroj Paraste (Madhya Pradesh) The Challenges of Establishing Cyber Cafes by Rohini Pawar (Maharashtra) The Community Service Centre - Myth or Reality? by Neeru Rathod (Gujarat) Video
19.30 20.00	Hindustani Classical Performance by Aditya Dipankar
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 21, 2013

18.00 19.00	Screening of Sabaka A young elephant trainer in India vows revenge against the cult that killed his family. He seeks help from the local Maharajah who refuses, and he sets out alone to battle the enemy... Sabaka is a 1954 film produced and directed by Frank Ferrin starring Boris Karloff, Reginald Denny, June Foray, et.al.
19.00 20.00	Slouching towards Tlön: An Encyclopedia for the 2nd century of Indian cinema — A Talk by Lawrence Liang Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen’s Encyclopedia of Indian cinema (1994) marked an important moment for the study of Indian film history. In the two decades since its publication we have seen a rise in the academic community working on Indian film history along with the rise of various new archival initiatives online. Materials that were hitherto unavailable have also made their way into the public domain via the efforts of film historians, cinephiles and other enthusiasts. It is perhaps fitting to think about what a collaborative encyclopedia of Indian cinema for the 21st century may look like. Using Rajadhayksha and Willemen’s Encyclopedia as a base, Lawrence has been working on an online version that incorporates moving images, photographs and archival materials and his presentation will open up questions of how one thinks of an online encyclopedia as well as larger conceptual questions of the relationship between the encyclopedias, the internet and moving image archives. Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 22, 2013

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Surveillance

18.00 18.30	“The Indian Surveillance State”— A Talk by Maria Xynou The Central Monitoring System confirms that, starting from last month ‘Big Brother’ is a reality in India. But how do authorities get the tech to spy on us? Maria has started investigating surveillance technology companies operating in India. So far, 76 companies have been detected which are producing and selling different types of surveillance gear to Indian law enforcement agencies. Join us to see India´s first investigation of who is aiding our watchers! Video
18.30 19.00	Why Privacy and How? A Talk by Bernadette Langle "But I have nothing to hide!" That's what most people think. Are you sure? What about all the services you use for free, don't you think the service provider has to spend money on that, and that he needs to earn it somehow? Bernadette will show some alternatives and also how easy it can be, to put your messages in a virtual private envelope as you use to do with messages on paper. Video
19.00 19.45	Cyber Security Preview — Presentation by Laird Brown and Purba Sarkar CIS in cooperation with Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, is developing a film project on cyber security in India from a civil society perspective. Laird will show the preview of the project. The preview will include an overview of the project along with a video footage from the first series of interviews. Video
19.45 20.00	Faking of Fingerprints: A Presentation by Bernadette Langle Bernadette will give a brief presentation on how easy it is to fake a fingerprint. Afterwards you can get hands-on. Fake a fingerprint yourself and take it with you to your home. Video Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283, Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

May 23, 2013

Kannada Language and IT

18.00 18.15	Kannada in Modern Era: A Guest Talk by Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara Dr. Chandrashekhara will be the chief guest for this session and will give a guest lecture. Video
18.15 19.30	From Palm Leaf to Tablet – Journey of Kannada: A Talk by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja Kannada language which has a history of 2000 years and quite rich in literature started on palm leaves. Kannada advanced with modern times adopting the marvels of Information Technology. This is accomplished by successfully implementing Kannada in various facets of IT. It is being used everywhere from data driven applications to websites to hand held devices like tablets. These aspects will be brought out during the talk. Summary in Kannada: ತಾಳೆಗರಿಯಿಂದ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ತನಕ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಪಯಣ ಸುಮಾರು ಎರಡು ಸಾವಿರ ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಭವ್ಯ ಇತಿಹಾಸವಿರುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದ ಉಗಮ ತಾಳೆಗರಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಆಯಿತು. ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆಯು ಆಧುನಿಕ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಅದ್ಭುತ ಕೊಡುಗೆಗಳನ್ನು ತನ್ನದಾಗಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬೆಳೆಯಿತು. ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಎಲ್ಲ ಅಂಗಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡವನ್ನು ಅಳವಡಿಸಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಇದು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಯಿತು. ಆನ್ವಯಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶವಿರಲಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಸ್ಪಂದನಾತ್ಮಕ ಜಾಲತಾಣವಿರಲಿ, ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹಿಡಿದು ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡುವ ಟ್ಯಾಬ್ಲೆಟ್ ಇರಲಿ –ಎಲ್ಲ ಕಡೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಳಕೆ ಆಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಕಡೆ ಒಂದು ಪಕ್ಷಿನೋಟವನ್ನು ಈ ಭಾಷಣದಲ್ಲಿ ನೀಡಲಾಗುವುದು. Video
19.30 20.00	Carnatic Music Performance by Nirmita Narasimhan Video
20.00	Dinner
RSVP: Bernadette Längle (bernadette@cis-india.org), Ph: +91 80 4092 6283 Prasad Krishna (prasad@cis-india.org).

About the Speakers

Vibodh Parthasarathi	Vibodh Parthasarathi works with the Centre for Culture and Media Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is also a Board Member at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. He maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media and development policy, business history of creative industries, and governance of media infrastructure. At the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, his ongoing research addresses media policy literacy, the TV news industry and the digital switchover in India. He is the co-editor of the critically acclaimed tri-series on Communication Process (Sage).
Lawrence Liang	Lawrence Liang is the Chairman of the Board at the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a graduate of the National Law School. He subsequently pursued his Masters degree in Law and Development at Warwick, on a Chevening Scholarship. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. A keen follower of the open source movement in software, Lawrence has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written extensively on these issues and is the author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses. Lawrence has taught at NLS, the Asian College of Journalism, NALSAR, etc., and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the idea of cinematic justice at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Maria Xynou	Maria Xynou is a Policy Associate on the Privacy Project at the CIS. She has previously interned with Privacy International and with the Parliament of Greece. Maria holds a Master of Science in Security Studies from the University College London (UCL).
Bernadette Langle	Bernadette Längle recently graduated in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and computer science. She is also a so-called hacktivist together with one of the oldest hacker associations of the world, the Chaos Computer Club, having a lot of influence in German politics. As one of the core-team organizer of Chaos Communication Congress in Germany she also has a lot of experience in organizing events.
Laird Brown	Laird Brown is a strategic planner and writer. His core competencies are brand analysis, public relations, and resource management. Laird has worked at the United Nations in New York; high-tech ventures in North America, Europe, and India; and, is a guest speaker at ICT conferences internationally. He is currently working on a film project for CIS on cyber security in India with Purba Sarkar.
Purba Sarkar	Purba Sarkar is an associate producer with the cyber security film project. She holds a Bachelor in Technology degree from West Bengal University of Technology. Purba worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail for 4 years before joining CIS in January, 2013.
Dr.Chandrashekhara Kambara	Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara is a prominent poet, playwriter, folklorist, film director in Kannada language. He is also the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi. He is known for his effective usage of North Karnataka dialect of Kannada language in his plays and poems and is often compared with D.R. Bendre. He has been conferred with many prestigious awards including the Jnanpith Award (the highest literary honour conferred in India) in 2011 for the year 2010, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Shri by Government of India, Kabir Samman, Kalidas Samman and Pampa Award. After his retirement, Kambara was nominated Member of Karnataka Legislative Council, to which he made significant contributions through his interventions.
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja	Dr U B Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. He has to his credit many firsts, viz., first Kannada website, first Kannada online magazine, first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS, first Indian language (Kannada) editor for WinCE device (HP Jornado 720), first Indian language version (Kannada) of universally popular Logo (programming language for children) software, etc. His Kannada logo won the Manthan Award for the year 2006. He was a member of the technical advisory committee setup by the Govt. of Karnataka for Standardization of Kannada on Computers (2000). He is also a member of the Kannada Software Committee of Govt. of Karnataka (2008-current).

The Artists

Kiran Subbaiah	Kiran Subbaiah studied sculpture at Santiniketan, MSU Baroda and the RCA London. He was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam where he worked on art that incorporated informatics and electro-mechanics. He is also known for making videos using custom-built tools that enable him to perform multi-person film-making tasks single-handed. His art is shown extensively in India and abroad. Subbaiah is based in Bangalore and is represented by the Chatterjee and Lal gallery in Mumbai. Kiran will present the Spectator, a robot that can sense the presence of human beings around it. It tries to appreciate them as works of art.
Tara Kelton	Tara Kelton is an artist and designer. She has been living in Brooklyn, USA and Bangalore, India for the last three years. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. Kelton’s video, print, and web-based works investigate moments in which technology alters our perception of the physical world. Kelton has taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology and has recently exhibited her work at Vox Populi (USA), Franklin Street Works (USA), GALLERYSKE (Bangalore) and the India Design Forum (Mumbai). Tara will present Trace, a surveillance camera feed drawn in real-time by anonymous online workers.
Navin Thomas	Navin Thomas is a multimedia artist and a professional scrap market junkie, he spends a good quality of his precious time looking for obscure cultural misfits... after destroying most of himself in the 90's, he now spends his time restoring your mother's brother’s tin space toys and other unusual situations.
Abhishek Hazra	Abhishek Hazra approaches his art with a particular emphasis on the study of the historiography of science. He uses videos and prints that often integrate textual fragments drawn from real and fictional scenarios. He has previously exhibited and performed at Science Gallery, Dublin, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, Experiment Marathon Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Kunstmuseum Bern. Abhishek was most recently an artist in residence at SymbioticA, the Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia, Perth. It was first performed as part of Beam Me Up, curated by Reinhard Storz and Gitanjali Dang, which was acknowledged by Pro Helvetia, New Delhi and German Book Office, New Delhi. Abhishek will be presenting #cloudrumble56 (attempted to re-animate sections of the Indian parliamentary archives — specifically, the transcripts of the scientist M.N. Saha's (1893-1956) interventions — through a performance that was transmitted only through live tweets on Twitter).
Aditya Dipankar	Aditya Dipankar started fiddling with music at the age of 4 when he started learning the tabla and then went on to play it for a long time. Years later, he discovered his strong inclination towards singing. Now, under the noble guidance of Pandit Vijay Sardeshmukh (Senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva), he is trying to understand the simplicity and spontaneity in the rich tradition of Hindustani classical music.
Nirmita Narasimhan	Nirmita Narasimhan is a Policy Director at CIS and works on accessibility for persons with disabilities. She was awarded the national award for empowerment of persons with disabilities by the President of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award. Nirmita Narasimhan is a disciple of Dr. Radha Venkatachalam and renowned maestro Prof. T.R. Subramanyam. She began learning music at the age of 5 and went on to complete her Ph.D. in this subject from the Delhi University. Nirmita has been performing since 1995 and received several accolades such as the Sahitya Kala Parishad Scholarship and prizes in several competitions. She received the Gold medal in MA for standing first in the University and also stood first in MPhil. She has released a CD on Ponnayya Pillai compositions and also sung in an album of varnams. Nirmita has performed in different places in India such as Delhi, Chennai, Tirupathi and Bangalore as well as in Singapore and has also given several thematic concerts such as Eka Raga Sandhya and Pallavi concerts.
Sharath Chandra Ram	Sharath Chandra Ram (Sharathchandra Ramakrishnan) has interests in multimodal art, cognitive science, accessibility, digital humanities and network cultures. He is a faculty at the Centre for Experimental Media Arts at the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. At the Centre for Internet and Society he helped set up and manage activities at the Metaculture Media Lab : an open hackerspace and alternative platform for research and exchange. His writings and musings at CIS maybe found here: http://cis-india.org/author/sharath He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Artificial Intelligence specializing in interactive virtual environments. Previously as a Research Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences he received a special mention award at the International Conference on Consciousness (2012) held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies for his work on ‘Cross modal Integration’. As an amateur radio broadcaster, he is a proponent of the free use of airwaves for relief work, education and transmission art. He has also been a development related radio journalist (PANOS @ Nepal, Voices UNDP@Bangalore), speaker at the International Ham Radio Convention (Port Blair, 2006) and as a film enthusiast has been a Press Reviewer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Locations

Bangalore

Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, Second 'C' Cross, Domlur,
2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560071,
Karnataka, India
Ph: +91 80 4092 6283
Fax: +91 80 2535 0955

Delhi

Centre for Internet and Society
G 15, Top floor
Behind Hauz Khas, G Block Market
Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110016
Ph: + 91 011 40503285

Event Brochure

Event Flier

Event Posters/Banners and Videos

Accessibility

National Resource Kit (PDF, PNG)
NVDA E-Speak (PDF, PNG)
International Collaborations (PDF, PNG)
Partners (PDF, PNG)
Publications (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
Inclusive Planet (PDF, PNG)

In the below video Anandhi Viswanathan gives a demo of the National Resource Kit project and Rameshwar Nagar gives a demo of the NVDA and ESpeak (Text-to-Speech) project during the exhibition.

Access to Knowledge

Broadcast Treaty (PDF, PNG)
Copyright (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 1 (PDF, PNG)
Software Patent 2 (PDF, PNG)
Pervasive Technologies (PDF, PNG)

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

Factsheet (PDF, PNG)
Reaching Out (PDF, PNG)
Outreach (PDF, PNG)
Bridging Gender Gap (PDF, PNG)
Press Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Education Programmes (PDF, PNG)
Team Achievements (PDF, PNG)
Visualization (PDF, PNG)

Openness

Open Access to Scholarly Literature (PDF, PNG)
Open Access to Law (PDF, PNG)
Open Standards (PDF, PNG)
Free/Open Source Software (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Free Speech)

Blocking of Websites (PDF, PNG)
Freedom of Speech (PDF, PNG)
Intermediary Liability (PDF, PNG)
Internet Governance Forum (PDF, PNG)

Internet Governance (Privacy)

Privacy Events (PDF, PNG)
Timeline (PDF, PNG)
UID (1) (PDF, PNG)
UID (2) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (1) (PDF, PNG)
DNA (2) (PDF, PNG)

Telecom

Institutional Framework for Indian Telecommunication (PDF, PNG)
Growth of Telecom Industry in India (PDF, PNG)
Delicensed Spectrum (PDF, PNG)
Spectrum Sharing (PDF, PNG)

RAW Monographs

Archives and Access (PDF, PNG)
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities (PDF, PNG)
The Last Cultural Mile (PDF, PNG)
Porn, Law, Video Technology (PDF, PNG)
Re:Wiring Bodies (PDF, PNG)
Community Informatics and Open Government Data (Special Issue) (PDF, PNG)

News and Media

Media Coverage (PDF, PNG)
Organizational Chart (PDF)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/celebrating-5-years-of-cis

December 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-01-16T05:15:27Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society wish you all a great year ahead. In the December 2012 newsletter, we bring you the draft early chapters of our “National Resource Kit” project for persons with disabilities (covering four southern states); and accessibility-related comments on the Twelfth Five Year Plan; the draft research on pervasive technologies and access to knowledge that we presented at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in Brazil; our comments on the privacy implications of including RFID tags in the proposed Rule 138A of the Motor Vehicle Rules, a report on the open access lectures delivered by Prof. Leslie Chan during his tour of India, reports of Wikipedia-related workshops conducted across three cities, and news and media coverage.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Research Manager (Digital Humanities project), and Policy Associate (Access to Knowledge and Openness) and Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
CIS received a grant of INR 54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation for Creating a National Kit of Laws, Policies and Programs for Persons with Disabilities on August 16, 2012. Anandhi Vishwanathan from CIS and Shruti Ramakrishnan from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are the researchers presently working for this project. Early draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from the readers:

The Tamil Nadu Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Karnataka Chapter (by Shruti Ramakrishnan, December 30, 2012).
The Kerala Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).
The Andhra Chapter (by Anandi Vishwanathan, December 31, 2012).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Event Organised

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15 – 17, 2012). The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was organized by Fundação Getulio Vargas, American University Washington College of Law, Columbia University, Open AIR, and ICSTD. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Pranesh was one of the moderators in the Roundtable Discussion on Priority Policy Forums, Research and Analysis Needs and Commitments.

Research for the Global Congress

For the 2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest event, CIS conducted research. Jadine Lannon (based on research by Annapoornima and Rohan George and with help from Yogesh Kumar did research on documentation of phones and their patent, Amba Kak did research on copyright and mobile licensing, Vikrant Vasudev conducted research on patent pools and valuation methods, Hans Varghese Mathews did research on mathematical models of patent pools and Nehaa Chaudhuri did research on analysis of 3Gand 4G patent pools.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Event Report

Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report (by Yogesh Londhe, December 10, 2012). Event was hosted at CIS office in Bangalore. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event held in CIS office in Bangalore on December 1 and 2, 2012.

Events Participated

‘Information & Networks’ Partners’ Meeting (organised by International Development Research Centre, Canada in Rio de Janeiro, December 11 – 12, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke in session on Open Business and IP.

Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India (Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science & Technology, CSIR, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala, Manasa Media Centre, Mysore University Library and SDM Institute for Management Development, December 17 – 20, 2012).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia Project)
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Events Organised

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute).
Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, December 8, 2012).

Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

News / Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

Videos

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.
Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan (CIS, Bangalore, November 30, 2012). Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist gave a talk.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.

Upcoming Event

Meta Refresh (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, February 22 and 23, 2013).

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Analysis of Central Motor Vehicle Rules

Comments on the Proposed Rule 138A of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 Concerning Radio Frequency Identification Tags (by Bhairav Acharya, December 3, 2012).

Columns/Op-eds

Online Censorship: How Government should Approach Regulation of Speech (by Sunil Abraham, Economic Times, December 5, 2012).
The Worldwide Web of Concerns (by Pranesh Prakash, Deccan Chronicle, and Asian Age, December 10, 2012).
The Trouble with Hurried Solutions (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hindu, December 15, 2012).
Tomorrow, Today (Nishant Shah, The Indian Express, December 29, 2012).

Event Organised

Meeting of the Network of Internet & Society Centers (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Center for Technology & Society, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Center for Civic Media, NEXA Center for Internet & Society and CIS, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6 – 8, 2012).

Upcoming Events

DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012).

Events Participated

Second International e-Governance Conference (organized by the National Committee for Corporate Governance Electronic Iraq and the United Nations Development Programme, Rashid Hotel, Baghdad, December 2, 2012). Sunil Abraham presented on "Review of the Legal Environment in Iraq for Effective e-Governance".
Seminar/Artist Talks : "Outresourcing" with the Transmediale Collective (organised by the Berlin - Transmediale new media collective, December 3, 2012, Bangalore). Sharath Chandra Ram presented a White Paper.
World Conference on International Telecommunications (organised by ITU, December 3 – 14). Chinmayi Arun participated as a civil society representative.
Internet Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points (organised by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University, December 6 – 8, 2012).
Annual Conference on Human Rights 2012 (organised by Estonian Institute of Human Rights and Google). Malavika Jayaram participated as a panelist.
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp (Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, Rio, Brazil, December 13 and 14, 2012). Elonnai Hickok made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.
Economic Impact of Internet in India (organised by Aspen Institute India, December 21, 2012). Chinmayi Arun attended this event.

Blog Entries

Transcripts from WCIT-12 (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Section 66-A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Cases (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 3, 2012).
Internet-driven Developments — Structural Changes and Tipping Points (by Elonnai Hickok, December 28, 2012).
State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary (by Elonnai Hickok, December 31, 2012).
Mining the Web Collective (by Sharath Chandra Ram, December 31, 2012).

Video

Technology Culture and Events in South East Asia — A Presentation by Preetam Rai (CIS, Bangalore, December 18, 2012). Preetam Rai gave a lecture.

Media Coverage

66A ‘cut & paste job’ (by GS Mudur, Telegraph, December 3, 2012). Pranesh Prakash and Snehashish Ghosh are quoted.
Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns (by Surabhi Agarwal, December 6, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Debate on Section 66A rages on (Vasudha Venugopal, The Hindu, December 10, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Hacktivists deface BSNL website (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 13, 2012).
Govt likely to issue guidelines to clarify IT rules soon (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 16, 2012).
The freedom of expression debate: The State must mend fences with The Web (by Rahul Jayaram, India Today, December 18, 2012).
‘The IT Act is fine, but its interpretation is not’ (DNA, December 19, 2012).
No fear of losing internet freedom till Jan 15: Experts (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, December 22, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
UN agrees to review agencies governing Internet (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, December 27, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt (The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
A note of dissent on cash transfers and UID (The Hindu, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham was one of the signatories.
The year social media came of age in India (by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan, The Times of India, December 31, 2012). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Newspaper Column

Inflation Control Through Structural Reforms (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, December 11, 2012).

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India
Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Licensing Framework for Telecom: A Historical Overview (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).
Market Structure in the Telecom Industry (by Snehashish Ghosh, December 31, 2012).

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Book Review

Not Just Fancy Television (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, December 8, 2012): Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Media Coverage

What does it mean to be a digital native? (by Oliver Joy, CNN, December 8, 2012).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

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

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

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — December 2012

praskrishna — 2013-01-10T13:33:41Z

This is the fourth Access to Knowledge newsletter from the CIS team in Delhi! During the month of December we had organised the Marathi wiki workshop, a workshop at NMAIT in Karnataka and a workshop at SRM University in Chennai.

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of upto INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program has become the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). In this issue we bring you updates from the Marathi wiki community and workshops organised in NMAIT in Karnataka and SRM University in Chennai.

Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

CIS Office in Delhi

The A2K team consists of three members: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

Education Program

Marathi Wiki Workshop at TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, December 8, 2012). Organised as part of the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society’s initiative of focusing on Indian languages. Nitika Tandon participated in the event.

Workshops Organised by CIS:

Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT (NMAIT, Karkala Taluk, Karnataka December 21, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikipedia Workshop at SRM (SRM University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, December 17, 2012, co-organised in association with Metawings Institute). Noopur Raval participated in the event.

Media Coverage

A Report of Odia Wikipedia Workshop at IIT, Kharagpur (Samaja, Odia daily, Kolkata edition, December 3, 2012).

# Blog Entries

Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, December 19, 2012).
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups (by Noopur Raval, December 28, 2012).

Video

Wikipedia: State of Tech — A Talk by Erik Moeller (CIS, Bangalore, November 12, 2012). Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk.

About CIS

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

Follow us elsewhere

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

*Support Us*

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

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

Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh

Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:08:03Z

A Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian.

The session on Day 1 was conducted by Subhashish Panigrahi and the session on Day 2 was conducted by Subhashish and Piyush.

Day 1: Introductory Session

There was news coverage about this session in the Hindustan Times. Members of the British Library (members above 16 years) were informed about the event through the British Council's mailing list. About 32 participants attended this session on Day 1. These included people from different age groups and backgrounds. Amazingly there were more elderly folks than the youngsters! Most of them were from Ludhiana, Mohali and Panchkula (Mohali and Panchkula are two nearby cities).

Subhashish gave the welcome address and asked the participants to introduce themselves and speak about their Wikipedia experience and interaction as a user. Many of them asked questions in the beginning itself which was quite beneficial as we got to spending some time to know each other. The participants were taken through the presentation by questioning about "Who edits Wikipedia and why they edit it", and since the participants continued asking a lot of questions in between, the intro session was longer. Most of them were still not believing that Wikipedia articles could be edited by common men like them. So Subhashish decided to do some vandalism. One of the participants volunteered for creating her user account, and the year when Chandigarh was declared as being the "cleanest city" of India was changed. She then corrected it. Subhashish explained how experienced editors correct such mistakes. The participants were briefed about a few formatting options like bold, italics, hyperlinking and creating heading levels, etc., and showed the "help" tab through which they could learn more. Majority of them had doubts about the credibility and they brought examples of many articles having wrong information. So the rest of the session was spent discussing about the low visibility being one of the reasons of articles with wrong information and how more editor contribution is essential for articles in the Indian context. The participants were also shown articles with "cleanup / more citations needed" maintenance tags and told how they could be improved.

Day 2: Editing Workshop

Ten participants from the previous day (including a sports-blogger, a techie, four students, a ELT trainer, a pediatrician and a lady from Ludhiana who created her user account on Day 1 and brought her father for Day 2) came over for this workshop. There were four new student participants as well. Subhashish and Piyush spoke briefly about what is intended for the editing session. All the participants created their user accounts. Some of the participants helped the ones who were new to create their user accounts. The participants chose various articles including articles of local importance such as Banka Bihari Temple in Chandigarh, paratha (few of the participants raising queries on why it is not spelt "paraNtha", Assam tea, and so on.

Figure 1: Above is a picture of participants doing Wiki editing

The audience listened patiently and asked interesting questions like "what is there for me", "what we are going to do next", etc. They all gathered together for a photoshoot, discussed on setting a wiki club to stay connected and agreed to continue editing after the session is over. The participants were also excited to hear that the Chandigarh British Library Wikipedia Club would be India's third Wikipedia club.

Figure 2: Above is a picture of the participants on Day 2

Meeting with British Library Staff

After the session got over there was a meeting with British library's Deputy Manager Christina and IT Head Varinder. We were joined by a columnist from Tribune and one participant. We explained how the wiki club will function and how it would help them as well. Being a library they could involve many of their members in this. A woman editor from Ludhiana has showed interest for conducting workshops in her town. There was a sports-blogger and techie who explained how the local blogger community (over 125+ bloggers) meet up regularly and blog actively. This is a community we could explore more to promote Wikipedia amongst techies. We found that the British Library was quite open to ideas and showed interest for this collaborative model. The participants also asked about defining positions for the wiki club so that people having different interest could take up the lead for different activities.

Post event steps:

Emails with thanks and appreciating their interest were sent to the participants.
Formal opening of the club was done on Wikipedia and participants and new editors have been informed.
Help/support desk on Facebook was set up to provide online support.
Press releases were sent to newspapers.
Distributing work among new editors has begun.
Discussion for next meetup and keeping them updated on regular basis is being implemented.

Meetings were also held with the curator of Chandigarh museum and with Sheetal Prakash, former professor in Public Administration at Punjab University who could help us in reaching out to Punjabi media.

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/report-of-the-wikipedia-workshop-in-british-library

The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop

Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:16:44Z

For those who might not be aware, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the first Indic Wikipedias where community started editing way back in 2002. However, after the initial few edits all activities got stopped and it was inactive over the last decade. Recently we conducted a few workshops that led to the revival of Punjabi Wikipedia. This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012.

Surinder Wadhawan, a Mumbai based Wikipedian played an important role in designing this workshop and introducing Punjabi Wikipedia to the Punjabi speakers. The interest and enthusiam showed by Surinder encouraged long-time Punjabi wikipedian G.S.Guglani to join this workshop.

About 25 participants came over for this workshop. The College of Computer and Information Technology (CCIT) supported in hosting this event.

Sarabjit Singh, CEO of the organization introduced the invited guests and explained briefly about the session. Surinder thereafter made a presentation explaining the basics of Wikipedia editing. Guglani, one of the old and active editors of Punjabi Wikipedia talked about the Punjabi Wikipedia and its present situation. He then invited one of the participants and helped her creating her user account and edit an article. Janmeja Singh, a Punjabi language researcher spoke about unicode standards and the importance of Wikipedia for Punjabi language. Gurjeet Singh, another new wikipedian demonstrated Punjabi typing using commonly used keyboards with Roman characters for those who were not aware of typing in Punjabi.

We then started the editing session. Out of them 15 new editors (of which 13 were female) edited various articles. We showed them the typing support page (http://bit.ly/Uw8WaV) on Punjabi Wikipedia and distributed the same in printed form (http://bit.ly/Rk9wde). Guglani, Subhashish and Surinder helped editors with basic editing and referencing. New Wikipedians were also informed about the Punjabi Wikipedia Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/Pr7tBE ).

Above is a picture of all the participants from the Punjabi Wikipedia workshop

The workshop was covered in Signpost (http://bit.ly/SSvUYh). There was some media coverage as well:

Daily Ajit: http://bit.ly/OWPozC
The Tribune: http://bit.ly/UMrDvs
Hindustan Times: http://bit.ly/UMrNTn
PunjabInfoline: ‪http://bit.ly/UZhoT8
YesPunjab.com: http://bit.ly/OcMANc

Photos: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:First_Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop,_Ludhiana

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/first-punjabi-wikipedia-workshop

WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground

Rahul Cherian — 2012-09-28T04:41:08Z

After many years of hard lobbying by the World Blind Union, it appears that the WIPO Treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities (TVI) could become a reality next year. However, due to pressure from the European Union and the United States, and their insistence on several untenable provisions, there is a real risk that the TVI could become unworkable on the ground.

The following is a list of concerns that must suitably be addressed if the TVI is to make a realistic dent in the “book famine” in which only a few per cent of books are available in accessible formats that persons with print disabilities can read.

Definition of authorised entity to be widened.
The current definition of authorized entity prescribes that only authorized entities that address the needs of beneficiary persons as one of their primary (in brackets) activities or institutional obligations can undertake conversion and distribution of books in accessible formats. This requirement is unacceptable since it will exclude many legitimate organisations and institutions that undertake these activities but who do not address the needs of beneficiary persons as a "primary" activity or institutional obligation. Some examples of such organisations/institutions are mainstream education institutions and mainstream libraries. Delhi University which has a large number of blind students will be excluded and this is unacceptable.
Authorised entities must be required to follow simple rules and procedures when converting and distributing works in accessible formats.
As is proposed now, authorized entities could be required to follow complex rules and procedures with respect to the permitted activities. In this connection it is critical to note that:
- Smaller organisations will not be in a position to keep organised records. Therefore smaller organisations that serve rural or small populations must not be subject to a requirement to keep records where they do not distribute accessible formats in electronic form.
- There must be no requirements for organisations to apply Technology Protection Measures to accessible formats in electronic form.
- While organisations can inform beneficiary persons to whom they supply accessible formats that there must be no subsequent distribution to non-beneficiary persons, an organisation should have no obligation to oversee the use by the beneficiary persons they supply accessible formats to, or any responsibility for misuse by beneficiary persons they supply accessible formats to.
- There must be no requirement to share the records that organisations are required to keep with any person or entity other than in the eventuality of copyright infringement proceedings.
The rules and procedures must therefore be simplified to reflect the above.
The exception must automatically kick in if the relevant accessible formats are not available in the market on the same day as the mainstream format.
At present there is no clarity on when the exception kicks in and the existing wording can be interpreted such that the exception may apply only after significant time has passed after the books are available in the market in the mainstream format. If a work is made available in the market in a mainstream format it is essential that beneficiary persons can enjoy the work in the relevant accessible format at the same time. Failure to do so is discriminatory towards beneficiary persons. In this connection, the TVI must expressly clarify that if the accessible format copy is not available on the same day as the mainstream format, the exception automatically applies and authorised entities and beneficiary persons can create accessible format copies on the same day that the mainstream format is commercial available.
This will also be an incentive for rights holders to take steps to ensure that accessible format copies are made commercially available on the same day as mainstream formats.
“Making available” to be possible through wire and wireless means.
One of the proposed changes to the TVI is the clarification that “making available” accessible format copies to the public should be as per Article 8 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty thereby expressly providing for communication to the public, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them. Given that technology is making it increasingly possible for beneficiary persons to access accessible format copies over wire and wireless means, this is clarification is very critical.
The Authorised Entity in the exporting country must not have any obligation to verify any form of legal eligibility in the importing country.
As per the current wording of the TVI an authorized entity in one Member State:
- Must, when exporting to beneficiary person in another Member State, verify whether that other Member State would permit that beneficiary person to make or import that accessible copy; and
- Can only export to an entity or organization in another Member State that the originating authorizing entity has identified as another authorized entity.
It is obvious that authorised entities in one country cannot verify the above with any degree of certainty and therefore it is impossible for authorised entities to comply with this requirement. Moreover, as in the case of all copyright exceptions and limitations, rights holders have the right to take copyright infringement action against any person or entity that operates outside, or exceeds, the exception. This requirement relating to the verification legal legibility must therefore be deleted.
Member states having the flexibility to decide whether to link exceptions to commercial availability.
At present, the draft TVI provides Member States the flexibility to decide whether to confine permitted activities to instances where there is no commercial availability of accessible format copies. This flexibility is critical for Member States since the economic and distribution ground realities in each Member State vary widely and only a Member State can decide this issue conclusively for its own circumstances. Any attempt to change this position in the TVI must be opposed.
In short, barring the above issues, the Treaty appears to heading in the right direction. The upcoming intersessionals in Geneva (17-19th October 2012) to discuss the text of the Treaty will be crucial to decide the fate of the Treaty. Watch this space.

Rahul is the founder of Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability Law and Policy and he advices the World Blind Union on legal issues relating to the WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/wipo-treaty-for-the-visually-impaired

August 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-12-06T04:54:20Z

Centre for Internet & Society newsletter for the month of August 2019.

Highlights for August 2019
The Oxford Internet Institute and CIS are creating a State of the Internet’s Languages report, as baseline research with both numbers and stories, to demonstrate how far we are from making the internet multilingual. The call is available in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, English, IsiZulu, Spanish, and Tamil. CIS invites friends and communities to translate the call into other languages. CIS's Access to Knowledge (A2K) team is conducting a free knowledge movement and as part of this initiative it is inviting contributions from the Wikipedia community. Photos, media, content or archives donated by community members would be used worldwide to disseminate information. The content you are donating must be under Creative Commons Share-like content. You must have the copyright of the content under CC licenses. Over the last few years, several digital identity schemes have been initiated in different countries across the world. There has been significant momentum on digital ID, especially after the adoption of UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, which calls for legal identity for all by 2030. Authors, Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena, explore about the uses and design of digital identity systems and ask two core questions a) What are appropriate uses of ID?, and b) How should we think about the technological design of ID? Together with the Institute of Technology & Society (ITS), Brazil, and the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law(CIPIT), Kenya, CIS participated at a side event in RightsCon 2019 held in Tunisia, titled Holding ID Issuers Accountable, What Works?, organised by the Omidyar Network. A report of the event is published here. As governments across the globe implement new, foundational, digital identification systems (“Digital ID”), or modernize existing ID programs, there is dire need for greater research and discussion about appropriate uses of Digital ID systems. At RightsCon 2019 in Tunis, we presented working drafts on appropriate use of Digital ID by the partner organisations of this three-region research alliance - ITS from Brazil, CIPIT from Kenya, and CIS from India. CIS gave its comments to the ID4D Practitioners’ Guide: Draft For Consultation released by ID4D in June, 2019. The submission is divided into three main parts. The first part (General Comments) contains the high-level comments on the Practitioners’ Guide, while the second part (Specific Comments) addresses individual sections in the Guide. The third and final part (Additional Comments) does not relate to particulars in the Practitioners' Guide but other documents that it relies upon. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had released the National Digital Health Blueprint on 15 July 2019 for comments. CIS submitted its comments. CIS notes that the nature of data which would be subject to processing in the proposed digital framework pre-supposes a robust data protection regime in India, one which is currently absent. Accordingly, it urges the ministry to cease the implementation of the framework until the Personal Data Protection Bill is passed by the Parliament. Aayush Rathi , Vedika Pareek , Divij Joshi and Pranav Bidare co-authored a research paper 'Future of Work in the ASEAN'. The authors reveal that the future of work will be mediated through region and country specific factors such as socioeconomic,geopolitical and demographic change. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Ambika Tandon with research assistance by Sankalp Srivastava and Anjanaa Aravindan. The research is supported by Tides Foundation.

CIS and the News

The following articles were authored by CIS secretariat during the month:

The Knowledge Base is Liberated (Subodh Kulkarni and Madhav Gadgil; Loksatta; August 3, 2019).
Private Sector and the cultivation of cyber norms in India (Arindrajit Basu; Nextrends India; August 5, 2019).
Rethinking the intermediary liability regime in India (Torsha Sarkar; CyberBRICS; August 16, 2019).
Digital Native: How free is the internet? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 18, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar with social media or ending encryption is counterproductive (Sunil Abraham; Prime Time; August 26, 2019).
A judicial overreach into matters of regulation (Gurshabad Grover; The Hindu; August 28, 2019).
Kashmir’s information vacuum (Aayush Rathi and Akriti Bopanna; The Hindu; August 29, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS secretariat was consulted for the following articles published during the month in various publications:

Will Modi govt move on Kashmir’s Article 370 stand the scrutiny of Supreme Court? (The Print; August 6, 2019).
‘I’m just helpless’: Concern about Kashmir mounts as communication blackout continues (Niha Masih; Washington Post; August 6, 2019).
Why the Madras HC case on WhatsApp traceability could have wider ramifications (Haripriya Suresh; The News Minute; August 8, 2019).
Ministry of Health's public consultation on National Digital Health Blueprint: Legal issues around telemedicine, consent, and 'egosystems' in healthcare (Trisha Jalan; Medianama; August 8, 2019).
Abuse linked to Net fixation (Nina C. George; Deccan Herald; August 13, 2019).
India Shut Down Kashmir’s Internet Access. Now, ‘We Cannot Do Anything.’ (Vindu Goel, Karan Deep Singh and Sameer; New York Times; August 14, 2019).
India’s top science institution is trying hard to fix its “manel” problem (Quartz India; August 16, 2019). This piece was originally published on Connect under the headline, “We Learned (The Hard Way) Not to Have Manels.”
Perché l'India ha tagliato internet al Kashmir (Raffaele Angius; WIRED.IT; August 19, 2019).
US pressure threatens to weaken data - localisation mandate in India's landmark data-protection bill (Sandhya Sharma; ET Prime; August 19, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar to Facebook, WhatsApp won't curb fake news, but may undermine its legislation: Experts (Swathy Moorthy; Moneycontrol; August 20, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar to Facebook, Twitter: Possible witch-hunt or key to curb crime & fake news? (Taran Deol and Revathi Krishanan; The Print; August 21, 2019).
AI is biased, you’ll see if you Google ‘hands’ (Rajmohan Sudhakar; Deccan Herald; August 25, 2019).
Government plans tighter rules for social media brands like Facebook, TikTok, ShareChat (Sunny Sen; CNBC TV 18; August 28, 2019).
What Centre will tell Supreme Court on Aadhaar and social media account linkage (Amrita Madhukalya; Hindustan Times; August 28, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.

Wikipedia

Under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation we are doing a project for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Blog Entry

Call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia (Bhuvana Meenakshi; August 19, 2019).

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. As part of internet governance work we work on policy issues relating to freedom of expression primarily focusing on the Information Technology Act and issues of liability of intermediaries for unlawful speech and simultaneously ensuring that the right to privacy is safeguarded as well.

Freedom of Speech & Expression

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Participation in Events

Packets, net neutrality and gaming public policy outcomes (Organized by Has Geek; Bangalore; August 15, 2019). Gurshabad Grover attended Prof. Vishal Misra's lecture on net neutrality.

Privacy

Under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC we are doing a project on surveillance. CIS is researching the history of privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhar. As part of our ongoing research, we bring you the following outputs:

Submission

Comments on the National Digital Health Blueprint (Samyukta Prabhu, Ambika Tandon, Torsha Sarkar and Aayush Rathi; August 7, 2019).

Participation in Events

Digital ID Forum 2019 (Organized by UNDP; Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; July 3, 2019). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists at this event.
BIS LITD 17 meeting (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; New Delhi; July 3, 2019). Gurshabad Grover attended the sixteenth meeting of the Information Systems Security and Biometrics Section Committee (LITD17).
Facebook Data for Good in Bangalore (Organized by Facebook; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; July 25, 2019).
Roundtable with the WhatsApp leadership (Organized by WhatsApp; Mountbatten, The Oberoi, New Delhi; July 26, 2019). Will Cathcart, WhatsApp's new global head, visited India and invited Sunil Abraham for a discussion.
Facebook Data for Good in New Delhi (Organized by Facebook; University of Chicago Center, New Delhi; July 29, 2019).

IT / Information Technology

A research on the usage of systems (computers and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving and sending information as well as the IT Act:

Research Paper

Future of Work in the ASEAN (Aayush Rathi , Vedika Pareek , Divij Joshi and Pranav Bidare; edited by Elonnai Hickok and Ambika Tandon with research assistance from Sankalp Srivastava and Anjanaa Aravindan; August 31, 2019).

Participation in Event

Cyber Policy 2.0 (Organized by National Law University; Bangalore; August 17, 2019). Arindrajit Basu was a speaker.

Artificial Intelligence

With origins dating back to the 1950s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not necessarily new. However, interest in AI has been rekindled over the recent years due to advancements of technology and its applications to real-world scenarios. We conduct research on the existing legal and regulatory parameters:

Participation in Events

Emergence of Chinese Technology:Rising stakes for innovation, competition and governance (Organized by Omidyar Network in partnership with the Esya Centre; New Delhi; August 12, 2019). Arindrajit Basu attended the event.
Impact of Industrial Revolution 4.0 - IT and Automotive Sector in India (Organized by the Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung; Bangalore; August 21, 2019). Aayush Rathi attended the event.
Policies for the Platform Economy (Organized by IT for Change; India Habitat Centre; New Delhi; August 30, 2019). Amber Sinha and Anubha Sinha were panelists.

Digital Identity

Omidyar Network is investing in establishment of a three-region research alliance — to be co-led by the Institute for Technology & Society (ITS), Brazil, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) , Kenya, and CIS. As part of this Alliance, we at the CIS will look at the policy objectives of digital identity projects, how technological policy choices can be thought through to meet the objectives, and how legitimate uses of a digital identity framework may be evaluated.

Research Paper

Design and Uses of Digital Identities - Research Plan (Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena; August 8, 2019).

Submissions

The Appropriate Use of Digital Identity (Amber Sinha; August 8, 2019).
Comments to the ID4D Practitioners’ Guide (Amber Sinha; August 8, 2019).

Participation in Event

Holding ID Issuers Accountable, What Works? (Organized by Omidyar Network; RightsCon 2019; August 8, 2019).

Researchers@Work

The researchers@work programme at CIS produces and supports pioneering and sustained trans-disciplinary research on key thematics at the intersections of internet and society; organise and incubate networks of and fora for researchers and practitioners studying and making internet in India; and contribute to development of critical digital pedagogy, research methodology, and creative practice.

Participation in Event

Workshop on Archival Standards and Digitisation Workflow (Organized by British Library; NCBS; Bangalore; August 19 - 20, 2019). P.P. Sneha attended the event.

Blog Entries

#HookingUp (Akhil Kang, Christina Thomas Dhanraj, Dhrubo Jyoti, and Gowthaman Ranganathan; August 1, 2019).
Call for Contributions and Reflections: Your experiences in Decolonizing the Internet’s Languages! (P.P. Sneha; August 7, 2019).
Simiran Lalvani - Workers’ fictive kinship relations in Mumbai app-based food delivery (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 16, 2019).

About CIS

CIS is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

Follow CIS on:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

Support CIS:

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

Collaborate with CIS:

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2019-newsletter

Bhuvana Meenakshi elected Mozilla Rep for July 2019

Admin — 2019-09-25T16:33:55Z

Bhuvana Meenakshi was selected as a Rep of the Month (July 2019) by Mozilla for my active contributions.

Reps are community coordinators interested in:

finding and connecting new talent with Mozilla projects they are contributing to
developing communities on a functional or local level
supporting local communities and Mozilla to have an effective and decentralized environment for contribution
creating collaborations with adjacent communities to spread Mozilla’s mission and expand Mozilla’s outreach in the open source ecosystem
collecting local knowledge from Mozilla communities to inform and inspire Mozilla’s strategy, activities and priorities

How is the Rep of the Month nominated?

Every Rep can be nominated by any Reps Mentor to receive this recognition. Therefore it's possible to nominate other Reps, not just the mentor's mentees. This nomination is meant as a recognition for outstanding contributions to Mozilla through the Reps program. Mentors are encouraged to nominate any Reps that have stood out in the past month.

For more see here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhuvana-meenakshi-elected-mozilla-rep-for-july-2019-1

Analysis on the strategies of Mozilla and Wiki communities on gender gap aspects

bhuvana — 2019-10-03T11:56:37Z

There is a need for research on how Open Source communities are trying to balance the gender ratio and how they provide the safe space environment to its contributors. With this in mind I have come up with this blog as I am an active contributor of Mozilla since 5 years and also got myself recently introduced to Wikimedia and its sister projects, have interacted with few Indian women contributors in both of these communities and came out with a few observations on how I see them in India and what could be improved in both communities.

Opening note

Wikipedia community

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of articles where many users can edit it freely and it has become so large that you run across it all the time in Google. It is so popular that it is now one of the Top 5 websites in the world! The reason behind the growth is because the articles are simple and useful.

Wikipedians are the contributors who do a communal work to improve the content by editing bits of text and cluster them to the large database. Beyond this there are other sister projects of Wikimedia which interest the audience on whichever they are expertise about. The main motivation for these contributors is their freedom to contribute in their own native language which they are more passionate about. This is a great social cause they are contributing towards.

Mozilla community

Mozilla makes browsers, apps, code and tools that put people before profit. In fact, there’s a non-profit Foundation at the heart of the enterprise.Their mission is to keep the internet open and accessible to all. Hope everyone uses or had at least at some point seen Firefox browser/logo, so this is the prime product of Mozilla. There are various projects to support the Firefox browser and they are mostly Open Source.

Mozillians are the volunteers who contribute in the improvement of these projects thus helping the world to access the internet and the Open web.Mozilla Volunteers are passionate to learn,collaborate and knowledge share among a large world-wide community and the crew is a mix of coder, non-coders, policy makers and anyone who supports Open Web. The point that drives everyone to contribute is that the community creates a vibe to contribute and to create a safe and better experience in accessing the digital world.

WikiProject Women

This a group of editors who aim to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women's topics. It brings Wikipedia users of all genders, sexual orientations, geographic locations, and personal backgrounds together to discuss and collaborate on coverage of women's content across Wikipedia.There are various streams in which women can be part of the larger mission for instance:

Art and Feminism

Women in Red

Wiki loves women

Womoz

Women & Mozilla ("WoMoz") a community composed of members from different Open Source projects.It is mainly dedicated to improving women's visibility and involvement in Free/Open Source and Mozilla, and to increase the number of women contributors. Anyone can participate in this project, regardless of sex, age, job, etc. We are united by the common goal of promoting women's visibility and involvement in open source communities. They also believe that the Internet, FLOSS projects and computing must remain open and participatory. This also means accessible in the same way to all - women and men alike.

It also believe solutions should continuously be proposed in order to improve the visibility of all minorities, who for various reasons might not have equal access to computers or the Internet. This project is an example of this, as it aims at ameliorating women's presence and participation in Mozilla and open source. But currently this group is not very active, except for a few regional contributors where they find massive necessity to focus on the women participation.

Overview of the strategies used for increasing women participation

Methodologies used

Both the communities are great supporters of the Free Softwares and licenses and so the methods that is used in addressing the gender gap issues is as follows:

Conduct gender neutral events like hack-a-thons/ edit-a-thons where the tutor is a woman or there is a large ratio of under represented community in the event.
Host monthly offline/online meetups.
Work on projects which are gender neutral based.
Following up special protocols like CoCs strictly at these events.
Days like “International Women’s Day” and on similar significant occasions some unique events will be hosted and contributors will be appreciated.

Impact on Indian communities

The WikiProject woman and WoMoz programs play a very important role among the Indian communities. Although I do not see a single or uniform progress there is always a good scale-up among the regional communities. For a country like India where there is still necessity for uplifting the presence and awareness of these type of FOSS programs I feel that most of these programs are extensively hosted in urban or developed phases of the country. Recently, the internet access has spread across but then the basic knowledge of contributing to Open Source is still abandoned. The end result and the what the contributors shall get on contributing to these communities must be emphasised more.

Closing note

My study and analysis on these two communities is drawn from personal interest and engagement with these communities since I have been contributing and interacting with the contributors for the last few years. The objective of this post is basically to bring about an awareness on the accessible resources on bridging the digital divide , and how these resources can be modified and taken further for a country like India. The efforts taken to improve the gender neutrality by the above communities is laudable but more light has to be thrown on improving the measures taken to sustain women contributors

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

http://www.womoz.org/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/analysis-on-the-strategies-of-mozilla-and-wiki-communities-on-gender-gap-aspects-1

January 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-03-03T16:34:21Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of its e-Newsletter for 2019.

The CIS newsletter aims to highlight developments in copyright and patent, free speech and expression, privacy, cyber security, telecom, etc. as well as Industry 4.0, big data, additive manufacturing and so on which are revolutionizing and moving the digital world forward. Through this newsletter we look to engage you with our research and build a strong bond by bringing you insightful articles and blog posts which will be beneficial for you and your business. Throughout the year we will send you stories and insights from our board, staff and community leaders. We welcome your feedback, suggestions or comments regarding our newsletter or any other aspect of our research.

Welcome to r@w blog!

CIS researchers@work programme (RAW) is delighted to announce the launch of its new blog hosted on Medium. The RAW blog will feature works by researchers and practitioners working in India and elsewhere at the intersections of internet, digital media, and society. The blog will also feature highlights and materials from ongoing research and events at the researchers@work programme.

Highlights for January 2019

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi have produced a research paper that contextualises the narrative around Industry 4.0 and the future of work with reference to the female labour force in India.
Gurshabad Grover, Nikhil Srinath and Aayush Rathi (with inputs from Anubha Sinha and Sai Shakti) presented a response to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-The-Top (OTT) Communication Services. CIS appreciates the continual efforts of TRAI to have consultations on the regulatory framework that should be applicable to OTT services and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs).
Pranesh Prakash, Karan Saini and Elonnai Hickok authored a policy brief that recommends several changes pertaining to current legislation, policy and practice to the Government of India regarding coordinated vulnerability disclosure (“CVD”) for improving the overarching information and cyber security posture of the country.
The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, a multi-stakeholder initiative comprised of eminent individuals across the globe opened a public comment procedure to solicit comments and obtain additional feedback. Arindrajit Basu, Gurshabad Grover and Elonnai Hickok responded to the public call-offering comments on all six norms and proposing two further norms.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in January:

How to make EVMs hack-proof, and elections more trustworthy (Pranesh Prakash; Times of India; December 9, 2018).
Registering for Aadhaar in 2019 (Sunil Abraham; Business Standard; January 2, 2019).
The DNA Bill has a sequence of problems that need to be resolved (Shweta Mohandas and Elonnai Hickok; Newslaundry; January 15, 2019).
India should reconsider its proposed regulation of online content (Gurshabad Grover; Hindustan Times; January 24, 2019). Akriti Bopanna and Aayush Rathi provided feedback for the article.
India’s proposed new internet bill is as repressive as the worst of Chinese laws (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 27, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Creeped out by Netflix's 'You'? Here's how you can avoid online stalkers, data thieves (Sanyukta Dharmadhikari; The News Minute; January 10, 2019).
Civic activism over WhatsApp and stories of and from cab drivers are part of a new narrative in Bengaluru (Sowmya Rajaram; Bangalore Mirror; January 13, 2019).
They know where you are (Tini Sara Anien; Deccan Herald; January 17, 2019).
Oyo Hotels’ Real-Time Digital Record Database Sparks Privacy Fears (Nishant Sharma; Bloomberg Quint; January 16, 2019).
Is the viral #10YearChallenge just another sneaky way for tech firms to gather users’ personal data? (Devarsi Ghosh; Scroll.in; January 18, 2019).
Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools (Wired; January 22, 2019).
New movies lose out due to piracy (Surupasree Sarmmah; Deccan Herald; January 23, 2019).
Submitted Your Biometrics for Aadhaar? Here’s How You Can Lock/Unlock That Data (Vidya Raja; Better India; January 24, 2019).
India’s largest bank SBI leaked account data on millions of customers (Zack Whittaker; Tech Crunch; January 30, 2019).
Open standards can disrupt Facebook’s messaging monopoly (Abhimanyu Ghoshal; The Next Web; January 30, 2019).
Conmen seed fake phone numbers in Google to trap people looking for customer care details (Tushar Kaushik; Economic Times; January 30, 2019).
Amazon and Walmart are about to take a big hit in India (Q13 Fox; January 31, 2019).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Cyber Security

Submission

Response to GCSC on Request for Consultation: Norm Package Singapore (Gurshabad Grover, Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok; January 22, 2019).

Policy Brief

Leveraging the Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process to Improve the State of Information Security in India (Pranesh Prakash; Karan Saini and Elonnai Hickok; January 23, 2019).

Privacy

Submission

CIS Submission to UN High Level Panel on Digital Co-operation (Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok; January 30, 2019).

Gender

Research Paper

A Gendered Future of Work (Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi; December 19, 2018).

Event Organized

RFCs We Love meetup (Organized by CIS and India Internet Engineering Society; CIS, Bangalore; January 19, 2019).

Events Participated / Partnered In

Webinar on the draft Intermediary Guidelines Amendment Rules (Organized by CCAOI and the ISOC Delhi Chapter; New Delhi; January 10, 2019). Gurshabad Grover was a discussant in the panel.
MediaNama roundtables on intermediary liability rules (St. Marks Hotel, Bangalore; January 25, 2019). CIS was a community partner. Gurshabad Grover participated in the meeting.
DSCI's Bangalore chapter meet (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; January 29, 2019). Karan Saini and Gurshabad Grover participated in the meet.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions.

Submission

Response to TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-The-Top (OTT) Communication Services (Gurshabad Grover, Nikhil Srinath and Aayush Rathi with inputs from Anubha Sinha and Sai Shakti; January 10, 2019).

Researchers at Work (RAW)

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Announcement

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 (IRC19): #List, Jan 30 - Feb 1, Lamakaan (P.P. Sneha; January 9, 2019).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-19-newsletter

Supporting Indian Community 2018: Needs Assessment

tito — 2019-02-06T21:46:14Z

The Wikimedia Foundation and Google worked in close coordination with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Wikimedia India chapter (WMIN) and user groups will pilot a program encouraging Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant and high-quality content in Indian languages. Here is the needs-assessment report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/supporting-indian-community-2018-needs-assessment

Mini MediaWiki Training Theni

Ananth — 2019-02-13T02:34:40Z

CIS-A2k is trying to strengthen the MediaWiki movement in India, and over the last six months, the team has collaborated with different Indian Wikimedians and started a project called Indic-TechCom.

Indic-TechCom provides technical support to the Indic Wikimedia community and as of now has supported community members in Indic OCR and Indic Wikisource stats.

To increase the awareness on MediaWiki, Indic TechCom members and CIS-A2K decided to reach out to students with the Computer science background and help them understand how to contribute on MediaWiki. As a pilot project, we reached out to Nadar Saraswathi College of Engineering and Technology and organised a two-day long Mini MediaWiki training for the students on 22nd and 23rd of January 2019.

As part of the training, On Day 1, students were explained about MediaWiki and were introduced to Git, GitHub, Phabricator and Gerrit. We helped them to install MediaWiki software on their system and also helped them to understand the structure of MediaWiki.

In the second day, students were introduced to the extensions and skins, understanding the structure of extension and special pages. We also taught them how to submit patches through Gerrit.

This training had a group of 20 students and 2 faculty members who were supporting the students and guiding them in their native language. The first day of the event started slowly as students were lacking in having the knowledge of Wikimedia and its structure. After setting up the relation of the Wikimedia platform the students were able to understand the use and benefits of MediaWiki. Then the installation of MediaWiki and hosting of own MediaWiki server was done. Seven students were successfully able to install and play with Localsettings.php to get the grip of their sites.

At the end of the sessions, two[1][2] students were able to submit the patch to Gerrit and it was approved by Volker_E (Sr. User Experience Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation).

[1]. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214470

[2]. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214468

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mini-mediawiki-training-theni

Goa University students update ‘Goa’ Marathi articles on Wikipedia

Admin — 2019-02-22T02:27:14Z

Faculty and students of Goa University’s Marathi department have updated 164 Marathi articles on Wikipedia related to Goa recently.

The article was published in the Times of India on February 20, 2019.

They have also added information related to the state focused on freedom fighters, Marathi literature and cultural heritage, tourism, biodiversity and the environment.

The two-day effort was carried out under the supervision of Subodh Kulkarni from the Centre for Internet and Society, the Indian partner of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The history of Goan villages collected by students was uploaded on Wikipedia in Marathi Devanagari Unicode. They also participated in #1Lib1Ref campaign supported by Wikipedia Library and uploaded new articles and 25 photos.

Other than editing the 164 Marathi articles, the faculty and students also edited reference for articles on Wikipedia and contributed to important facts about Goa.

Kulkarni served as the resource person for the session, while director of digital learning and initiative at Goa University Prof Ramrao Wagh, head of department of Hindi Vrushali Mandrekar; librarian at GU library Gopakumar, head of department of Marathi Sunita Umraskar, and coordinator of the workshop Vinay Madgaonkar, oversaw the effort.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-february-20-2019-goa-university-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wikipedia

Marathi Language Fortnight Workshops 2019

subodh — 2019-03-01T00:39:33Z

Maharashtra is a state which is rich in diversity in terms of language and culture seen in its various regions such as Konkan, Marathwada, Western Maharashtra, Northern Maharashtra and Vidarbha. Awareness needs to be created to make Wikimedia movement inclusive and diverse in these geographical regions as well as in their social strata.

Collaboration for organizing events

The Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge wing (CIS-A2K) launched the concept of organizing state-wide workshops to spread awareness and train editors in the nitty-gritties of Wikipedia editing and creating digital content. The campaign is now regularly conducted by Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha (RMVS), the language department of Maharashtra government with support from CIS-A2K and various institutions.

These events were conducted during the Marathi language fortnight (1 – 15 January 2019) upto Marathi Language Day on 27 February 2019. The objectives of the event such as creating awareness about digital knowledge in Marathi, open knowledge resources and Wikimedia projects; explaining the history of Wiki movement; training participants in basic editing skills in Wikipedia; exploring ways to find reliable references; presenting article structure, were broadly covered in the sessions. Trainers also explained participants on copyright, community guidelines, uploading images, and so on.

CIS-A2K had collaborated with the state language department from 2017 onwards. In the first series of workshops, three events were conducted. In the second series in 2018 six workshops out of a total 17 workshops were conducted across the state. In the year 2019, the awareness spread to more educational institutions located in different regions of the state. In the third series, CIS-A2K conducted five workshops out of total 21 workshops conducted. CIS facilitated the process and supported some workshops remotely.

The Workshops

The first workshop was conducted at Chintamanrao College of Commerce at Sangli. The awareness session about open knowledge sources and Wikimedia projects was organized for students and faculty in the beginning of workshop. After this one hour session, actual skill training in Wikipedia editing was done for three hours for 24 participants. They created the account and learnt the editing and image upload on Commons. The practice was done in sandboxes before working in main namespace. The students of pre-university course and graduate course attended the workshop. The commerce and management related articles were edited.

The second workshop was conducted at Shivaji University, Kolhapur. The Marathi language department took the initiative to organize this workshop for the second consecutive year. The participants were selected from 4 colleges affiliated to university. The faculty was also actively involved. The introductory session was attended by 50 students. The editing training of three hours was conducted in computer lab, in which 24 new users participated. The editors practiced the manual of style, providing links and references, etc. on their sandboxes before working on the main namespace articles. The editors mostly worked on locally relevant topics.

The third workshop was conducted in Dayanand College at Solapur. This institution organized this event for the second consecutive year. The thematic discussion on history of Solapur was facilitated by a senior editor of Sakal newspaper. The plan for documentation of local festival - Gadda Yatra and history of Solapur was discussed. It is proposed to start this activity with thematic workshop. Total 15 new and old users participated in the workshop.

The fourth workshop was conducted at Mass Communication & Journalism department of Solapur University. The faculty of this department took the initiative to organize this event for the second time. Total 25 new and old users participated in the workshop. The participants edited the articles related to journalism and also uploaded the images on Commons. Some editors completed the task of adding references to articles. After the meeting with the faculty, group of post graduate students were assigned 50 articles about reputed Marathi newspapers. They will complete this task as part of their online academic submissions.

The fifth wokshop was conducted at SSSKR Innani College at Karanja Lad in district Washim. This was the first Wikipedia programme in this region of the state. As it was the first Wiki event, we decided to organise a two day workshop. The management and faculty participated actively in this workshop. In the workshop, references and images were added to existing articles about local heritage, tourist places and personalities. The images were uploaded to newly created categories - Karanja Lad and SSSKR Innani College on Commons. Over 100 members participated in this two day event, while 45 users edited actively on Wikimedia projects.

Follow-up

After the workshop, quarterly refresher sessions are planned in these institutions. The active students' WhatsApp groups will be formed for support and online training sessions. This cadre of Wiki Guides would facilitate the programs for other students. The meeting with faculty and board of studies would be held for integration of Wikimedia activities with the academic assignments.

More info check out the Meta report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-language-fortnight-workshops-2019