Centre for Internet and Society

May 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2016-06-10T19:34:10Z

Welcome to the May 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS along with 20 other organisations petitioned the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information Technology to bring in accessibility considerations within the draft Procurement Bill. Pavishka Mittal wrote a blog post on the legality and implications of the Reserve Bank of India's proposed classification of Peer-to-Peer lending companies as non-banking financial institutions. The sixth section of our extended survey of digital initiatives in the practice of arts and humanities in India is now online. The final report will be published serially, and will comprise seven sections in total. CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore how we study the Internet in India today. Please send the abstracts (no more than 200 words) to raw@cis-india.org by Sunday, June 12, 2016. CIS will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on Monday, June 20, 2016. CIS filed RTI applications seeking information from institutes such as IIM Bangalore; NLU Jodhpur; NLSIU; IIT Kanpur; IIT Kharagpur; NALSAR; NUJS; Delhi University; and IIM Ahmedabad. Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg wrote an article for the Wire in which they analyzed the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. They argue that the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and hindering other opportunities offered by maps. CIS sent its comments on the Draft New ICANN By-Laws in which it observed that the draft by-laws are overwrought and that rather than producing a broad constitutional document for ICANN the by-laws read like the worst of governmental regulations and create more problems than they solve.

CIS in the News

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

Exercise to correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (The Hindu; April 28, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website on May 1, 2016.

T’puram to host Wikipedia workshop on May 4, 5 (Mathrubhumi; May 1, 2016).
Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil (The Times of India; May 5, 2016).
Promoting Online Content Through 'Wiki Malayalam' (New Indian Express; May 6, 2016).

Why India’s attempt to police digital maps and satellite images is a ‘dumb’ idea (News Minute; May 6, 2016).
Google, Apple and Microsoft may need licence for satellite mapping in India (Aman Sharma and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; May 9, 2016).
Geospatial Info Regulation Bill will hurt start-ups, small firms (Varun Aggarwal; Hindu BusinessLine; May 10, 2016).
Why The New Government Policy Mandating Panic Buttons On Phones Isn’t Going To Protect Women (The Ladies Finger; May 14, 2016).
India's Proposed Map Law Prompts Outcry (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 17, 2016).
Suckfly Attacks National Stock Exchange Tech Vendor, Among Others (Rohit Pathak; The Quint; May 21, 2016).
India Seeks to Limit Use of Maps and Satellite Images (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; May 27, 2016).
How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities (The Times of India; May 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; February 2016). The post was mirrored in Global Voices. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian.
A Large Byte of Your Life (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 3, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.

A four year, action-packed experience with Wikipedia (Sailesh Patnaik; Opensource.com; April 15, 2016). This was mirrored on CIS website recently.
Online Censorship on the Rise: Why I Prefer to Save Things Offline (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2016). This was mirrored on the website recently.
Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 8, 2016).

Wikipedia’s 15th birthday inspires Bangla translators; Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (Nahid Sultan and Shailesh Patnaik; Wikimedia Blog; May 9, 2016).

Identity of the Aadhaar Act: Supreme Court and the Money Bill Question (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; May 9, 2016).
Criminal Defamation and the Supreme Court’s Loss of Reputation (Bhairav Acharya; The Wire; May 14, 2016).
Before Geospatial Bill: A Long History of Killing the Map in Order to Protect the Territory (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg; The Wire; May 16, 2016).
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; The Wire; May 17, 2016).
Women's Safety? There is an App for That (Rohini Lakshané; Gender IT.org; May 19, 2016).

ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଏନସାଇକ୍ଲୋପିଡ଼ିଆ "ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ" ବିକାଶ ପାଇଁ ଏକାଠି ହେଲେ ପୁରୀର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀ (Subhashish Panigrahi; YourStory Odia, May 20, 2016).

Celebrating 13 Years of the Kannada-language Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; DNA; May 22, 2016).
Modi’s New Intellectual Property Rights Policy Will Only Benefit Players with Deep Pockets (Anubha Sinha; May 28, 2016).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

May 2016 Report

►Other

Accessible ICT Procurement (Pranesh Prakash; May 9, 2016).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is 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.

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

CIS gathered information from various educational institutions in response to several RTI applications. All of these have been published as different blog posts:

MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from JNU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kharagpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NALSAR (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NUJS (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Delhi University (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 15, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Ahmedabad (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 17, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIM, Bangalore (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 21, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLU, Jodhpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 26, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from NLSIU (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 27, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from IIT, Kanpur (Nehaa Chaudhari; May 31, 2016).

Nisha S. Kumar assisted in the preparation of all these documents.

Participation in Event

National Confererence on Competition & IPR in ICT, Telecom and Mobile Sets (Organized by CMAI; May 18, 2016; Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi). Rohini Lakshané and Anubha Sinha attended this conference.

Other Blog Entry

Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; May 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Images and Links Matter Quality (Rahmanuddin Shaik; May 4, 2016).
Indian English Wikipedian Nvvchar completes 1500 Did You Know articles (Tito Dutta; May 9, 2016).
Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia (Subhashish Panigrahi; May 19, 2016). Ananth Subray contributed to this blog.

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Internet Governance
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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.

►Freedom of Expression

Submission and Comment

Comments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards (Amber Sinha; May 28, 2016).
Submission by the Centre for Internet and Society on Draft New ICANN By-laws (Pranesh Prakash, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Swati Muthukumar with inputs from Sunil Abraham; May 30, 2016).

Blog Entry

Criminal Defamation Remains and so does the Debate (Japreet Grewal; May 19, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Privacy Issues with DRM (Jalaj Pandey; May 3, 2016).

Event Organized

Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges (Organized by Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU and CIS; May 26 - 27, 2016; New Delhi). The event was supported by the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Free Software Movement of India, Knowledge Commons, PEACE, and Center for Advancement of Public Understanding of Science & Technology.

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Researchers at Work
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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

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; May 20, 2016).

Blog Entries

New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice (P.P. Sneha; May 19, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Summary (Pavishka Mittal; May 18, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Legality and Implications (Pavishka Mittal; May 23, 2016).
RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Data Security and Privacy Concerns (Vipul Kharbanda; May 31, 2016).

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About CIS
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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 diverse abilities, 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

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.

► Request for Collaboration

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/may-2016-newsletter

How the Odia Wikimedia community is enriching Wikipedia with character encoding technology

subha — 2015-06-14T11:51:46Z

Last year, I wrote about the development of Odia language character encoding converters that the Wikipedia community was working on. These converted text into Unicode, a universal encoding standard. These converters have now been made available for use, just in time for today’s thirteenth anniversary of the Odia Wikipedia.

The original blog post published on Wikimedia Blog is here.

Character encoding is used to represent a collection of characters through an encoding system, and is used in computation, data storage, and transmission of textual data. Fonts in different scripts used to have several different encoding systems before the onset of Unicode.

However, most media outlets—as well as the state government—are still using old encoding systems for Odia. These require the installation of a particular font using the same encoding system to read documents. Unicode makes this much easier, as most modern computers come with Unicode fonts preinstalled.

A character encoding converter is generally used to convert from one encoding system to another. Massive amounts of content, not archived on a regular basis, could now be converted to Unicode and, in turn, provide Wikipedia editors with easily accessible sources to create new articles and enhance existing ones.

The Odia language is spoken by over 40 million people in eastern India, accross various Indian cities, and by expatriates abroad. It is one of the oldest languages in South Asia, and is recognized as a “classical language” by the Indian government. The Odia Wikipedia celebrates its thirteenth anniversary today, June 3.

However, the “classical language” status has not yet boosted knowledge production or use of the language on the Internet. Almost all online newspapers and state publications, such as Odia-language journals, public announcements, and information portals, host their content in various legacy character encodings that do not allow users to easily access and share information. This has, unsurprisingly, proven to be a major hurdle for the small Odia Wikimedia community, who hope to enrich their project with Odia-language citations.

To help solve these problems, the community tried using two encoding converters. These were previously developed by friends from Srujanika, a non-profit based in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, that works on promoting science education in school curricula in the Odia language, as well as the digitization of early Odia literature. These converters became the building blocks on top of which Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar built converters after massively rewriting their code. I was also part of the re-building process, from the initial development of the converters to the design of their interface, and I helped to design handouts teaching new users how to use them.

The community played a major role in promoting the converters on social media. An op-ed in the Odia newspaper Samaja helped to reach out to more people unaware of the uses for Unicode. Many Internet users did not realize that they had been sharing knowledge on their blogs or social media using various legacy encodings, which neither appear in search engines nor allow anyone to share them in an accessible way.

By converting news and articles from newspapers and magazines as test cases, the converters were improved over time. Citing Odia-language sources wasn’t so easy before: making use of any content from a local newspaper could take hours.

From September 2014 to March 2015, a small project ran to convert text from several newspapers and magazines, so that they could be used as citations in articles in the Odia Wikipedia — this is important because, when these sources are not available in Unicode, search engines and Wikipedia users can have difficulty finding them.

Because the converters were hosted separately on Google Drive, it was difficult to have them all in one central place. Odia Wikipedians wanted their Wikipedia to host a single converter, where a user could select the appropriate input encoding. Wikimedian and developer Jnanaranjan Sahu came up with a responsive, wiki-based converter that went live on May 12 and is now available for use. The converter now enables the choice of source encoding from a drop-down menu, and converts the input into Unicode. Issues with this conversion process can be reported via Google Spreadsheet.

Combining five different converters into one, Jnanaranjan says, was a necessary next step in development: “When I found that there are different URLs for different converters, and that the URLs lead to a bunch of different sites, it seemed quite messed up. It would have been difficult for users to locate each of the converters. I thought it would be easier for users if they could find all the encoding converters for Odia on one page on their home wiki. So, I tried to tweak the source code and design this converter.”

He also explains that several newspapers whose news is encoded in older systems are now rich information sources. "Converting them and using the information to add more citations to Wikipedia could help to achieve the dream of every single person being able to contribute more information to the Odia Wikipedia," he says, "so all human knowledge may be available in our language."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-june-4-2015-odia-wikipedia-community-is-enriching-wikipedia-with-character-encoding-technology

March 2016 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-04-13T08:05:42Z

CIS Newsletter for the month of March 2016 is here.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share its March 2016 newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
CIS published and circulated two press releases on March 11 and 15, 2016, as the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016: 'The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken!' and 'The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory!' CIS submitted an initial list of recommendations to the Members of Parliaments to highlight the aspects of the Bill that require immediate attention. The recommendations were prepared by Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh. In an article titled Flaws in the UIDAI Process published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Hans Varghese Mathews. He stated that the Government of India is engaged upon biometrically identifying the entire population of India. An experiment performed at an early stage of the programme has allowed us to estimate the chance of a false positive: and from that to estimate the proportion of duplicands. For the current population of 1.2 billion the expected proportion of duplicands is 1/121, a ratio which is far too high. Vipul Kharbanda wrote an analysis of Aadhaar Act in the context of Justice A.P. Shah Committee Principles. The analysis has thrown light on the substantial aspects of the Act in relation to privacy concerns which have been raised by a number of experts. Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha produced two infographics that 1) evaluate the Aadhaar Bill 2016 against the National Privacy Principles, and 2) highlight the vulnerabilities in the UIDAI implementation process not addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016. CIS has initiated the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. With the objective to sensitize and impart the skillset in handling NVDA – the Screen Reader and the usage of BookShare Online Library for the print disabled to the Special Educators, Karna Vidya Technology Centre in collaboration with Computer and Internet Society conducted a one-day workshop on February 27, 2016. 48 special educators participated and benefited from the workshop. An article titled 8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias by Subhashish Panigrahi was first published in Huffington Post on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016. CIS has published a report on the 30th Session of WIPO-SCCR giving an analysis of the Broadcast Treaty Negotiations and the Negotiations on International Instrument for Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives. Anubha Sinha wrote an essay titled Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India as part of the The Good Life in Asia's Digital 21st Century essay collection. She stated that smartphones have emerged as the exemplar of mankind's quest for shrinking technologies. They embody the realization of a simple premise – that computing devices would do more and cost less. This realization has been responsible for modern society's profound transformations in communication, governance, and knowledge distribution. Rohini Lakshané wrote an analysis of the patent landscape in a research paper titled Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey. The paper has indicated that although India has the second-largest wireless subscriber base in the world, with more than 150 mobile device vendors, it has, until recently, remained relatively unaffected by the global smartphone wars. The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP) to provide appropriate guidelines for collection, analysis, use, and distribution of geospatial information across India, and to assure data availability, accessibility and quality. A pre-drafting consultation meeting for the NGP was organised in Delhi on February 3, 2016. Anubha Sinha attended the meeting. The glue that allows infrastructures to link and operate efficiently is standards as they make technologies interoperable and efficient tells Vanya Rakesh in a blog entry titled Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India. P.P. Sneha wrote a blog post which studies the digital creative industries in India while examining some initial questions. She stated that the term ‘creative industries’ has been around for a while now, but with the advent of the digital, and with interest from different sectors, especially with a focus on policy and economic development, it would be essential to critically examine the discourse around the term, and see where it may be changing to open up new possibilities, particularly for the arts, humanities and design. CIS strongly condemns the acts of sexual harassment that took place against one of its representatives Padmini Baruah during ICANN 55 in Marrakech. It is completely unacceptable that an event the scale of an ICANN meeting does not have in place a formal redressal system, a neutral point of contact or even a policy for complainants who have been put through the ordeal of sexual harassment. ICANN cannot claim to be inclusive or diverse if it does not formally recognise a specific procedure or recourse under such instances.

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

The workshops were conducted earlier but published recently on our website:

Report on eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology for Visually Challenged (Organized by National Association for the Blind, New Delhi, Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, and CIS; January 21, 2016; Tiruchirappalli).
Report on NVDA with E-Speak and BookShare Online Library (Organized by Karna Vidya Technology Centre, Computer and Internet Society, and CIS; February 27, 2016; Chennai).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is 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.

►Pervasive Technologies

Article

Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India (Anubha Sinha; The Good Life in Asia's 21st Century Essay Collection; March 16, 2016).

Blog Entries

Report of the 30th Session of the WIPO SCCR by the Centre for Internet & Society (edited by Nehaa Chaudhari with assistance from Nisha S.K., Aarushi Bansal, Amulya P., and Saahil Dama; March 16, 2016).
Dataset: Patent Landscape of Mobile Device Technologies in India (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016).

Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016)

►Wikipedia

Articles

Eight Challenges That Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Wire; March 17, 2016). A version of the article was also mirrored by Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.
8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; March 19, 2016). This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.
8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; March 28, 2016). The article was originally published in the Wire on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.

Participation in Event

BHASHA-Indian Languages Digital Festival (Organized by news media YourStory; March 11, 2016; New Delhi). Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk in the panel “The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles.
8th IBA International Conference (Organized by Indus Business Academy; March 24 - 26, 2016; Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Democratizing of Knowledge Access- Case of Regional Language Wikipedia.

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Openness
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Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Submission

Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission (Anubha Sinha; March 29, 2016)

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Internet Governance
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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 International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Big Data

Article

Too Clever By Half: Strengthening India’s Smart Cities Plan with Human Rights Protection (Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; March 22, 2016).

Blog Entry

Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India (Vanya Rakesh; March 19, 2016).

►Freedom of Expression

Statements

Sexual Harassment at ICANN (Padmini Baruah; March 18, 2016).
CIS' Statement on Sexual Harassment at ICANN55 (Vidushi Marda; March 21, 2016).

►Privacy

Submission

List of Recommendations on the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 - Letter Submitted to the Members of Parliament (Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh; March 16, 2016).

Articles

Flaws in the UIDAI Process (Hans Varghese Mathews; Economic & Political Weekly, Journal, Vol. 51, Issue No. 9, February 27, 2016).
Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems (Pranesh Prakash; Livemint; March 7, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee (Amber Sinha; The Wire; March 10, 2016).
Are we Losing the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech on Indian Internet? (Amber Sinha; March 10, 2016).
Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme (Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha; Hindustan Times; March 12, 2016).
Will Aadhaar Act Address India’s Dire Need For a Privacy Law? (Nehaa Chaudhari; Quint; March 31, 2016).

Blog Entries

A comparison of the 2016 Aadhaar Bill, and the 2010 NIDAI Bill (Vanya Rakesh; March 9, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill 2016 & NIAI Bill 2010 - Comparing the Texts (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 9, 2016).
The New Aadhaar Bill in Plain English (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda; March 11, 2016).
An Urgent Need for the Right to Privacy (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 16, 2016).
The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken! (Japreet Grewal and Sunil Abraham; March 16, 2016).
The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory! (Amber Sinha; March 16, 2016).
Analysis of Aadhaar Act in the Context of A.P. Shah Committee Principles (Vipul Kharbanda; March 17, 2016).
Vulnerabilities in the UIDAI Implementation Not Addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 (Pooja Saxena and Vipul Kharbanda; March 21, 2016).

Participation in Events

GNI-Industry Dialogue Learning Session: Human Rights Impact Assessments and Due Diligence in the ICT sector (Organized by Global Network Initiative; March 11, 2016; Washington D.C.). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 (Organized by RightsCon; Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California; March 30 - April 1, 2016).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Op-ed

Connectivity: Let's Apply What We Know (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 2, 2016).

Submission

TRAI Consultation on Differential Pricing for Data Services - Post-Open House Discussion Submission (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 30, 2016).

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

Blog Entry

Studying Digital Creative Industries in India: Initial Questions (P.P. Sneha; March 17, 2016).

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

The Crypto Wars Are Global (Joseph Cox; Motherboard; March 4, 2016).
Govt narrative on Aadhaar has not changed in the last six years: Sunil Abraham (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 8, 2016).
Aadhaar: Govt will not compromise on national security (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 9, 2016).
Hard to broad ban! (Taru Bhatia; Governance Now; March 9, 2016).
Seven reasons why Parliament should debate the Aadhaar bill (and not pass it in a rush) (Anumeha Yadav; March 11, 2016).
Aadhaar is actually surveillance tech: Sunil Abraham (Sahil Makkar; Business Standard; March 12, 2016).
Will Only Legal Backing For Aadhaar Suffice? (Indian Express; March 14, 2016).
India's billion-member biometric database raises privacy fears (Sanjeev Miglani and Manoj Kumar; March 16, 2016).
A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns (John Ribeiro; IDG News Service and CSO; March 16, 2016).
Pratap Vikram Singh - Why Aadhaar is Baseless? (Governance Now; March 17, 2016).
Forget privacy, Aadhaar Bill gives too much power to the executive (Aloke Tikku; Sunil Abraham; March 17, 2016).
In India, Biometric Data Storage Sparks Demands for Privacy Laws (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; March 18, 2016).
Dead and Clicking (Jayanthi Madhukar and Sowmya Rajaram; Bangalore Mirror; March 20, 2016).
India Still Trying To Turn Optional Aadhaar Identification Number Into A Mandatory National Identity System (TechDirt; March 22, 2016).
Debate: Five Aadhaar Myths that Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny (Reetika Khera; March 23, 2016).
How the government gains when private companies use Aadhaar (M. Rajshekhar and Anumeha Yadav; March 24, 2016).
Making Aadhaar Mandatory: Gamechanger For Governance? (NDTV; March 24, 2016).
ICANN Sexual Harassment Case Highlights Lack of Procedure at Global Internet Body (Wire; March 24, 2016).
Securing the internet’s future (Hindu Businessline; March 25, 2016).
On Google Maps, JNU top result in search for 'anti-national' (Kim Arora; The Times of India; March 25, 2016).
Woman Alleges Harassment at Major International Conference (Kavita Patil; Bangalore Mirror; March 30, 2016).

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About CIS
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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 diverse abilities, 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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2016-bulletin

Odia Wikipedia to Digitise 14 Books

praskrishna — 2014-03-31T14:29:43Z

On the occasion of the 79th Odisha Day (Utkal Divas) on April 1, the Odia Wikipedia has decided to take up a new project for digitisation of 11 books of eminent Odia author Dr Jagannath Mohanty.

This article was published in the Pioneer on March 30, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi is quoted.

According to Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge) of Centre for Internet and Society Bengaluru Subhasis Panigrahi, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) would take up the digitisation project where KISS students would type them on WikiSource, a sister project of Wikipedia.

These books include children’s literature, travelogues and biographical essays penned by Dr Mohanty.Digitisation of three more books, two in Odia Jati, Jagruti O Pragati (on people and culture of Odisha) and Bhasa O Jatiyata in Odia (based on research on Odia language), and an English book Classical Odia (on the literary heritage of Odia) will be also be inaugurated on this day.

All these digitised books will be made available on the Internet with open access through free licences. More than 5,000 pages will be digitised in these two projects.Several public and private organisations have started making serious efforts after Odia got the classical language status recently.

To discuss the need for many new tools and technological advancement, a seminar will be held at Jayadev Bhawan here on March 29. Prof Udayanath Sahu and writers Asit Mohanty and Dr Lenin Mohanty will discuss about spell check for Odia, use of Odia language in the media and tools for typing in Odia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/daily-pioneer-state-editions-bhubaneswar-odia-wikipedia-to-digitise-14-books

Indian government includes open source in RFPs

subha — 2016-06-18T18:18:54Z

The Government of India has implemented a remarkable new policy-level change for open source software (OSS) deployment.

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has asked that open source software-based applications be included in Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for all new procurements. Note there is not a plan at this time to replace existing proprietary systems with open source software.

As stated, the policy will "adopt open standards and promote open source and open technologies" in order "to prepare India for a knowledge based transformation into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy."

Three major objectives of the new policy for OSS:

To provide a policy framework for rapid and effective adoption of OSS
To ensure strategic control in e-Governance applications and systems from a long-term perspective
To reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of projects

In addition to adopting open source and open standards, the Indian Government is also emphasizing on opening up the source code without any royalty for the community to use, modify and redistribute the original/modified software. This is compliant with the Creative Commons (CC) licenses.

Proprietary software (labeled as "closed source software" and "CSS" in the policy document) would only be permitted for demonstrated urgent/strategic need or lack of expertise or non-availability of open source software. The suppliers then are not bound to use open source software, though it is preferred over proprietary per this policy change. The policy document also mentions government collaborating with local and international open source communities for software development

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-source-subhashish-panigrahi-june-8-2015-indian-govt-includes-open-source-in-rfps

Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books

Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule — 2016-01-03T11:26:49Z

As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.

This was published in Wikimedia Blog on December 3, 2015.

As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.^[1]

MGS is a non-profit organization working for the preservation of Maharashtra’s linguistic and cultural heritage. It was founded in Pune, India in 1894. Being an important archive for the preservation of many hundreds of years old manuscripts and historical artifacts from the Peshwa era, the institution is open to public for study and research.

During the four-day anniversary celebration, the Centre for Internet Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K)—an organization that supports the Wikimedia movement in India—opened a Wikipedia stall there where Marathi Wikimedians were present. Around 600 people visited the stall and learned about the news of MGS’s book donation.

Many active and new Marathi Wikimedians were present at the exhibition stall along with Abhinav Garule from the CIS-A2K program to share the incredible work Marathi Wikipedia and Wikimedia community at large are doing. Autographs of eighteen notable writers who received awards from Sanstha for different genres of writings were collected for uploading to the Wikipedia pages about them. While meeting the authors, Wikimedians also approached them to relicense some of their works under Creative Commons licenses so that they could be digitized on Wikisource and/or enrich Wikipedia—and some of the authors expressed a good deal of interest in opening up their books for Wikisource.

Some of the major books donated are Peshwa Rojnishi (diary of Peshwa), Benjamin Franklin Charitra (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin), Kekavali, S M Paranjape Charitra (autobiography), Letters Exchanged between the Sanstha and the British Government, Shinde Gharanyacha Padmamay Itihas (manuscript), and Marathwadyatil Arvachin Marathi Vangmay (modern Marathi literature from Marathwada, a region in Maharashtra) are some of the popular books read by Marathi speakers that are going to be part of the books donated by the organization.

We reached out to Avinash Chaphekar, the joint secretary of the organization, to know more about the state of book publication and readership.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Could you share your ideas of opening these invaluable books for Wikisource? How they are going to be useful for the online readers to learn about the Peshwas?

Avinash Chaphekar (AC): These books are of historical importance and contain information that needs to reach more people; they cover topics that are rarely covered well anywhere else. Right after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, as it contains a lot of messages for a common person, a lady walked up to and asked if she could read it in Marathi. Be it such autobiographies or a poetry book like “Kekavali”, such books that were published by the MGS should not be kept closed—many readers are searching for them. We donated 800 of these old books to the Marathi Wikisource because we don’t have large presence in the media or the Internet, so how would any reader who does not know us buy a book? If these books are available online, they can at least find and read them.

SP: Where do you think there is gap between publishers and readers today? Many Marathi books get published every year and if you search on the Internet, which many people today do, you would hardly find much.

AC: Online readership is increasing every day, but when you look at Marathi readers, the majority of them are still buying books. During the exhibitions here (even this year!), there is always quite a rush to buy books. Only the youth and tech-savvy people read online. But most people we meet say that they feel more comfortable holding and reading physical books. Moreover, there is no concrete research validating that most of the youngsters here are accessing information only online. I still feel reading books in a conventional way by holding books in your hands will continue to exist as there is some kind of satisfaction that lies in it.

SP: Did you know that we are going to get these books retyped, meaning that readers will not just be able to read them in their smartphones or computers but they could use the text for republishing the same books in the future? How do you think such a model will be useful for publishers?

AC: At the MGS, we don’t have funds to republish these books, and publishers are not ready to do it no matter how historically valuable the books are—even an incredibly valuable reference book called Marathi Grantha Nirmiti Watchal (the history of creation of Marathi books in Marathi), authored by SG Tulpule and published by us in 1973. This book has detailed information about Marathi publications, even those that existed before printing technology existed. As many such books are not being reprinted, we cannot leave the remaining few copies to perish. Let them go online and reach millions of people.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାରର ଆବଶ୍ୟକତା ସମାଜ

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T08:11:10Z

Odia Wikisource, a sister project of Odia Wikipedia and a free online Odia-language library is celebrating its first anniversary in Bhubaneswar tomorrow. Available online at or.wikisource.org, the project finally went live in last year on October 20 after being incubated over two years.

In a nutshell, it not just provides free and open access to readers to access text that are out of copyright or available under free license, but also allows them to contribute in either digitizing copyright-free text or correcting mistakes made by others. All the contributors to the project are volunteers and are fondly called "uikiali" in Odia. These volunteers follow certain guidelines to check through the content digitized by others to make sure there is no copyrighted text posing copyright violation, correct typos and other grammatical mistakes and incorrect attribution. Authors and copyright holders are also encouraged to provide permission in re-licensing their work under free licenses like CC-BY/CC-by-SA licenses so that some of their content becomes available online and fill the large gap of the Odia books online to some extent. "Last year, the Wikimedia community in Odisha did a remarkable job in bringing as many as 141 books from multiple authors relicensed under the above mentioned licenses" said the Centre for Internet and Society's Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi. "Where we, as an institution, could play a role in reaching out to many authors and convincing them for a small contribution to the society" added Panigrahi.

Click to read the full story published by Full Odisha on October 25, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/b13b21b3cb3fb06-b09b07b15b3fb2ab3eb20b3eb17b3eb30b30-b06b2cb36b4db5fb15b24b3e-b38b2eb3eb1c

Fuel Gilt Conference 2016

praskrishna — 2016-09-25T03:27:38Z

Fuel Gilt Conference 2016 was organized by the Fuel Project is being held in New Delhi on September 24 and 25, 2016. This is the fourth conference in series. Subhashish Panigrahi made a presentation at this event.

Technical and other interface strings that fall under the ambit of FUEL are actually a subset of several other localization projects. They can also be used for bettering the corpus of machine translation. And there is a need for collaboration between communities and institutions -- both free and open source, and the proprietary ones -- to help grow their corpus. More and more collaborations in place will help the volunteer localizers even more as the localization suggestions will increase drastically with partnerships are more. Two existing such partnerships could be Pontoon by Mozilla and Content Translation by the Wikimedia Foundation. When the former shows localized strings from memory as suggestion and even include translations by proprietary organizations like Microsoft, the latter helps Wikipedians create Wikipedia articles faster by translation suggestions sourced from the corpus of Apertium and Yandex. Bettering collaboration needs strengthening two major aspects; a) growing professional and mutual bonding with other communities/organizations that are there in the same domain, and b) creating technical infrastructure to address the aforementioned pluralism. In my talk, I will detail about my own experience and best practices from working with several communities beyond borders and lessons learned from from my own work and the work of many others. A larger discussion with other colleagues at the Conference will hopefully shape into creating a manual or a few Open Educational Resources of some kind to help the future localization leaders. For more info, click here.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2016

Odisha Dibasa 2014: 14 Books Re-released under CC License

subha — 2014-04-14T10:57:43Z

Odisha became a separate state in British India on April 1, 1936. Odia, a 2,500 year old language recently gained the status of an Indian classical language. The Odia Wikimedia community celebrated these two occasions on March 29 in Bhubaneswar with a gathering of 70 people.

Originally published on the Wikimedia blog on April 8, 2014. Media coverage of the event can be accessed here.

Linguists, scholars and journalists discussed the state of the Odia language in the digital era, initiatives for its development and steps that can be taken to increase accessibility to books and other educational resources. 14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). Professor Udayanath Sahu from Utkal University, The Odisha Review’s editor Dr. Lenin Mohanty, Odisha Bhaskar’s editor Pradosh Pattnaik, Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty, Dr. Madan Mohan Sahu, Allhadmohini Mohanty, Chairman Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa and trust’s secretary Brajamohan Patnaik along with senior members Sarojkanta Choudhury and Shisira Ranjan Dash spoke at the event.

Eleven books from Odia writer Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa” trust, a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for the development of the Odia language. Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to Odia Wikimedia to release and digitize these books.

The community will be training students and a group of six faculty members at KISS who will coordinate the digitization of these books. “Collaborative efforts and open access to knowledge repositories will enrich our language and culture,” said linguist Padmashree Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak as he inagurated the event. Dr. Pattanayak and Odia language researcher Subrat Prusty from the Institute of Odia Studies and Research also re-licensed three books based on their research on Odia language and cultural influence of the language on other societies under the same license. KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

An OpenType Odia Unicode font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from Odialanguage.com was released under the OFL license. This is the first Odia OpenType font that the community actively tested. A new Odia offline input tool called “TypeOdia” by Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar was also released for public distribution. DVDs containing the font, the input tool, Odia language dictionaries, offline Odia Wikipedia in Kiwix, Wikipedia editing guide, ISCII to Unicode font converter, various free and open source software packages and Ubuntu operating system.

Active Odia Wikipedian and Admin Mrutyunjaya Kar gave the inaugural speech. Subhashish Panigrahi from the Center for Internet and Society read the annual report and vision of Odia Wikipedia. Chief guest Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak discussed about the efforts put forth that brought the Odia language as the sixth Indian classical language. A large majority of Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easy accessibility. He further discussed the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts. Professor Udayanath Sahu presented on the process, progress and implementation of machine translation project in Utkal University.

Experienced Wikimedians conducted an advanced Wikipedia workshop on the second day of event at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. It was attended by a majority of the existing Wikimedians from the community including new Wikipedians who signed up for the Odia Wikipedia Education Program at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Mrutyunjaya Kar presented on WikiData and various tools for linking and accessing information in multiple languages on various Wikimedia projects. Ansuman Giri discussed advanced technical aspects such as the use of various gadgets, proper categorization, how to use subpages, how to auto-list archive pages, customizing WikiLove feature, user rights modification, including how important it is to cite biographies of living persons with secondary sources, etc. Shitikantha Dash discussed copyright and issues regarding uploading images and other media files on Wikimedia Commons. Dr. Subas Chandra Rout presented on “notability, referencing and creating citations for the notable topics.” Subhashish Panigrahi discussed the work plan for the year, failure of program projects, collective learning and the dos and don’ts of community building.

We hope that more authors will come forward and re-release their books under CC-BY-SA license. The Odia community is excited to see or.wikisource.org go live. A few Wikipedians are even interested in typing their favorite free licensed books to make them available on Wikisource. I believe it’ll be challenging to train the KISS students to type and proof-read the written texts. In the CISA2K’s draft plan, the goal to have the number of editors seems overestimated. The students need to have some knowledge about Wikimedia and how it works in general before they start working. We hope that the books will be digitized properly and in coming days more users will join us in the process as we will have more free books in Odia Wikisource. I appeal to the Odia people to be a part of the Odia Wikimedia community and make Odia Wikisource a successful project, we need all the time you can devote. :-) Ansuman Giri, Odia Wikipedian


A group picture of Odia Wikipedians (by Jnanaranjan Sahu, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odisha-dibasa-2014

Software Freedom Pledge

pranesh — 2015-09-25T12:26:09Z

On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.

We, who have gathered together for Software Freedom Day 2015, believe that software freedom is both a matter of ethical principle as well as a matter of pragmatism, and is necessary for a democratic, open society.

We believe that it is desirable that all people, but especially governments, use, contribute to, and spread open standards, free/libre/open source software, open APIs, openly-licensed content (including open data, open access, and open education resources), leading to a vibrant public domain, and ensure that all of the above are accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and other marginalised sections of society.

Given that, we pledge to:

use and spread free software amongst our family, friends, and neighbours, both in person and virtually.
demand that services we use in turn use open standards and open APIs, and thus be available for all using free/libre/open source software, without the payment of any royalties.
raise the issue of software freedom with our democratic representatives, to seek that they in turn respect and promote these principles.
as far as possible, making our own work openly available, and seek to convince our employers, publishers, producers, and other persons who might be in a position to restrict
work against any laws, policies — corporate or governmental — or technical restrictions that seek to prevent people from full exercise of their rights, and which are contrary to the above principles.

Signed by:

Abhaya Agarwal
Ananth Subray
Asutosha Sarangi
Chirag Sarthi J
Prakash Hebballi
Pranesh Prakash
Ralph Andrade
Subhashish Panigrahi
Tito Dutta
Veethika Mishra

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015

April 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-05-31T04:29:24Z

Newsletter for the month of April below.

We are happy to share with you the fourth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (April 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

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Highlights
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CIS received 35 engaging abstracts in response to the call for essays on 'Studying Internet in India'. The final essays will be published from June onwards. The ten selected abstracts can be read at http://cis-india.org/raw/studying-internet-in-india-selected-abstracts/ .

CIS submitted its comments to the National Informatics Centre on April 30, 2015 bringing to notice the negligible progress on the front for making Indian government websites conform to the notified standards, and gave recommendations to take the initiatives forward.
Nehaa Chaudhari has prepared a consolidated report that tracks the development of India's National IPR Policy and the requests by CIS to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion under the RTI Act and responses elicited from the Department.

Institute of Odia Studies and Research organised 2nd National Language Conference beginning on March 30, 2015 and ending on April 2, 2015 at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. This conference was organised in collaboration with the Department of Tourism and Culture. Subhashish Panigrahi presented a paper in Odia language in this conference as part of a panel discussion related to Odia language computing.

Sunil Abraham's article titled "Shreya Singhal and 66A" was published in Economic and Political Weekly Vol-L No.15. Vidushi Marda helped in doing the research.

Sunil Abraham in an article in DNA titled " Multiple Aspects Need to be Addressed as the Clamour Grows for Network Neutrality " tells readers that there are four violations of Network Neutrality that are considered particularly egregious.

Jyoti Panday prepared an analysis of the Supreme Court judgement in Shreya Singhal and what it does for intermediary liability in India.
In February 2015, CIS had requested DeitY under RTI Act to provide information clarifying the procedures for blocking in India. The response elicited from DeitY has been published.

CIS sent a joint response to the TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services with scholars from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The response was sent on March 27, 2015.

► Vacancies at CIS

CIS is seeking applications for:

Internship : CIS is providing opportunities for students enrolled in graduate programmes to undertake internship at its offices in Bangalore and Delhi. Eligible candidates are welcome to participate in our internship programme.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

# Monthly Updates

April 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; April 30, 2015).

# Language Testing Reports

Hindi Language (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 10, 2015).
Gujarati Language (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 16, 2015).
Oriya Language (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 30, 2015).

►Other

# Submission

Comments to the GIGW (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 30, 2015).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is 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 Entries

Methodology: Patent Landscaping in the Indian Mobile Device Market (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014). The list of standards and specifications found in sub-USD-100 Internet-enabled mobile phones sold in India" (Annexure 2 in the post) has been updated .
Conference on Standards Settings Organizations (SSO) and FRAND, NLSIU (Rohini Lakshané; April 5, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: RTI Requests by CIS to DIPP + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari; April 15, 2015).
Pervasive Technologies Project Working Document Series: Literature Review on IPR in Mobile app development (Anubha Sinha; April 29, 2015).

Media Coverage

CIS gave inputs for the following:

One reason startups are moving out of India (Evelyn Fok and Varun Aggarwal; The Times of India; April 10, 2015). This was also mirrored in Economic Times .
Indian businesses crave IP certainty, but better patent values are tempting them overseas (IAM Magazine; April 28, 2015).

►Wikipedia

# Participation in Event

2nd National Language Conference, Bhubaneswar (Organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research; Institute of Physics; Bhubaneswar; March 30 - April 2, 2015). This conference was organised in collaboration with the Department of Tourism and Culture. Subhashish Panigrahi presented a paper in Odia language in this conference as part of a panel discussion related to Odia language computing.

# Blog Entries

Hindustani Language: We Are Wikipedia (Syed Muzamiluddin; April 10, 2015).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଅସୁବିଧା (Subhashish Panigrahi; April 15, 2015).
Wikipedia Campus at Oxford College (Subhashish Panigrahi; April 28, 2015).

# News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Odia waits for Google Translate debut - Nine Indian languages available (Anwesha Ambaly; Telegraph; April 6, 2015).
Now you can search Google in Kannada, in your handwriting (Apurva Venkat; Bangalore Mirror; April 18, 2015).

►Openness

# Event Co-organized

NASA International Open Data Challenge 2015 (Co-organized by CIS and Team Indus; Bangalore; April 11-12, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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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 International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Freedom of Expression

India's Apex Court in a landmark decision struck down section 66A of the IT Act. The judgment provided great relief for advocates of freedom of speech on the Internet. The development attracted lots of media coverage to which CIS gave its inputs:

# Articles

Shreya Singhal and 66A (Sunil Abraham; Economic and Political Weekly Vol-L No.15; April 11, 2015). Vidushi Marda helped in doing the research.
Don't Do Nothing. Take a Stand on Net Neutrality. (T. Vishnu Vardhan; NDTV; April 13, 2015).
Multiple Aspects Need to be Addressed as the Clamour Grows for Network Neutrality (Sunil Abraham; DNA; April 16, 2015).
The Hazards of a Non-neutral Internet (Geetha Hariharan; April 18, 2015). A modified version of the blog entry was published as an article titled " A must for free speech " in the Week.

# Blog Entries

The Supreme Court Judgment in Shreya Singhal and What It Does for Intermediary Liability in India? (Jyoti Panday; April 11, 2015).
DeitY says 143 URLs have been Blocked in 2015; Procedure for Blocking Content Remains Opaque and in Urgent Need of Transparency Measures (Jyoti Panday; April 29, 2015).

# Event

Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age: Effective Research, Policy Formation & the Development of Regulatory Frameworks in South Asia (Organized by Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Observer Research Foundation and CIS; Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi; April 21, 2015).

# Participation in Event

Financial Express hosts #NetNeutralityDebate: 'Price discrimination can be allowed, but not for the same packet of data' (New Delhi; April 24, 2015). Pranesh Prakash participated in the discussion.

►Privacy

# Participation in Event

Privacy International Network Meeting (Organized by Privacy International, UK; April 22 - 23, 2015). Sunil Abraham attended the meeting.

►Miscellaneous

# Announcement

IIGF Recruitment : The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) conducted walk-in interviews on May 16, 2015 at NIXI Jasola office, Flat No. 6B, 6th Floor, Uppals M6 Plaza, New Delhi. NIXI sought candidates to fill the posts of Technology Analyst, Policy Analyst, Research Associate and Executive Assistants.

# Participation in Events

Global Conference on Cyberspace 2015 (Co-organized by Dutch Government, City of the Hague and One Conference; The Hague, Netherlands; April 16 - 17, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. He also participated in an expert roundtable conference .
CII Digital India Summit (Organized by Confederation of Indian Industries; Taj Mahal Hotel and Pragati Maidan, New Delhi; April 21 and 24, 2015). Pranesh Prakash attended the summit.

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'Smack' the Trolls! (Marianne De Nazareth; The Citizen; March 31, 2015).
The block heads (Sibi Arasu; Hindu Businessline; April 3, 2015).
Smriti Irani brings back focus on voyeurism prevailing in our country (Amrita Madhukalya; DNA; April 6, 2015).
Surveillance rises, privacy retreats (Namrata Acharya; Business Standard; April 12, 2015).
People voice their support for net neutrality, say Internet a utility not a luxury (IBN Live; April 13, 2015).
Net neutrality: Trai receives over 2 lakh mails (Sandhya Soman and Jayanta Deka; April 14, 2015).
Net neutrality: Debate rages on (Surabhi Aggarwal; Business Standard; April 11, 2015)
Net neutrality debate rages (Lalatendu Mishra and Pradeesh Chandran; The Hindu; April 15, 2015).
Net neutrality: Net activism packs a punch (Sandhya Soman; The Times of India; April 19, 2015).
Net Neutrality debate in India: Here are all the arguments you need to know (Indian Express; April 23, 2015).
Freedom struggle 2.0 (Zara Khan; Hindu; April 25, 2015).
Cry, you nasty trolls (Prasun Chaudhari; The Telegraph; April 26, 2015). Net Neutrality: The argument continues (Deepak Ajwani and Debojyoti Ghosh; Forbes India Magazine; April 29, 2015).

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

# Blog Entries

Studying Internet in India: Selected Abstracts - CIS received thirty five engaging abstracts in response to the call for essays on 'Studying Internet in India.' The final essays will be published from June onwards. These are the ten selected abstracts: Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights (by Deva Prasad); Indic Scripts and the Internet (by Dibyajyoti Ghosh); The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination (by Divij Joshi); Dharmasala Networked (by Laird Brown); WhatsApp Economy (by Maitrayee Deka); Citizens and their Internet (by Purbasha Auddy); The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar (by Sailen Routray); Quantity over Quality: Social Media and the New Class System in India (by Sarah McKeever); Governing Speech on the Internet: Transforming the Public Sphere through Policymaking (by Smarika Kumar).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

# Submission

Response to TRAI Consultation Paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-Top (OTT) Services (Pranesh Prakash; March 27, 2015). The response was sent in March but mirrored on our website recently.

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About CIS
---------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

► 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. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2015-bulletin

Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi

Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-01-12T05:28:14Z

The first ever Odia Wikipedia workshop in Odisha's historic town of Puri finally shaped in on this December 20. With 25 participants contributing to Odia Wikipedia this day, more Wikipedia outreach in the city were planned.

Organised at the Premier Institute of Computer Studies (PICS), this workshop saw many students from technical background including four female participants. The Google Local Guides group of Bhubaneswar collaborated with us in organising this workshop. Thanks to long time Odia Wikimedian Dr Subas Chandra Rout to spare time and taking pain in coming all the way from Bhubaneswar to mentor the new editors. Only 10-12 participants could sign up on the spot because of IP address throttle that we could not fix beforehand. Otherwise the event went well and after a week, many of the participants have turned out to be active on Odia Wikipedia which is pretty exciting.

We planned to organise a meetup once in two month at Puri with the focus on improving at least 20-25 articles related to to the city and district during the meetup. There was a three-minute coverage of the workshop on Odisha Television (OTV) and a brief report of the workshop was published on Odisha Reporter.

As part our effort in chronicling the voice of the Wikipedia community in the WikipediansSpeak series, we reached out to Wikimedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout and Snehasish Nayak after the workshop. Dr Rout shares his interactions and future plans to expand the Odia Wikimedia community:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Thank you so much for mentoring these new Wikimedians! How was your overall experience working with them?
Subas Chandra Rout (SRR): The participants were, indeed, very enthusiastic. They not just were good listeners when we were presenting but contributed well after we demonstrated.

SP: How often do you think we should come back here and work with the same set of participants?
SRR: I think one more visit to ensure that they feel more integrated with the larger Odia Wikimedia community and help them contribute more. Face-to-face interaction will also help them feel more comfortable to share the kind of problems they might have been facing.

SP: What kind of problems did they face during the workshop? How did you help them with those problems?
There were certain technical/logistics problems which kind of made us keep the workshop limited to more demonstration by us and less practice by them. Sailesh seems be following up with them as some of them have already started editing Wikipedia actively.

Snehasish Nayak, organiser of the event and a new active Wikimedian of the Odia community—it is worth mentioning that Snehasish has 360 edits on Odia Wikipedia already—shares more about himself, his interests and ideas for future projects:

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): How and when you got introduced to Odia Wikipedia? Did you know about it before or heard from someone before you formally got an orientation?
Snehasish Nayak (SN): The first time I got to know about Odia Wikipedia was during the Google I/O 2015 event. It was Sailesh Pattnaik who introduced me to Odia Wikipedia. My Wikipedia journey started in December 2015, when Sailesh asked me for some help to conduct a Odia Wikipedia in my hometown Puri.

SP: You graduated as an engineer. Many engineers in India do not even contribute much to language related work, especially the ones that are not paid for. What drives you to contribute so much that you have crossed 360 edits in just three weeks?
SN: From my school days, Wikipedia has been good friend to me. I don’t remember in how many projects Wikipedia has come to my rescue. And in return Wikipedia never asked for anything. I felt it would be the best platform to share free knowledge across the globe.Odia being my native language and it being a very old language needs contribution from the youth like me. In the era of digital revolution Odia Wikipedia has the potential of empowering every single Odia with the sum of the world's knowledge any time of in any place. If anyone asks me about what I am getting in return because of my contribution, my first answer would be "knowledge". I have learnt quite a lot after I started contributing to Odia Wikipedia. And after each contribution, it gives me a great feeling that I have done something useful for the world”. It inspires me to contribute more and more...

SP: You have recently started working and promoting about WikiTungi Puri. Can you share little more about it? What it will do? How it will benefit the Odia language?
SN: With the coming of our group, WikiTungi Puri, we are going to organize more workshops, meetups and other outreach programs in and around Puri. But the work will never be limited only to the city. We are always ready to collaborate with the global community. At Puri, We have plans to design thematic outreach activities in some of the educational institutions of Puri and we would like to invite them to be part of WikiTungi Puri. We have plans to bring the "Odia Wikiquote" live out of the Incubator wiki. We have started working on designing of training materials for the new editors. I have a great feeling that we are going to have more and more active contributors joining us in the near future.

From the place where see it from, Odia Wikipedia is becoming a pioneer of bringing digital technology for taking our language to a whole new level!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-takes-puri

Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KISS

praskrishna — 2014-01-16T06:52:36Z

A day long Odia Wikipedia workshop for post-graduate students and faculty members is being organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) on January 10.

Subhashish Panigrahi is conducting the workshop.

ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:କର୍ମଶାଳା/ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର/୮

ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ରୁ

ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରସ୍ଥିତ ଆଦିବାସୀ ଆବାସିକ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ KISS (କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇସେନ୍ସ)ଠାରେ ଏଠାକାର ଶିକ୍ଷକ ଓ ସ୍ନାତକୋତ୍ତର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନେ ଆଦିବାସୀମାନଙ୍କର ଭାଷା, ଚଳଣି ଓ ଜନ‌ଜୀବନ ବାବଦରେ ଅନେକ ଗବେଷଣାଭିତ୍ତିକ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଏକାଧିକ ଭାଷାରେ ଲେଖିବାର ଏକ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରାଯାଇଛି । ପ୍ରାରମ୍ଭିକ ପର୍ଯ୍ୟାୟରେ ଏହି ନ‌ଥିକରଣ ତିନୋଟି ଭାଷାରେ (ଓଡ଼ିଆ, ଇଂରାଜୀ ଓ ହିନ୍ଦୀ)ରେ କରାଯାଇ KISS ୱେବସାଇଟରେ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ କରାଯିବ । ଏହି ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗସମୂହ ଜ୍ଞାନ‌କୋଷ ପରିସରରେ ଥିବାରୁ ଏସବୁକୁ ଉଇକିକରଣ କରି ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗସବୁକୁ ସମୃଦ୍ଧ କରିବା ନିମନ୍ତେ ଏହି ଏହି କର୍ମଶାଳାର ଆୟୋଜନ କରାଯାଇଛି । ନ‌ଭେମ୍ବର ୧୪ (ଗୁରବାର‌) ଦିନ ସକାଳ ୧୧:୦୦ ରେ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠିତ ହୋଇ ଥିବା ପ୍ରଥମ କର୍ମଶାଳାରେ ଯୋଗଦେଇଥିବା ଶିକ୍ଷକ ଓ ସ୍ନାତକୋତ୍ତର ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନଙ୍କ ନିମନ୍ତେ ଏହା ଏକ ଉନ୍ନତ କର୍ମଶାଳା । ଏଥିରେ ସେମାନଙ୍କୁ ଦିଆଯାଇଥିବା ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗଗୁଡ଼ିକୁ ସେମାନେ ସମ୍ପାଦନା କରି ସେଥିରେ ଅଧିକ ତ‌ଥ୍ୟ ଯୋଡ଼ି ତାହାକୁ ଉନ୍ନ୍ତ କରିବେ । ସମ୍ପାଦନା ପରେ ଆଗାମୀ ଯୋଜନା ବଆବଦରେ ଆଲୋଚନା କରାଯିବ ।

ଏଥିରେ କଣ କଣ ଶିଖିବାକୁ ମିଳିବ?

ଓଡ଼ିଆରେ ଟାଇପିଂ
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ. ସମ୍ପାଦନା
ଆଗାମୀ ଯୋଜନା

ସ୍ଥାନ ଓ ସମୟ

KISS (କଳିଙ୍ଗ ଇନଷ୍ଟିଚୁଟ ଅଫ ସୋସିଆଲ ସାଇସେନ୍ସ), ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର
ଜାନୁଆରି ୧୦ (ଶୁକ୍ରବାର‌), ସକାଳ ୦୯:୦୦

ଏହି କର୍ମଶାଳାରେ ଭାଗ ନେଉଥିବା ଉଇକିଆଳିଗଣ

--ସୁଭାସିସ ପାଣିଗାହି (ମୋ ସାଙ୍ଗେ କ‌ଥାବାର୍ତ୍ତା)

ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନର ଶିକ୍ଷକ ଓ ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀଗଣ

କାମ ବିତରଣ

ନଭେମ୍ବର ମାସର କର୍ମଶାଳାରେ ଭାଗନେଇଥିବା ସମସ୍ତ ଶିକ୍ଷକ ଓ ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀମାନଙ୍କୁ ୧୧ଟି ଛୋଟ ଛୋଟ ଦଳରେ ଭାଗ କରାଯାଇଥିଲା । ପ୍ରତିଟି ଦଳ ଏକ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ଉପରେ ମିଳିତ କାମ ଆରମ୍ଭ କରିବେ । ତଳେ ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗର ନାମ ଓ ଶିକ୍ଷକ ତ‌ଥା ଛାତ୍ରଛାତ୍ରୀଙ୍କ ନାମ ଦିଆଗଲା । ଆଜିର କର୍ମଶାଳାର ସମସ୍ତ ଅଂଶଗ୍ରହଣକାରୀ ନିଜ ନିଜର ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗରେ କିଛି ଲେଖା ଆରମ୍ଭ କରିଛନ୍ତି । ଏହି କର୍ମଶାଳାରେ ସେମାନେ ଏହି ଲେଖାଗୁଡ଼ିକ ସମୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ କରିବେ ।

ପ୍ରସଙ୍ଗ ନାମ	ଶିକ୍ଷକଙ୍କ ନାମ	ଶିକ୍ଷକଙ୍କ ନାମ	ଛାତ୍ର/ଛାତ୍ରୀଙ୍କ ନାମ	ଛାତ୍ର/ଛାତ୍ରୀଙ୍କ ନାମ
ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ ଲୋକସଂସ୍କୃତି	ମହତ ଶତପ‌ଥୀ		ରୁକ୍ମଣ ବରିହା	ସମ୍ବାରୀ ମୁର୍ମୁ
ହୋ ପରବ			ତରଣୀସେନ ସାମଡ
ହୋ ଜନ‌ଜାତିର ପର୍ବପର୍ବାଣୀ	ଦୀପ୍ତିରଞ୍ଜନ ବେହେରା		ସୂର୍ଯ୍ୟମଣି ସଏ	ତରଣୀସେନ ସାମଡ
ହୋ ଜନ‌ଜାତିର ବିବାହ ପ୍ରଥା‎	ସୌମିତ୍ରୀ ସାମନ୍ତରାୟ			ଜଗଦୀଶ କୁମାର ସିଂ
ଲାଞ୍ଜିଆ ସଉରା ଜନ‌ଜାତିର ଘର‎	ପ୍ରୀତିନନ୍ଦା ରାୟ		ସୁବାସ ଚନ୍ଦ୍ର ସାମଲ	ଗିରିଜା ଶଙ୍କର ମଲିକ
ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ ପର୍ବପର୍ବାଣୀ	ସାଇ ବିଶ୍ୱନାଥ ତ୍ରିପାଠୀ	ପ୍ରିୟମ୍ବଦା ସ୍ୱାଇଁ		କାପୁରା ସୋରେନ
ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ ସଙ୍ଗୀତ	ନୀଳିମା ସାମନ୍ତ	ସୁଜ୍ଞାନୀ ରଥ	ବାସୁଦେବ ମାରାଣ୍ଡି
ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ ଜନ ଜାତିର ଜୀବନ ଜୀବିକା	ଶୁଭଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ ମହାନ୍ତି		କ୍ରିଷ୍ଣା ସୋରେନ	ମହେନ୍ଦ୍ର ବେଶ୍ରା
ମୁଣ୍ଡା ଜନ‌ଜାତି			ସରୋଜିନୀ ସିଂ

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/odia-wikipedia-workshop-kiss-january-10-2014

Report from India: Relicensing books under CC

subha — 2014-05-05T09:13:15Z

My name is Subhashish Panigrahi. I am an educator currently working in the community and communication front at The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K), an India-based catalyst program to grow Indic language communities for Wikipedia and its sister projects. Prior to my work at CIS, I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program, a predecessor to the current CIS-A2K project.

Read the original published on Creative Commons Blog on April 18, 2014 here.

While building ties with higher education and research organizations, I also try to get educational and encyclopedic resources licensed under Creative Commons licenses so that communities can use them to enrich Wikimedia projects. Currently, there is a low level of content available across all the Indic languages and the need for Unicode-based content is extremely crucial.

	While negotiating with authors for relicensing their books in Creative Commons license, I started identifying certain motivation areas for any author for such free content donation. Some of the authors, publishers, and copyright holders have started learning about open access to scholarly publications. However, the readers who are likely to buy a hard copy of a book are likely to buy it even when a free, virtual version is available – that’s the idea authors who are skeptical about CC licenses need to understand.

While negotiating with authors for relicensing their books in Creative Commons license, I started identifying certain motivation areas for any author for such free content donation. Some of the authors, publishers, and copyright holders have started learning about open access to scholarly publications. However, the readers who are likely to buy a hard copy of a book are likely to buy it even when a free, virtual version is available – that’s the idea authors who are skeptical about CC licenses need to understand.

Open source book publishing in India has gained much interest and focus, primarily because of the lack of foresight of the possibilities that are tied to the release of books. It was Pratham Books that first came up with the brilliant idea of “One book book in every child’s hand.” The subsequent release of multilingual books under free licenses was the beginning of a new era in Indian publication.

Book publishers should also think of the target readers of print and web media. Releasing content in free licenses doesn’t affect the mainstream print publications. When it comes to books, there is always a scope for reprinting and making money. After negotiations with two authors and getting 13 books about children’s literature, travelogues, popular science, and linguistic and historical research, I am sure the publishing community has not been educated in the right way about providing free access to content.

It generally takes a long time and effort to negotiate with the copyright holders to get the books out with a CC-BY-SA tag. But it is a permanent and a significant value addition for the open knowledge movement. I believe with more online readers and reviewers getting complete access to books, authors gain more respect in the society and popularity which in turn helps them to sell more of the reprints. Two prime fears are keeping many publishers away from releasing their books online for free: the fear of going out of business and the fear of losing ownership of content. But at the same time, some of the publishers are becoming aware of the mass media outreach and winning hearts of many readers by releasing content for free without copyright restrictions.

Case studies:

Release of a four-volume encyclopedia in Konkani

In 2013, Goa University released Konkani Vishwakosh, a Konkani-language encyclopedia in CC-BY-SA 3.0 license that they had published. This is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource and content from it is being used to enrich the Konkani version of Wikipedia. The project additionally brought about 20 active contributors for digitization.

Release of 11 Odia language books

11 books from Odia author and academic Dr. Jagannath Mohanty were re-released under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license by the “Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa,” a trust founded by Dr. Mohanty for literary discussions and upbringing new writers. His wife and trust’s current chairman Allhadmohini Mohanty formally gave written permission to release and digitize these books. The Odia Wikimedia community is planning to involve undergraduate students of an indigenous educational institution, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, to digitize these books. The trust is also reaching out to publishers who published more than 150 of the author’s books to give permission for re-releasing them under a CC license.

Relicensing “Classical Odia” under a free license

The book is heavy and expensive for any normal reader. Enormous copies were sold after Odia was declared as the sixth Indian classical language; however, this did not stop the authors Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty from changing the license term from All Rights Reserved to CC-BY-SA 3.0. 600-plus pages full of historical documents and manuscripts along with many undiscovered areas of Odia language’s literary heritage of more than 2500 years are now going to go on WikiSource and enrich Wikipedia articles apart from being great resource for language researchers.

Relicensing books and conversion of ISCII to Unicode font

Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty, “Jati, Jagruti O Pragati” and “Bhasa O Jatiyata,” have been relicensed. These are few of those thousand books in those the text are typed with fonts with ISCII standard and not Unicode. ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters. So, a computer with one particular font not installed will display absurd characters. The publication and printing industries still use these fonts as the desktop publishing software package they use for typeset do not have Unicode engine to render the fonts properly. The conversion from these ISCII fonts to Unicode is a way that is going to be used for digitizaing these books to convert the entire book with searchable Unicode content.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/creative-commons-subhashish-panigrahi-april-18-2014-report-from-india-relicensing-books-under-creative-commons

Bharat Majhi Writings Now Available Under a Creative Commons License

subha — 2014-11-07T15:34:38Z

Before the advent of Odia Wikisource becoming live, Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) got in touch with notable Odia author Bharat Majhi for bringing his writings on the Internet.

Dr. Sailen Routray, Director, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) (also an institutional partner of CIS-A2K) played a key role in initiating a dialog with Mr. Majhi. Five of his books are now available under Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0 (CC-by-SA 4.0) license:

Agadhu Duari
Saralarekhaa
Murtikaara
Mahanagara Padya
Highwayre Kuhudi

Bharat Majhi is a known name in Odia literary circle. His writings on societal structures in rural Odisha, the people, their life, aspiration and suffering have been critically acclaimed. These books also become the first Odia modern poetry books to be available under a CC-by-SA license and Mr. Majhi takes another leap of being the first Odia poet to release his literary work under CC-by-SA 4.0 license.

Video

In this video, Odia-language poet Bharat Majhi reciting a poem from his first book Agadhu Duari. He recently released 5 of his books under CC-by-SA 4.0 license by the efforts of Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS).He also tells Subhashish Panigrahi about his dreams of poetry becoming a performing art coming true by it becoming more open. After other Odia author and poet Dr Jagannath Mohanty, Majhi is the first Odia poet to release poem online under CC-by-SA license and his poetry earn the title of the first Odia modern poetry under the same license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/bharat-majhi-writings-now-available-under-cc-license