Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia

nitika — 2013-12-31T11:48:02Z

The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K team) is pleased to share with you the key accomplishments about the work it accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia from September to December 2013 in this report. In accordance with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Program’s (CIS-A2K) Konkani Work Plan 2013-14 the program has invested time and effort to build Konkani Wikimedia community and projects.

Highlights

Increased editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia

CIS-A2K has been organising different programs and workshops. The idea is to bring in as many volunteers as possible who can contribute to Konkani Wikipedia for years to come. We have organised these outreach sessions mainly in Devanagari, Romi and Kannada scripts. As a result of these programs we have been able to significantly increase no. of editors, consistently have minimum of 5-6 active editors per month and build a community of volunteers. You can also view level of editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia for the past few months in the chart below:


Above: Edits Per Month on Konkani Wikipedia (Mar-13 to Dec-13) (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Increased number of articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Total number of articles increased from 150 in Sep 2013 to 315 in Nov 2013. The number of articles have doubled over a period of 3 months. We should keep in mind that out of those who edited in Devanagari; 95% of them were completely new to the input method and had to spend considerable time learning and practicing it.


Above: No. of articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Translated Media Wiki messages

CIS-A2K organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. We achieved translating 79% of these messages in Konkani Devanagari while all 100% messages have already been translated in Romi script

Re-release of Konkani Vishwaksh under Creative Commons License

Upon CIS-A2K‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era. Konkani Vishwakosh is a four-volume hard copy encyclopedia (3632 pages) published by Goa University; a work that took over 14 years to develop. It encompasses the world’s information in a nutshell with special emphasis and detailed information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. To know more about click here and here

Initiated & Completed 30% of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

Goa University in collaboration with the CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. 37 participants are enrolled in this project who are working to digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized. The program started on 19th October and in just about 2 months 30% of the encyclopedia had already been digitized. You can monitor the progress of this project on Wikisource. Here are the links for Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4. Please note that some of the participants firstly digitize the encylopedia either in their Sandbox or offline and then move it to Wikisource. To know more about the project click here.

Signed an MoU with Goa University

Goa University entered into a three year MoU with CIS for building Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this partnership, Goa University and CIS-A2K will work together to help build Konkani Wikipedia and community.

White paper by a Linguist

Fr. Pratap Naik, S.J. B.Sc., B.Ed. M.A. (Linguistics), M.Phil. (Linguistics), Ph.D. (Linguistics) has written a white paper discussing issues faced by Konkani language and his views on how it should be dealt on Wikimedia projects. We'll soon upload the white paper on Wikimedia Commons and make the link available.

14 Outreach session, over 450 participants, in 3 months

CIS-A2K organised about 14 outreach sessions and reached out to over 450 people to create awareness about Konkani Wikipedia and the community between Sep-Dec 2013. Details of these sessions can be found here.

Got consensus from field experts

Over the past few months CIS-A2K has spoken with Konkani Wikipedians (such as Frederick Noronha, Deepak D'Souza, Seby Fernandes) Konkani linguists (such as Fr. Pratap), professors from Konkani Department at Goa University (Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar), cultural experts (such as Prof. Alito Siqueira and Harriet Vidyasagar) and other experts to propose a solution for Konkani Wikipedia that faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. To a great extent we have got consensus from different field experts that we should strive to create separate Wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active.

Wikipedians Speak

One of the ongoing projects of CIS-A2K is 'Wikipedians Speak' which are small videos of Wikipedians that captures their expereinces, learnings and challenges. As a part of this project CIS-A2K published several videos of Konkani Wikipedians.

Link to the post published on Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/work-accomplished-konkani-wikipedia

University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License

pavanaja — 2014-07-24T07:03:45Z

The University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by the University of Mysore can easily be termed as the best encyclopaedia in Kannada. It has been modelled after the famous Britannica encyclopaedia. Mysore University Vishwakosha has 14 volumes having a total of 13802 pages. The very first volume was brought out in the year 1969 and the final volume was released in 2004. Many famous Kannada authors, scientists, academicians and stalwarts from other fields have worked on creating this encyclopaedia. The print volumes of the first version of the encyclopaedia are out of stock now. Recently UoM has started revising and reprinting the encyclopaedia. So far 4 volumes have been revised, enhanced and published.

UoM believes in Open Access to Knowledge. It has put up the research outputs from its departments online for free access to the public. UoM has done these as a subscriber to the idea of Budapest Open Access Initiative. The Open Access Institutional Repository, of UoM, covers scholarly publications covering journal articles, conference papers, books, book reviews, presentations, reports and patents ever since UoM was established in 1916. Extending the philosophy of open knowledge to the Kannada encyclopaedia published by UoM becomes a natural extension. UoM is in the verge of celebrating its centenary soon and has taken many initiatives in that direction.

CIS-A2K has been in negotiations with UoM towards releasing of its high quality Kannada Vishwakosha (Kannada Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons license. CIS and UoM signed a MoU on February 22, 2014. Here is the relevant extract from the MoU: "They will work together to digitize all encyclopaedic publications for which the copyright is owned by UoM, and re-release them under the Creative Common license (CC-BY-SA 3.0). The digitized content will be made available for everyone through free content distribution platforms like Wikipedia and Wikisource. The digitization will be done employing the global standard Unicode so that the content has longevity, is universally portable and is easily searchable. Both parties have joined hands to undertake the above in order to enhance digital literacy in the Kannada language and facilitate collaborative production and free dissemination of knowledge in Kannada to the students, academics, researchers and the wider public. The parties also believe that by reintroducing the knowledge in digital and openly accessible formats could significantly enhance the production of knowledge in Kannada and give a new lease of life to Kannada language in the digital era. The parties will co-design and jointly implement relevant programmes to achieve this objective." As part of this MoU, UoM agreed to release the first six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under CC.

Volume numbers 1, 2, 4 and 6 of Kannada Vishwakosha of UoM have been revised and published recently. A project page has been created in Kannada Wikipedia for this project. Kannada Wikipedians joined hands in the project. The project involved extracting the text from the soft copies of the files, converting them into Unicode, extracting articles from these files and uploading them to Kannada Wikisource.

A team of interns from Christ University had a major role to play in this development. These were students from the Wikipedia in Education Program that was conducted in Christ University during the academic period of 2013-14. These students took active part in the current project and uploaded about 1200 articles so far (till July 21, 2014).

Media Coverage

The event attracted very good media coverage. Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.

Other Links:

UoM Kannada Vishwakosha conversion project page in Kannada Wikipedia - http://bit.ly/mysoreunivwp
Articles from UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - http://bit.ly/mysoreuniv
Category UoM Kannada Vishwakosha in Kannada Wikisource - http://bit.ly/mysoreunivws
For pictures from the Open Knowledge Day event in Mysore - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mysore_University_Open_Knowledge_Day

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia

vishnu — 2014-10-10T11:26:26Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoU) with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS, in its sustained efforts to enhance the content and reach of Kokani Wikepedia (which is in incubation), has signed an MoU for a period of five years with Nirmala Insitute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College established in 1963 by the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in response to the then urgent need for trained teachers in post liberation Goa. The key objectives of this partnership are: a) to design, develop and execute a certificate course titled "Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia", which is aimed at middle and high school teacher-trainees and teachers; and b) to introduce Wikimedia projects into the pedagogic curriculum of NIE.

Both CIS and NIE share a mutual interest in conserving, developing and disseminating knowledge free of cost in Konkani, which incidentally is Goa’s official language. Konkani as a language faces several challenges — it has no official script. The population who speak it are dispersed across the world and have little motivation to further the cause of Konkani, and there are few educational venues that offer a formal course to study Konkani or offer Konkani based curriculum. NIE Principal Dr. Denzil Martins welcomed this MoU and said that "it will guide our teacher-trainees to upload relevant information in Konkani that can be freely accessed by the local population" and "provide the volunteer-trainees with skills that they will be able to use to contribute and enhance the free knowledge in Konkani". The MoU was signed by Dr. Denzil Martins from NIE and T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, Access to Knowledge, CIS) in the presence of staff and students of NIE and volunteers Harriet Vidyasagar and Gayathri Rao Konkar. Dr. Rita Paes, ex-Principal of NIE who worked to forge this MoU sent her best wishes.

CIS-A2K since 2013, has worked to develop partnerships with key educational institutions to promote and grow Konkani Wikipedia. It has previously worked with NIE to design and implement a program to enroll 100 B.Ed. students to increase the amount of information available in Goan villages and towns on Konkani Wikipedia. A2K has also been instrumental in convincing Goa University to re-release Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia) under CC-BY-SA 3.0 , making it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

The course ‘Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia’ will enable the teacher participant to have a) a comprehensive understanding of changes due to digital technology to the knowledge domain; b) an introduction to various openness movements that inform the discourse on Open Educational Resources; c) exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia; and d) practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context. The parties will also co-design and jointly implement programmes to introduce Wikipedia in the NIE curriculum. The curriculum for this workshop is positioned within the context of indian languages (particularly Konkani) and school education to ensure that any learning is practical and can be applied within the teachers immediate pedagogic environment. Speaking about the relevance of this course Gayathri and Harriet (who have been associated with NIE as volunteers) mentioned that "the Goa government has handed out tablets to all school going children in Goa. In order to use them effectively in the classroom will require teachers to rethink their role and teaching methodologies and this course is an important step towards that". Agreeing with this Denzil Martins feels that this course "will provide the teacher-trainees with ideas and inputs for using Wikipedia in creative ways in the classroom".

This partnership could bring huge momentum and scale for the growth of Konkani as participants who graduate from this course will as teachers act as anchors and mentors to teach and assign Wikipedia editing assignments in their respective schools and classrooms.

As Gayathri feels "such courses once fine tuned should be made available to teachers from all over the country and should be part of the package for introducing the digital technology in the school system. Today it ends with setting up computer labls in schools or distribution of hardware to students - they may have a 'computer teacher' but the class and subject teachers never become part of these new initiatives. Only when this happens can we move away from 'teaching computers' to using computers as tools to learn and teach, which is the primary objective of digital technology in schools".

CIS will develop this open course and welcomes anyone to partner in this effort, which will be made available for anyone to use it within their context. The efforts to build free and open knowledge platforms like Konkani Wikipedia will continue and partnerships like NIE will play a crucial role in building a robust knowledge society in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia

Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia – CIS-A2K and ALC join hands

T Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik — 2014-09-30T05:11:29Z

Students and faculty of Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada aim to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in its quest to catalyze the growth of open knowledge movement in Indic languages recently added another feather to its cap by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Andhra Loyola College (ALC) in Vijayawada on August 14, 2014 to work collaboratively to improve Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wikisource. College Principal Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, Vice-Principals Fr. P. Anil Kumar and Fr. Rex Angelo, correspondent Fr. Raju signed the agreement with CIS-A2K programme director T. Vishnu Vardhan.

The MoU signed with ALC is for a period of five years and encompasses four activities: Open knowledge creation in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia: ALC faculty and students will be trained by CIS-A2K staff and interested Telugu Wikimedians to understand the principles that govern Wikipedia in order to generate quality entries. Faculty from Botany, Physics, Statistics, Ethics, Religion, Telugu Literature, and Music will work with CIS-A2K. Each of the faculty in the coming months will come up with a plan to generate open knowledge in Telugu in their respective disciplines. Content donation and digitization on Telugu Wikisource: ALC through its networks will help CIS-A2K to bring Telugu content under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. The Telugu department of the college expressed keen interest to work with CIS-A2K in digitizing historical Telugu content and to make it available on Telugu Wikisource. Various competitions will be planned in the future. Creating a free software environment at Andhra Loyola College: 400 machines within various labs on the campus will be converted into FOSS systems with free and open source software including support for Telugu and other Indic languages. It should be noted that all the existing computers of ALC are run on proprietary software. As a pilot initiative CIS-A2K has already converted 30 systems in a lab and named it as Loyola FOSS Lab. CIS-A2K to revise the FIT (Fundamentals in Information Technology): A mandatory course for all undergraduate students which will introduce students to FOSS, Openness and Wikipedia. This is an outcome of the FOSS orientation done by T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahimanuddin Shaik during the two workshops that were held at ALC.

CIS-A2K will put every effort to involve Telugu Wikimedians and FOSS community in taking this collaboration with ALC forward. CIS-A2K will also create a project page on Telugu Wikipedia to actively document and publicly share the detailed plans and progress. More updates will also be shared on this website.


Above: Representatives from ALC and CIS-A2K seen during the signing ceremony.

The signing of the MoU was done at a public event in the presence of students, faculty and management of ALC and various representatives from media. The media covered this event enthusiastically. The Hindu coverage can be found here and Eenadu article coverage is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/expanding-the-world-of-telugu-wikipedia-cis-and-alc-join-hands

International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft

sumandro — 2015-06-02T15:51:12Z

The first public draft of the International Open Data Charter was released at the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, May 28-29, 2015. It is being developed by a range of organisations led by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Open Data Working Group (co-chaired by Government of Canada and the Web Foundation), the Government of Mexico, the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network, and Omidyar Network. CIS has contributed comments to a previous version of the draft, and also took part in the pre-release meeting of potential stewards of the Charter on May 26 in Ottawa. Here is the text of the draft Charter. Please visit opendatacharter.net/charter/ to submit your comments.

Consultation Draft, May 2015

Preamble

1) The world is witnessing the growth of a global movement facilitated by technology and digital media and fuelled by information – one that contains enormous potential to create more accountable, efficient, responsive, and effective governments and businesses, and to spur economic growth.

Open data sit at the heart of this global movement.

2) Building a more democratic, just, and prosperous society requires transparent, accountable governments that engage regularly and meaningfully with citizens. Accordingly, there is an ongoing effort to enable collaboration around key social challenges, to provide effective oversight of government activities, to support economic development through innovation, and to develop effective, efficient public policies and programmes.

Open data is essential to meeting these challenges.

3) Effective access to data allows individuals and organisations to develop new insights and innovations that can generate social and economic benefits to improve the lives of people around the world, and help to improve the flow of information within and between countries. While governments collect a wide range of data, they do not always share these data in ways that are easily discoverable, useable, or understandable by the public.

This is a missed opportunity.

4) Today, many people expect to be able to access high quality information and services, including government data, when and how they want. Others see the opportunity presented by government data as one which can provide innovative policy solutions and support economic and social benefits for all members of society. We have arrived at a point at which people can use open data to generate value, insights, ideas, and services to create a better world for all.

5) Open data can increase transparency around what government is doing. Open data can also increase awareness about how countries’ natural resources are used, how extractives revenues are spent, and how land is transacted and managed – all of which promotes accountability and good governance, enhances public debate, and helps to combat corruption.

6) Providing access to government data can drive sustainable and inclusive growth by empowering citizens, the media, civil society, and the private sector to identify gaps, and work toward better outcomes for public services in areas such as health, education, public safety, environmental protection, and governance. Open data can do this by:

showing how and where public money is spent, which provides strong incentives for governments to demonstrate that they are using public money effectively;
supporting citizens, civil society organisations, governments and the private sector to collaborate on the design of policies and the delivery of better public services;
supporting assessments of the impact of public programs, which in turn allows governments, civil society organisations, and the private sector to respond more effectively to the particular needs of local communities; and
enabling citizens to make better informed choices about the services they receive and the service standards they should expect.

7) Open government data can be used in innovative ways to create useful tools and products that help to navigate modern life more easily. Used in this way, open data are a catalyst for innovation in the private sector, supporting the creation of new markets, businesses, and jobs. These benefits can multiply as more private sector and civil society organisations adopt open data practices modelled by government and share their own data with the public.

8) We, the adherents to the International Open Data Charter, agree that open data are an under-used resource with huge potential to encourage the building of stronger, more interconnected societies that better meet the needs of our citizens and allow innovation and prosperity to flourish.

9) We therefore agree to follow a set of principles that will be the foundation for access to, and the release and use of, open government data. These principles are:

Open Data by Default;
Quality and Quantity;
Accessible and Useable by All;
Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens;
Collaboration for Development and Innovation;

10) We will develop an action plan in support of the implementation of the Charter and its Technical Annexes, and will update and renew the action plan at a minimum of every two years. We agree to commit the necessary resources to work within our political and legal frameworks to implement these principles in accordance with the technical best practices and timeframes set out in our action plan.

Principle 1: Open Data by Default

11) We recognise that free access to, and the subsequent use of, government data are of significant value to society and the economy, and that government data should, therefore, be open by default.

12) We acknowledge the need to promote the global development and adoption of tools and policies for the creation, use, and exchange of open data and information.

13) We recognise that the term ‘government data’ is meant in the widest sense possible. This could apply to data held by national, federal, and local governments, international government bodies, and other types of institutions in the wider public sector. This could also apply to data created for governments by external organisations, and data of significant benefit to the public which is held by external organisations and related to government programmes and services (e.g. data on extractives entities, data on transportation infrastructure, etc).

14) We recognise that there is domestic and international legislation, in particular pertaining to security, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and personally-identifiable and other sensitive information, which must be observed and/or updated where necessary.

15) We will:

develop and adopt policies and practices to ensure that all government data is made open by default, as outlined in this Charter, while recognising that there are legitimate reasons why some data cannot be released;
provide clear justifications as to why certain data cannot be released;
establish a culture of openness, not only through legislative or policy measures, but also with the help of training and awareness programs, tools, and guidelines designed to make government, civil society, and private sector representatives aware of the benefits of open data; and
develop the leadership, management, oversight, and internal communication policies necessary to enable this transition to a culture of openness.

Principle 2: Quality and Quantity

16) We recognise that governments and other public sector organisations hold vast amounts of information that may be of interest to citizens, and that it may take time to identify data for release or publication.

17) We also recognise the importance of consulting with citizens, other governments, non-governmental organisations, and other open data users, to identify which data to prioritise for release and/or improvement.

18) We agree, however, that governments’ primary responsibility should be to release data in a timely manner, without undue delay.

19) We will:

create, maintain, and share public, comprehensive lists of data holdings to set the stage for meaningful public discussions around data prioritisation and release;
release high-quality open data that are timely, comprehensive, and accurate in accordance with prioritisation that is informed by public requests. To the extent possible, data will be released in their original, unmodified form and at the finest level of granularity available, and will also be linked to any visualisations or analyses created based on the data, as well as any relevant guidance or documentation;
ensure that accompanying documentation is written in clear, plain language, so that it can be easily understood by all;
make sure that data are fully described, and that data users have sufficient information to understand their source, strengths, weaknesses, and any analytical limitations;
ensure that open datasets include consistent core metadata, and are made available in human- and machine-readable formats under an open and unrestrictive licence;
allow users to provide feedback, and continue to make revisions to ensure the quality of the data is improved as needed; and
apply consistent information lifecycle management practices, and ensure historical copies of datasets are preserved, archived, and kept accessible as long as they retain value.

Principle 3: Accessible and Usable by All

20) We recognise that opening up data enables citizens, governments, civil society organisations, and the private sector to make better informed decisions.

21) We recognise that open data should be made available free of charge in order to encourage their widest possible use.

22) We recognise that when open data are released, they should be made available without bureaucratic or administrative barriers, such as mandatory user registration, which can deter people from accessing the data.

23) We will:

release data in open formats and free of charge to ensure that the data are available to the widest range of users to find, access, and use them. In many cases, this will include providing data in multiple formats, so that they can be processed by computers and used by people; and
ensure data can be accessed and used effectively by the widest range of users. This may require the creation of initiatives to raise awareness of open data, promote data literacy, and build capacity for effective use of open data.

Principle 4: Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens

24) We recognise that the release of open data strengthens our public and democratic institutions, encourages better development, implementation, and assessment of policies to meet the needs of our citizens, and enables more meaningful, better informed engagement between governments and citizens.

25) We will:

implement oversight and review processes to report regularly on the progress and impact of our open data initiatives;
engage with community and civil society representatives working in the domain of transparency and accountability to determine what data they need to effectively hold governments to account;encourage the use of open data to develop innovative, evidence-based policy solutions that benefit all members of society, as well as empower marginalised groups; and
be transparent about our own data collection, standards, and publishing processes, by documenting all of these related processes online.

Principle 5: Collaboration for Development and Innovation

26) We recognise the importance of diversity in stimulating creativity and innovation. The more citizens, governments, civil society, and the private sector use open data, the greater the social and economic benefits that will be generated. This is true for government, commercial, and non-commercial uses.

27) We recognise that the potential value of our open data is greatly increased when it can be used in combination with open data from other governments, the private sector, academic, media, civil society, and other non-governmental organisations.

28) We will:

create or explore potential partnerships to support the release of open data and maximise their impact through effective use. This may include local, regional, and global partnerships between governments, civil society, and the private sector;
engage with civil society, the private sector, and academic representatives to determine what data they need to generate social and economic value;
provide training programs, tools, and guidelines designed to ensure government employees are capable of using open data effectively in policy development processes;
encourage non-governmental organisations to open up data created and collected by them in order to move toward a richer open data ecosystem with multiple sources of open data;
share technical expertise and experience with other governments and international organisations around the world, so that everyone can reap the benefits of open data; and
empower a future generation of data innovators inside and outside of government by supporting an environment optimised for increasing open data literacy and encouraging developers, civil society organisations, academics, media representatives, government employees, and other open data users, to unlock the value of open data.

Crossposted from http://opendatacharter.net/charter/.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/international-open-data-charter-first-public-draft

Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation

subha — 2016-06-18T18:15:05Z

Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Here is a blog highlighting three Konkani Wikimedians and an advocate of the Wikipedia movement whose efforts finally paid off.

Read the original blog entry published on Wikimedia Blog on July 15, 2015 here.

The Goan Konkani Wikipedia (available at gom.wikipedia.org) has gone live after spending nine long years in incubation.

An Indo-Aryan language, of the Indo-European family of languages, Konkani is the official language of Goa. It is a minority language in other Indian states, such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, northern Kerala, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu. It is spoken by about 7.4 million people.

Konkani can be written in five different scripts: Devanagari—officially used by the Government of Goa—as well as Latin (locally known as Romi Konkani), Kannada, Malayalam, and Persian. Of these, the Goan Antruz dialect of the language, in the Devanagari script, is considered standard by the Indian constitution.

The Konkani Wikipedia has many heroes, as we see them. Melissa Simoes and Darshan Kandolkar are two of the many long-term contributors who joined during the Konkani Wikipedia @ Goa University program and are still active even after the program formally concluded. Darshan is an assistant professor at the Government College Pernem in Goa. His professor at Goa University, Dr. Madhavi Sardesai—who passed away last year—played a vital role in inspiring him to go for higher studies in Konkani. Darshan realized that there is a lot to be written in Konkani when he was introduced to Wikipedia, and after that, he became dedicated to contributing to the project.

“I would like to bring more students as contributors to our Konkani Wikipedia,” Darshan says. “My aim is to start with my students at Government College Pernem. Being an alumnus of Goa University, I also want my juniors there to join our community and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.”

“I have a dream to start a project for the freedom fighters of Goa and involve a diverse set of people, from students to journalists and columnists. I also want to build partnership with educational institutions so we could engage with the students for a longer run and the existing Konkani community could mentor them,” he continues.

“Being a new Wikipedia project, Konkani Wikipedia needs more quality measures and the articles have to grow to good quality articles with more images and templates, I want to take it to the level of English Wikipedia with both quantitative and qualitative growth in articles!”

The Konkani Wikimedia community has been using social media actively to promote the Konkani Wikipedia project, and to celebrate the successes of its contributors. After Melissa became the top contributor to the project, her fellow editor Luis Gomes congratulated her. That brought Melissa into the spotlight, gaining the attention of editors from the global Wikimedia community. The community is continuing a tradition to rewarding the most prolific contributor of each month as the “Wikipedian of the Month”.

Melissa was introduced to the Wikipedia program at her university where the target for each participating student was to write one article each about a village in Goa. “I wrote my article just for the sake of the marks, but never bothered to think about why I am writing it. After the program was over, I became inactive on Wikipedia.

“After some time, I met Father [Luis Gomes] in parish and then Darshan and Father inspired me to resume editing. Then, it became an addiction and I never stopped even for a day. I would come back from work and sit in front of my computer.

“Now, I am a teacher, and my fellow teachers are mostly women. I would like to introduce the Goan Konkani Wikipedia to them so they could also contribute to Wikipedia,” Melissa says.

As Konkani Wikipedia went live, long term Wikimedian Fredrick Noronha, an early advocate of Konkani Wikipedia, said, “It is a wonderful feeling to see the Goan Konkani Wikipedia live. I would like to congratulate all who have been involved in some or the other way with the making of Konkani Wikipedia live from the days of its inception and incubation.

“I am not a great contributor or even a language expert. I come from a content background and found my interest in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons long ago. But this helped me to associate myself in some way with the Konkani Wikipedia incubator. I am happy that CIS-A2K chipped in to help build a community and help it grow in collaboration with the Goa University.

“Students of the Konkani department in the university are the real heroes to take this effort forward by filling the Wikipedia incubator with more editing activity to which the institutional backing acted as catalyst,” he added.

Fredrick feels there are major challenges that the community now has to start taking measures for: “The macrolanguage is written in multiple scripts. Out of five of the scripts three—Devanagari, Romi/Latin and Kannada—are actively used in printing and publication currently. People using all the scripts should be equally participating in a movement like Wikipedia to take their languages to other native speakers using Wikipedia as a digital tool.

“The second challenge is with the contributors. Goa, being home to majority of the Konkani language speakers, has English education from the primary level. This means many have a great level of technical ability. The technical contributor community here would be of great use to Konkani Wikipedia if tapped,” he adds.

“The technical contributors are eager to contribute but have not been approached in a manner that would interest them. Similarly the Konkani authors who are helping propagate the language to masses have sadly no or very little clue about Wikipedia’s existence in Konkani. This disparity is stopping a massive flow of local encyclopedic content to the Konkani Wikipedia. Unless we tap into the technological and the linguistic groups it will be only a tip of the iceberg.”

Fredrick explains that the the current Konkani Wikipedia community is primarily made up of students of Goa University. “This is both good and bad,” he says. “Having young and enthusiastic students as Wikipedia editors is helping the project to leap forward, which might not have happened if the faculty were targeted instead. There is, however, a great need for diversification.

“The approach to bring in authors in the 60–70 years age group will vary from the approach to bring in, for example, technical people. Our outreach strategies should ultimately fulfill both the literary and technological contributors, so that their work can help us to both grow content and to solve the problem of the multiple scripts, respectively,” Fredrick adds.

The Konkani Wikipedia community is organizing a public seminar on July 18 at Goa University to celebrate the launch of the Konkani Wikipedia and to pay tribute to Dr. Madhavi Sardesai, who always dreamed of the Konkani Wikipedia getting out of incubation.

Video


Wikimedian Darshan Kandolkar shares his experience of contributing to Konkani Wikipedia. Video in Konkani. Video by Wikimedia India, freely licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live

India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched

nehaa — 2014-07-01T11:09:08Z

On Day 1 of the 28th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (“SCCR”), the WIPO organized an event to mark India’s ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, 2013 (“Marrakesh Treaty”), and to launch the Accessible Books Consortium (“ABC”).

India Becomes the First Country to Ratify the Marrakesh Treaty

Francis Gurry, Director General, WIPO said that the Marrakesh Treaty received 79 signatures in the twelve month period that the treaty was open for signatures. He further said that India’s ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty one year from its conclusion was a “WIPO record of sorts” and a “great example from a major country” of the importance attached to the Marrakesh Treaty.

Dilip Sinha, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations in Geneva handed over India’s Instrument of Accession to the Marrakesh Treaty to Francis Gurry. Ambassador Sinha in his speech stressed on the importance of the Marrakesh Treaty to India and said that it helped that India had its amendments to its Copyright Act, 1957 in place, incorporating the provisions of the Marrakesh Treaty.

Maryanne Diamond, the Immediate Past President of the World Blind Union (“WBU”) congratulated India on its ratification. Calling it a country who showed “huge leadership” in negotiations of the Marrakesh Treaty, Ms. Diamond said that this ratification was extremely significant, with India being home to a large number of blind and print disabled people and a part of the Global South. Ms. Diamond urged other nations to follow India’s example and make it a priority to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.

Jens Bammel, Secretary General, International Publishers Association (“IPA”) also congratulated India on its ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty and called on other member states to ratify it.

Accessible Books Consortium Launched

At the launch of the ABC, Mr. Gurry said that the Marrakesh Treaty was only the means to an end, where the end was books in the hands of print disabled and visually impaired persons across the world. “To make it operational,” said Mr. Gurry, “we need to have operational activities.” He said that the ABC was an operational activity which would “breathe life” into and “make operational” the legal framework provided by the Marrakesh Treaty.

What Does it Do?

Mr. Gurry said that the ABC aimed at achieving three things- first, capacity building; second, international book exchange and third, international book exchange.

Capacity Building- Mr. Gurry said that the ABC seeks to provide training on accessible book production and distribution. He thanked the Republic of Korea which has committed to providing financial assistance for training in respect of production of books in accessible formats.
International Book Exchange- Mr. Gurry said that this activity was an IT supported facility, namely, the TIGAR Service which has its origins in India. This would allow participating institutions to perform international searches of databases to find out if accessible formats of books are available.
Inclusive Publishing- Mr. Gurry said that at the end of the day, “books should be born accessible” and technology was creating the “promise of the realization of this aspiration.” Mr. Gurry said that the ABC would promote accessible publishing and to this end, had drawn up a charter of accessible publishing- Accessible Publishing Best Practice Guidelines for Publishers. Elsevier is the first publisher to have signed this charter.

India, WBU and IPA delighted

Praising the ABC, Ambassador Sinha called it an indicator of what multi-stakeholder cooperation needs to do. He said that the ABC would assist organizations such as the DAISY Forum of India in achieving the goal of access to books in accessible formats. Congratulating the WIPO for its efforts on this front, Ambassador Sinha said that this would help nations like India realize their goal of achieving the purposes of the Marrakesh Treaty. Ms. Diamond, representing the WBU congratulated Elsevier on signing the charter. Jens Bammel, on behalf of the IPA expressed concern for making books available in accessible formats for non English speakers. The ABC, he said, was a project initiated to “genuinely complement” the Marrakesh Treaty, and would create a global catalogue of accessible works, whether provided by libraries or by publishers. Expressing his delight that the ABC was being supported equally by all stakeholders, Mr. Bammel reached out to member states to support this initiative politically.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/indias-ratification-of-marrakesh-treaty-celebrated

Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Amended ITRs

chinmayi — 2013-01-30T05:36:26Z

This piece discusses the five major questions that have been the subject of debate after the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT). The politics surrounding the WCIT are not discussed here but it must be kept in mind that they have played a significant role in the outcome of the conference and in some of the debates about it.

Each question is discussed with reference to the text of the treaty, to the minutes of the plenary sessions (which are available via the ITU website), a little international law and a few references to other people’s comments on the treaty.

1. Do the ITRs apply to content on the internet?

Article 1.1 (a) has been amended to add the sentence “These Regulations do not address the content-related aspects of telecommunications”. Although some discussions about the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) and content have ignored this altogether, others seem concerned about its interpretation.

The ITU Secretary General has issued a statement in which he has clarified that “The new ITR treaty does NOT cover content issues and explicitly states in the first article that content-related issues are not covered by the treaty”.

Commentators like Chuan-Zheng Lee however, continue to view the treaty with suspicion, on the basis that it is necessary to examine content in order to tell whether it is spam (Lee and Chaparro differ on this question). However, others like Eric Pfanner have pointed to this paragraph in their skepticism about the US refusal to sign.

Some highlights from the plenary session discussions

The Chairman proposed the addition to Article 1.1(a) at the tenth plenary session. He did this to address concerns that the ITRs text could be interpreted to apply to content on the Internet. The original formulation that he proposed was ‘These regulations do not address and cannot be interpreted as addressing content’. This text was suggested in the middle of an extended discussion on Article 5A.

Many countries were skeptical of this insertion. Sudan argued that content could not be avoided in telecommunication networks “because it will always be in transit.” The United Arab Emirates seemed concerned about international interference in states’ existing regulation of content, and said “maybe we could actually say this in the minutes of the meeting that this regulation should not be interpreted as on alteration to Member States content regulation”.

Concerns about what the term ‘content’ means and whether it would apply broadly were raised by more than one country, including Saudi Arabia. For instance, it was argued that the text proposed by the Chairman might interfere with parts of the treaty that require operators to send tariff information correspondence. More than one country that felt that the insertion of this text would impact several parts of the treaty, and that it would be difficult to determine what amounted to dealing with content. The primary issue appeared to be that the term ‘content’ was not defined, and it therefore remained unclear what was being excluded. In response to these concerns, the Chairman withdrew his proposal for the amendment excluding content.

However, several states then spoke up in favour of the Chairman’s proposal, suggesting that the proposed amendment to Article 1.1 influenced their acceptance of Article 5A (on security and robustness of networks – discussed in detail below). Brazil suggested that an answer to the definitional concerns may be found in the work by Study Group 17, which had a definition available.

Following this, the next day, at the twelfth plenary, the Chairman brought back the Article 1.1 amendment excluding content. He stated explicitly that this amendment might be the way to get Articles 5A and 5B approved. The text he read out was insertion of the words “to the exclusion of their content”, after ‘’services’ at the end of 1.1A. Interestingly however, the term ‘content’ was never defined.

At the next plenary session, Iran raised the objection that this phrase was overbroad, and proposed the following formulation instead: “These Regulations do not address the content-related aspects of telecommunications”. This formulation found its way into the amended ITRs as the treaty stands today.

2. Does Article 5A on network security legitimize surveillance of Internet content?

Article 5A deals with ‘security and robustness of networks’ and requires member states to “individually and collectively endeavour to ensure the security and robustness of international telecommunication networks...”. This may have given rise to concerns about interpretations that may extend the security of networks to malware or viruses, and therefore to content on the Internet. However, Article 5A has to be read with Article 1.1(a), and therefore must be interpreted such that it does not ‘address the content-related aspects of telecommunications’.

Some commentators continue to see Article 5A as problematic. Avri Doria has argued that the use of the word ‘security’ in addition to ‘robustness’ of telecommunication infrastructure suggests that it means Internet security. However Emma Llansó of the Centre for Democracy and Technology has noted that the language used in this paragraph is “ far too vague to be interpreted as a requirement or even a recommendation that countries surveil users on their networks in order to maintain security”. Llansó has suggested that civil society advocates make it clear to countries which attempt to use this article to justify surveillance, that it does not lend itself to such practices.

Some highlights from the plenary session discussions

Article 5A was one of the most controversial parts of the ITRs and was the subject of much debate.

On December 11^th, in the Chairman’s draft that was being discussed, Article 5A was titled ‘security of networks’, and required members to endeavour to ensure the “security and robustness of international telecommunication networks”. The Chairman announced that this was the language that came out of Committee 5’s deliberations, and that ‘robustness’ was inserted at the suggestion of CEPT.

Several countries like Poland, Australia, Germany and the United States of America were keen on explicitly stating that Article 5A was confined to the physical or technical infrastructure, and either wanted a clarification that to this effect or use of the term ‘robustness’ instead of security. Many other countries, such as Russia and China, were strongly opposed to this suggestion and insisted that the term security must remain in the document (India was one of the countries that preferred to have the document use the term ‘security’).

It was in the course of this disagreement, during the tenth plenary session, that the Chairman suggested his global solution for Article 1.1 – a clarification that this would not apply to content. This solution was contested by several countries, withdrawn and then reinstated (in the eleventh plenary) after many countries explained that their assent to Article 5A was dependant on the existence of the Article 1 clarification about content (see above for details).

There was also some debate about whether Article 5A should use the term ‘robustness’ or the term ‘security’ (eg. The United States clarified that its preference was for the use of ‘resilience and robustness’ rather than security). The Secretary General referred to this disagreement, and said that he was therefore using both terms in the draft. The title of Article 5A was changed, in the eleventh plenary, to use both terms, instead of only referring to security.

3. Does Article 5B apply to spam content on the Internet?

The text of the amended treaty talks of ‘unsolicited bulk electronic communications’ and does not use the term ‘spam’[Article 5B says that ‘Members should endeavour to take necessary measures to prevent the propagation of unsolicited bulk electronic communications and minimize its impact on international telecommunication services’].If this phrase is read in isolation, it may certainly be interpreted as being applicable to spam. Commentators like Avri Doria have pointed to sources like Resolution 130 of the Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union (Guadalajara, 2010) to demonstrate that ‘unsolicited bulk electronic communications’ ordinarily means spam. However, others like Enrique A. Chaparro argue that it cannot possibly extend to content on the Internet given the language used in Article 1.1(a). Chapparo has explained, that given the exclusion of content, Article 5B it authorizes anti-spam mechanisms that do not work on content.

Article 5B, which discusses ‘unsolicited bulk electronic communications’, must be read with Article 1, which is the section on purpose and scope of the ITRS. Article 1.1 (a) specifies that the ITRs “do not address the content-related aspects of telecommunications”. Therefore it may be argued that ‘unsolicited bulk electronic communications’ cannot be read as being applicable to content on the Internet.

However, many continue to be concerned about Article 5B’s applicability to spam on the Internet. Although some of them that their fear is that some states may interpret Article 5B as applying to content, despite the contents of Article 1.1(a), many have failed to engage with the issue in the context of Article 1.1(a).

Some highlights from the plenary session discussions

Article 5B is inextricably linked with the amendment to Article 1.1. Mexico asked specifically about what the proposed amendment to Article 1.1 would mean for Article 5B: “I’m referring to the item which we’ll deal with later, namely unsolicited bulk electronic communications. Could that be referred to as content, perhaps?”. The Chairman responded saying, “This is exactly will solve the second Article 5B, that we are not dealing with content here. We are dealing with measures to prevent propagation of unsolicited bulk electronic messages”.

The amendment to Article 1.1 was withdrawn soon after it was introduced. Before it was reintroduced, Sweden said (at the eleventh plenary) that it could not see how Article 5B could apply without looking into the content of messages. The United States agreed with this and went on state that the issue of spam was being addressed at the WTSA level, as well as by other organisations. It argued that the spam issue was better addressed at the technical level than by introducing it in treaty text.

The amendment excluding content was reintroduced during the twelfth plenary. The Chairman explicitly stated that it might be the way to get Articles 5A and 5B approved.

The word ‘spam’ was dropped from the ITRs in the eight plenary, and “unsolicited bulk electronic communications” was used instead. However, in the eleventh plenary, as they listed their reasons for not signing the newly-amended ITRs, Canada and the United States of America referred to ‘spam’ which suggests that they may have viewed the change as purely semantic.

4. Does the resolution on Internet Governance indicate that the ITU plans to take over the Internet?

Much controversy has arisen over the plenary resolution ‘to foster an enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet’. This controversy has arisen partly thanks to the manner in which it was decided to include the resolution, and partly over the text of the resolution. The discussion here focuses on the text of the resolution and then describes the proceedings that have been (correctly) criticized.

The history of this resolution, as Wolfgang Kleinwächter has explained, is that it was part of a compromise to appease the countries which were taking positions on the ITU’s role in Internet governance, that were similar to the controversial Russian proposal. The controversial suggestions about Internet governance were excluded from the actual treaty and included instead in a non-binding resolution.

The text of the resolution instructs the Secretary General to “to continue to take the necessary steps for ITU to play an active and constructive role in the development of broadband and the multi-stakeholder model of the Internet as expressed in § 35 of the Tunis Agenda”. This paragraph is particularly controversial since of paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda says “Policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States. They have rights and responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy issues.” Kleinwächter has pointed out that this selection leaves out later additions that have taken place with progression towards a multi-stakeholder model.

The resolution also resolves to invite member states to “to elaborate on their respective positions on international Internet-related technical, development and public-policy issues within the mandate of ITU at various ITU forums including, inter alia, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and ITU study groups”.

A little after its introduction, people began expressing concerns such as the Secretary General may treat the resolution as binding, While the language may raise cause for concern, it is important to note that resolutions of this nature are not binding and countries are free to opt out of them. Opinions vary about the intentions that have driven the inclusion of this resolution, and what it may mean for the future. However commentators like Milton Mueller have scoffed at these concerns, pointing out that the resolution is harmless and may have been a clever political maneuver to resolve the basic conflict haunting the WCIT, and that mere discussion of the Internet in the ITU harms no one.

Some highlights from the plenary session discussions

Egypt and Bulgaria suggested that the resolution refer to paragraph 55 of the Tunis agenda instead of paragraph 35, by inserted the following text “”Recognizing that the existing arrangements for Internet Governance have worked effectively to make the Internet the highly robust, dynamic and geographically diverse medium it is today, with the private sector taking the lead in day-to-day operations and with innovation and value creation at the edges.” The US was also quite insistent on this language (although it did also argue that this was the wrong forum to discuss these issues).

The Chairman was willing to include paragraph 55 in addition to paragraph 35 but Saudi Arabia objected to this inclusion. Finland suggested that the resolution should be removed since it was not supported by all the countries present and was therefore against the spirit of consensus. The Secretary General defended the resolution, suggesting both that it was harmless and that since it was a key component of the compromise, eliminating it would threaten the compromise. South Africa and Nigeria supported this stand.

It was during this debate that the procedural controversy arose. Late into the night, the Chairman said there was a long list of countries that wished to speak and said “I just wanted to have the feel of the room on who will accept the draft resolution”. He proceeded to have countries indicate whether they would accept the draft resolution or not, and then announced that the majority of the countries in the room were in favour of retaining the resolution. The resolution was then retained. Upon Spain’s raising the question, the Chairman clarified that this was not a vote. The next day, other countries raised the same question and the Chairman, while agreeing that the resolution was adopted on the basis of the ‘taking of temperature’ insisted that it was not a vote so much as an effort to see what majority of the countries wanted.

5. Does the human rights language used in the preamble, especially the part about states’ access to the Internet, threaten the Internet in any way?

The preamble says “Member States affirm their commitment to implement these Regulations in a manner that respects and upholds their human rights obligations”, and “These Regulations recognize the right of access of Member States to international telecommunication services”. The text of the preamble can be used as an interpretation aid since it is recognized as providing context to, and detailing the object and purpose of, a treaty. However if the meaning resulting from this appears to be ambiguous, obscure, absurd or unreasonable, then supplementary means such as the preparatory work for the treaty and the circumstances for its conclusion may also be taken into account.

Therefore anyone who is concerned about the impact of the text inserted in the preamble must (a) identify text within the main treaty that could be interpreted in an undesirable manner using the text in the preamble; and (b) consider preparatory work for the treaty and see whether it supports this worrying interpretation. For example, if there were concerns about countries choosing to interpret the term ‘human rights’ as subordinating political rights to economic rights, it would be important to take note of the Secretary General’s emphasis on the UDHR being applicable to all member states.

Initially, only the first insertion about ‘human rights obligations’ was part of the draft treaty. The second insertion, recognizing states’ rights followed after the discussion about human rights language. Some states argued that it was inconsistent to place human rights obligations on states towards their citizens, but to leave out their cross-border obligations. It was immediately after this text was voted into the draft, that the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries refused to sign the ITRs. This particular insertion is phrased as a right of states rather than that of individuals or citizens, which does not align with the language of international human rights. While it may not be strictly accurate to say that human rights have traditionally been individual centric (since collective rights are also recognized in certain contexts), it is certainly very unusual to treat the rights of states or governments as human rights.

Some highlights from the plenary session discussions

The United States of America and the Netherlands wanted to include language to state explicitly that states’ international human rights obligations are not altered in anyway. This was to clarify that the inclusion of human rights language was not setting the ITU up as a forum in which human rights obligations are debated. Malaysia objected to the use of human rights language in the preamble right at the outset, on the grounds that the ITRs are the wrong place for this, and that the right place is the ITU Constitution. It even pointed to the fact that jurisprudence is ever-evolving, to suggest that the meaning of human rights obligations might change over time. These were the two major perspectives offered towards the beginning of the discussion.

The Chairman underlined the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is already applicable to all UN countries. He argued that reflection of these principles in the ITRs would help build universal public faith in the conference.

The first traces of the states’ access rights can be seen in Cuba’s intervention at the ninth plenary – Cuba argued that limiting states’ access to public information networks amounted to infringement of human rights. At the fourteenth plenary, Nigeria proposed on behalf of the African group that the following text be added to the preamble “And recognize the right of access of all Member States to international telecommunication networks and services." Countries like China which had been ambivalent about the human rights language in the preamble, were happy with this move away from an individual-centric understanding of human rights, to one that sees states as representative of people.

The United States was express in its dissent, and said “human rights obligations go to the individual”. Sweden was also not happy with the proposal and argued that it moved away from well-established human rights language that affirmed existing commitments to drafting new human rights language.

It was an amended version of the African group proposal that finally found its way into the preamble. It was supported by many countries such as China, Nigeria and Sudan, who took the position that group rights are included within human rights, and that governments represent their citizens and therefore have rights on their behalf. This position was strenuously disputed by states like the USA, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Canada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/five-faqs-on-amended-itrs

The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation

tanvi — 2014-09-08T02:37:39Z

The Right to Privacy is a pivotal construct, essential to the actualization of justice, fairness and equity within any democratic society. It is an instrument used to secure the boundaries of an individual’s personal space, in his interaction with not only the rest of society but also the State.

It is within this realm of the social transaction that there exists an unending conflict between the Right to Privacy of an individual and the overbearing hand of the State as a facilitator of public interest. This right thus acts as a safety valve providing individuals with a sacred space within which their interactions in their personal capacity have no bearing on their conduct in the public sphere. The preservation of this space is incredibly important in order to ensure a willingness of individuals to engage and cooperate with the State in its fulfillment of public welfare measures that would otherwise be deemed as intrusive. It is in this regard that the Right to Privacy, one of the last sustaining rights that an individual holds against a larger State interest, ought to be protected by the law.

There are numerous dimensions to the idea of the Right to Privacy. These include but are not limited to the privacy of person, privacy of communication, personal privacy, transactional privacy, privacy of information and the privacy of personal data.

The Supreme Court of India has come to the rescue of individuals, time and again by construing "Right to Privacy" as an extension of the Fundamental Right to “Protection of Life and Personal liberty” under Article 21 of the Constitution. This has been reflected in the adjudicatory jurisprudence of the Constitutional courts in the country. However, there exists no Constitutional remedy to redress the breach of privacy by a nongovernmental actor, except under tortuous liability. The power and authority of public and private institutions to use an individual’s personal data for larger interests of national security or effectuation of socio-economic policies is still under extensive scrutiny. It is in this regard that we have compiled a number of sectoral legislations, regulating domains ranging from Finance and Telecom to Healthcare, Freedom of Expression, Consumer rights and Procedural codes. The highlighted provisions under each Act pertain to the mechanisms embodied within the legislation for the regulation of privacy within their respective sectors. Through this we aim to determine the threshold for permissible collection of confidential data and regulatory surveillance, provided a sufficient need for the same has been established. The determination of such a threshold is imperative to formulating a consistent and effective regime of privacy protection in India.

Click to download the below resources:

Legislations
Master Circulars
Finance and Privacy
Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure
Freedom of Expression
Identity and Privacy
National Security and Privacy
Consumer Protection
Transparency and Privacy
Healthcare
Telecom

Case Laws
Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure
Freedom of Expression
Identity and Privacy
National Security and Privacy
Consumer Protection
Transparency and Privacy
Healthcare
Telecom

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-embodiment-of-right-to-privacy-within-domestic-legislation

Clarification on the Information Security Practices of Aadhaar Report

Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali — 2018-11-05T12:08:06Z

We are issuing a second clarificatory statement on our report titled “Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar numbers with sensitive personal financial information” published on May 1, 2017.

The report concerned can be accessed here, and the first clarificatory statement (dated May 16, 2017) can be accessed here.

This clarificatory statement is being issued in response to reports that misrepresent our research. In light of repeated questions we have received, which seem to emanate from a misunderstanding of our report, we would like to make the following clarifications.

Our research involved documentation and taking illustrative screenshots (included in our report) of public webpages on the four government websites listed in our report. These screenshots were taken to demonstrate that the vulnerability existed.
The figure of 130-135 million Aadhaar Numbers quoted in our Report are, as clearly stated, derived directly by adding the aggregate numbers (of beneficiaries/individuals whose data were listed in the three government websites concerned) and published by the portals themselves in the MIS reports publicly available on the portals. The numbers are as follows:
- 10,97,60,343 from NREGA,
- 63,95,317 from NSAP, and
- 2,05,60,896 from Chandranna Bima (screenshots included in the report).
We did not arrive at this number by downloading data ourselves but by adding the figures on the government websites. To our knowledge, no harm, financial or otherwise has been caused to anyone due to the public availability. Further, it must be noted that we published the report only after ascertaining that the websites in questions had masked or removed the data. Therefore our report only points to the possibility that there could be harm caused by malicious actors before the data was taken down. However, we are not aware of any such cases of exploitation, nor do we suggest so anywhere in our report.

We sincerely hope that this clarification helps with a clearer comprehension of the argument and implications of the said report. We urge those who are using our report in their research to reach out to us to prevent the future misinterpretation of the report.

— Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/clarification-on-the-information-security-practices-of-aadhaar-report

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 2)

ananth — 2014-03-06T16:48:18Z

In a three-part study, Ananth Padmanabhan examines the "John Doe" orders that courts have passed against ISPs, which entertainment companies have used to block dozens, if not hundreds, of websites. In this, the second part, he looks at the law laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court on secondary and contributory copyright infringement, and finds that those wouldn't allow Indian courts to grant "John Doe" orders against ISPs.

In the second part of his study, Ananth Padmanabhan proceeds to examine applying a general theory of secondary or contributory copyright infringement against ISPs. He traces the basis for holding a third party liable as a contributory by closely examining the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in Sony Corp. v Universal City Studios[1] and MGM Studios, Inc. v Grokster, Ltd.[2] and concludes that this basis does not hold good in the case of a mere conduit intermediary such as an ISP.

[1]. 464 U.S. 417 (1984). Hereinafter referred to as Betamax.

[2]. 545 U.S. 913 (2005). Hereinafter referred to as Grokster.

Primary and Secondary Infringement

Liability for copyright infringement can either be primary or secondary in character. In the case of ISPs, liability as primary infringers does not arise at all, and it is in their capacity as conduit pipes facilitating the transmission of information that they could be held secondarily liable. Even in such cases, the contention of copyright owners is that once the ISP is notified of infringing content, it has the primary responsibility of preventing access to such content. This contention is essentially rooted in a theory of secondary infringement based on knowledge and awareness, and the means to prevent further infringement.

The controversy around a suitable model of secondary infringement is reflected in two judicial pronouncements – separated by a gap of more than two decades – delivered by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Sony Corp. v Universal City Studios,[3] the US Supreme Court held that the manufacturers of home video recording devices known in the market as Betamax would not be liable to copyright owners for secondary infringement since the technology was capable of substantially non-infringing and legitimate purposes. The U.S. Supreme Court even observed that these time-shifting devices would actually enhance television viewership and hence find favour with majority of the copyright holders too. The majority did concede that in an appropriate situation, liability for secondary infringement of copyright could well arise. In the words of the Court, “vicarious liability is imposed in virtually all areas of the law, and the concept of contributory infringement is merely a species of the broader problem of identifying the circumstances in which it is just to hold one individual accountable for the actions of another”. However, if vicarious liability had to be imposed on the manufactures of the time-shifting devices, it had to rest on the fact that they sold equipment with constructive knowledge of the fact that their customers may use that equipment to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted material. In the view of the Court, there was no precedent in the law of copyright for the imposition of vicarious liability merely on the showing of such fact.

Notes of dissent were struck by Justice Blackmun, who wrote an opinion on behalf of himself and three other judges. The learned Judge noted that there was no private use exemption in favour of making of copies of a copyrighted work and hence, unauthorised time-shifting would amount to copyright infringement. He also concluded that there was no fair use in such activity that would exempt it from the purview of infringement. The dissent held the manufacturer liable as a contributory infringer and reasoned that the test for contributory infringement would only be whether the contributory infringer had reason to know or believe that infringement would take place and not whether he actually knew of the same. Off-the-air recording was not only a foreseeable use for the Betamax, but also its intended use, for which Sony would be liable for copyright infringement.

This dissent has considerably influenced the seemingly contrarian position taken by the majority in the subsequent decision, MGM Studios, Inc. v Grokster, Ltd.[4] This case called into question the liability of websites that facilitated peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing. Re-formulating the test for copyright infringement, the US Supreme Court held that ‘one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties’. In re-drawing the boundaries of contributory infringement, the Court observed that contributory infringement is committed by any person who intentionally induces or encourages direct infringement, and vicarious infringement is committed by those who profit from direct infringement while declining to exercise their right to limit or stop it. When an article of commerce was good for nothing else but infringement, there was no legitimate public interest in its unlicensed availability and there would be no injustice in presuming or imputing intent to infringe in such cases. This doctrine would at the same time absolve the equivocal conduct of selling an item with substantial lawful as well as unlawful uses and would limit the liability to instances of more acute fault than the mere understanding that some of the products shall be misused, thus ensuring that innovation and commerce are not unreasonably hindered.

The Court distinguished the case at hand from Betamax, and noted that there was evidence here of active steps taken by the respondents to encourage direct copyright infringement, such as advertising an infringing use or instructing how to engage in an infringing use. This evidence revealed an affirmative intent that the product be used to infringe, and an active encouragement of infringement. Without reversing the decision in Betamax, but holding that it was misinterpreted by the lower court, the Court observed that Betamax was not an authority for the proposition that whenever a product was capable of substantial lawful use, the producer could never be held liable as a contributory for the use of such product for infringing activity by third parties. In the view of the Court, Betamax did not displace other theories of secondary liability. This other theory of secondary liability applicable to the case at hand was held to be the inducement rule, as per which any person who distributed a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as evidenced by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, would be liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. However, the Court clarified that mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough under this rule to subject a distributor to liability. Similarly, ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability etc. would not by themselves attract the operation of this rule. The inducement rule, instead, premised liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus did nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise.

These seemingly divergent views on secondary infringement expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court are of significant relevance for India, due to the peculiar language used in the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.[4]

Section 51 of the Act, which defines infringement, bifurcates the two types of infringement – ie. primary and secondary infringement – without indicating so in as many words. While Section 51(a)(i) speaks to primary infringers, 51(a)(ii) and 51(b) renders certain conduct to be secondary infringement. Even here, there is an important distinction between 51(a)(ii) and 51(b). The former exempts the alleged infringer from liability if he could establish that he was not aware and had no reasonable ground for believing that the communication to the public, facilitated through the use of his “place”, would amount to copyright infringement. The latter on the other hand permits no such exception. Thus, any person, who makes for sale or hire, or by way of trade displays or offers for sale or hire, or distributes for the purpose of trade, or publicly exhibits by way of trade, or imports into India, any infringing copies of a work, shall be liable for infringement, without any specific mens rea required to attract such liability. It is in the context of the former provision, ie. 51(a)(ii) that the liability of certain file-sharing websites for copyright infringement has arisen.[5]

Mere Conduit ISPs – Secondary Infringement Absent

In MySpace, the Delhi High Court examined the liability for secondary infringement on the part of a website that provides a platform for file-sharing. While holding the website liable, the Single Judge considered material certain facts such as the revenue model of the defendant, which depended largely on advertisements displayed on the webpages, and automatically generated advertisements that would come up for a few seconds before the infringing video clips started playing. Shockingly, the Court even considered relevant the fact that the defendant did provide for safeguards such as hash block filters, take down stay down functionality, and rights management tools operational through fingerprinting technology, to prevent or curb infringing activities being carried on in their website. This, in the view of the Court, made it evident that the defendant had a reasonable apprehension or belief that the acts which were being carried on in the website could infringe someone else’s copyright including that of the plaintiff. The logic employed by the Court to attribute liability for secondary infringement on file-sharing websites is befuddling and reveals complete disregard for the degree of regulatory authority available on the internet even where the space, i.e., the website, is supposedly “under the control” of a person. However, a critical examination of this decision is not relevant in understanding the liability of mere conduit ISPs. This is for the reason that none of the factual considerations relied on by the Single Judge to justify imposition of liability on a file-sharing website under Section 51(a)(ii) arise when the defendant is an ISP that only provides the path for content-neutral transmission of data.

This was completely ignored by the Madras High Court in R.K.Productions v. B.S.N.L.,[6] where the producers of the Tamil film “3”, which enjoyed considerable pre-release buzz due to its song “Kolaveri Di”, sought an omnibus order of injunction against all websites that host torrents or links facilitating access to, or download of, this film. Though this was worded as a John Doe plaint by branding the infringers as unknown administrators of different torrent sites and so on, the real idea was to look to the resources and wherewithal of the known defendants, ie. the ISPs, to block access to the content hosted by the unknown defendants.

This prompted the ISPs to file applications under Or. VII, Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code, seeking rejection of the plaint on the ground that the suit against them was barred by law. The Single Judge of the Madras High Court dismissed these applications for rejection of the plaint, after accepting the contention that the ISPs are necessary parties to the suit as the act of piracy occurs through the channel or network provided by them. The High Court heavily, and incorrectly, relied on MySpace without appreciating the distinction between a mere conduit ISP and a file-sharing website such as MySpace or YouTube, as regards their respective roles and responsibilities, the differing degrees of regulatory control over content enjoyed by them, and most importantly, the recognition and formalisation of these distinctions in the Copyright Act, 1957, vide the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012.

[3]. 464 U.S. 417 (1984). Hereinafter referred to as Betamax.

[4]. 545 U.S. 913 (2005). Hereinafter referred to as Grokster.

[5]. Hereinafter the Act.

[6]. Super Cassette Industries Ltd. v MySpace Inc., MIPR 2011 (2) 303 (hereinafter referred to as MySpace). This decision of the Delhi High Court has been rightly criticised. See http://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/super-cassettes-v-my-space (last accessed on 24.03.2013).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/john-doe-orders-isp-blocking-websites-copyright-2

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 3)

ananth — 2014-02-14T05:13:36Z

In a three-part study, Ananth Padmanabhan examines the "John Doe" orders that courts have passed against ISPs, which entertainment companies have used to block dozens, if not hundreds, of websites. In this, the third and concluding part, he looks at the Indian law in the Copyright Act and the Information Technology Act, and concludes that both those laws restrain courts and private companies from ordering an ISP to block a website for copyright infringement.

In the third part of his study, Ananth Padmanabhan looks into the fair use provisions recently introduced in respect of mere conduit intermediaries by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012, and concludes that there is no scope for any general, or specific, access blocking orders at the behest of the plaintiff in a civil suit, in India. He also argues that the Information Technology Act, 2000 read with the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 do not in any manner permit the Government to override the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957 (as amended) while facilitating the denial of access to websites on grounds of copyright infringement, because the Copyright Act, 1957, is a complete code by itself.

In 2010, the controversial Copyright (Amendment) Bill came up for deliberation before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development headed by Mr. Oscar Fernandes. While a major part of the discussion on this amendment revolved around the altered royalty structure and rights allocation between music composers and lyricists on the one hand and film producers on the other, it can be safely stated that this is the most significant amendment to the Copyright Act, 1957 for more than this one reason. The amendment seeks to reform the Copyright Board, bring in a scheme of statutory licenses, expand the scope of performers’ rights and introduce anti-circumvention measures to check copyright piracy. As part of its ambitious objective, the amendment also attempts a new fair use model to protect intermediaries and file-sharing websites.

The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012, which gives expression to this fair use model through Sections 52(1)(b) and (c), reads thus:

52. Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright. - (1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely:

(a) to (ad) - *****

(b) the transient or incidental storage of a work or performance purely in the technical process of electronic transmission or communication to the public;

(c) transient or incidental storage of a work or performance for the purpose of providing electronic links, access or integration, where such links, access or integration has not been expressly prohibited by the right holder, unless the person responsible is aware or has reasonable grounds for believing that such storage is of an infringing copy:

Provided that if the person responsible for the storage of the copy has received a written complaint from the owner of copyright in the work, complaining that such transient or incidental storage is an infringement, such person responsible for the storage shall refrain from facilitating such access for a period of twenty-one days or till he receives an order from the competent court refraining from facilitating access and in case no such order is received before the expiry of such period of twenty-one days, he may continue to provide the facility of such access;

From a plain reading, it is clear that two important exceptions are carved out: one, in respect of the technical process of electronic transmission and the other, in respect of providing electronic links, access or integration. The material distinction between these exceptions is the presence of a take-down proviso in respect of the latter kind of activity, ie. when providing electronic links, access or integration. This window of opportunity is not provided to the copyright owner when the third party is an ISP involved in the pure technical process of electronic transmission of data.

In R.K. Productions, the court was not informed of the introduction of these provisions vide the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012, despite the hearing happening on a date subsequent to the amendment coming into force. This probably influenced the outcome as well, since the court held that ISPs were liable to block access to infringing content, once the specific webpage was brought to the notice of the concerned ISP. Newly introduced Section 52(1)(b) however makes it abundantly clear that ISPs cannot, in any manner, be held liable when they are acting as mere conduit pipes for the transmission of information. This legal position is also materially different from jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom where, the ISPs though not liable for copyright infringement, are statutorily mandated to lend all possible assistance such as take-down or blocking of access upon notice of infringement being furnished to them. This dichotomy between liability for infringement on the one hand and a general duty to assist in the prevention of infringement on the other is explained clearly by the Chancery Division in Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v. British Telecommunications Plc.[1]

In Newzbin2, the Chancery Division took note of the safe harbour provisions created by the E-Commerce Directive,[2] particularly Articles 12 to 14 that dealt with acting as a “mere conduit”, caching and hosting respectively. The interesting feature with the “mere conduit” exception, which in all other respects is akin to the exception contained in Section 52(1)(b) of the Copyright Act, 1957, is the additional presence of Article 12(3). This provision clarifies that the “mere conduit” exception shall not stand in the way of a court or administrative authority requiring the service provider to terminate or prevent an infringement. Article 18 of this Directive also casts an obligation upon Member States to ensure that court actions available under national law permit the rapid adoption of measures, including interim measures, designed to terminate any alleged infringement and to prevent any further impairment of the interests involved. Similarly, the court looked into the Information Society Directive,[3]

Article 8(3) of which provides that “Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right.” This Directive was transposed into the domestic law in UK by the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003, SI 2003/2498, resulting in the insertion of Section 97A in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This provision empowers the court to grant an injunction against a service provider who has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright, such as where the service provider is given sufficient notice of the infringement. Finally, the Chancery Division also took note of the Enforcement Directive,[4]

Article 11 of which provided that Member States shall ensure that copyright owners are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right. This entire legislative scheme compelled the court in Newzbin2 to conclude that an order of injunction could be granted against ISPs who are “mere conduits”, restraining them from providing access to websites that indulged in mass copyright infringement. The court reasoned that the language used in Section 97A did not require knowledge of any particular infringement but only a more general kind of knowledge about certain persons using the ISPs’ services to infringe copyright. Thus, it is seen that in the United Kingdom, though a “mere conduit” activity is not infringement at all, the concerned ISP can be directed by the court to block access to a website that hosts infringing content on the basis of the above legislative scheme. The enquiry should therefore be directed towards whether India has a similar scheme for copyright enforcement.

The Information Technology Act – An Inapplicable Scheme for Website Blocking

The Information Technology Act, 2000[5]read with certain recently framed guidelines provides for a duty that could be thrust upon even “mere conduit” ISPs to disable access to copyrighted works. This is due to the presence of Section 79(2)(c) of this Act, which makes it clear that an intermediary shall be exempt from liability only where the intermediary observes due diligence as well as complies with the other guidelines framed by the Central Government in this behalf. Moreover, Section 79(3) provides that the intermediary shall not be entitled to the benefit of the exemption in Section 79(1) in a situation where the intermediary, upon receiving actual knowledge that any information, data, or communication link residing in or connected to a computer resource controlled by the intermediary is being used to commit an unlawful act, fails to expeditiously remove or disable access to that material on that resource without vitiating the evidence in any manner. In pursuance of Section 79(2)(c), the Central Government has also framed the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, which came into effect on 11.04.2011. Rule 4 of these Rules, when read along with Rule 2(d), casts obligation on an intermediary on whose computer system, copyright infringing content has been stored, hosted or published, to disable such information within thirty six hours from when it is brought to actual knowledge of the existence of such content by any affected person.

One way of understanding and interpreting in harmonious fashion, the provisions of the IT Act and the Rules therein and the recent amendments to the Copyright Act, is to contend that the issue of infringement of copyright by “mere conduit” ISPs is governed by Section 52(1)(b), which completely absolves them of any liability, while that of enforcement of copyright through the medium of such ISPs is governed by the IT Act. This bifurcation suffers from the difficulty that Section 79 of the IT Act is not an enforcement provision. It is a provision meant to exempt intermediaries from certain kinds of liability, in the same way as Section 52 of the Copyright Act. This provision, read with Section 81, makes it clear that the IT Act does not speak to liability for copyright infringement. From this, it has to necessarily follow that all issues pertaining to liability for such infringement have to be decided by the provisions of the Copyright Act. Therefore, the scheme in the IT Act read with the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules cannot confer additional liability for copyright infringement on ISPs where the Copyright Act exempts them from liability. More to the point, the intermediary cannot be liable for copyright infringement in the event of non-compliance with Section 79(3) or Rule 4 of the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules read with Section 79(1)(c) of the IT Act. Rule 4 of the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules, 2011, to the extent that it renders intermediaries outside the protective ambit of Section 79(1) upon failure to disable access to copyrighted content, is of no relevance as “mere conduits” have already been exempted from liability under Section 52(1)(b). Moreover, since these provisions in the IT Act do not deal with enforcement measures such as injunction orders from the court to disable access to infringing content in particular or infringing websites in general, it would be wrong to contend that the scheme in India is similar to the one in the United Kingdom where the issue of infringement has been divorced from that of enforcement.

To conclude, Section 52(1)(b) is a blanket “mere conduit” exemption from liability for copyright infringement that stands uninfluenced by the presence of Section 79 of the IT Act or the Intermediaries Guidelines Rules. In the absence of a legislative scheme for enforcement in India akin to Section 97A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Indian Courts cannot grant an injunction directing such “mere conduit” ISPs to block access to websites in general or infringing content in particular and any such action is not even maintainable in law post the insertion of Section 52(1)(b). The decision to the contrary in the R.K.Productions case is incorrect.

[1]. [2011] EWHC 1981 (Ch.). Hereinafter referred to as Newzbin2.

[2]. European Parliament and Council Directive 2000/31/EC on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (8 June 2000). This Directive was transposed into the domestic law in UK by the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, SI 2002/2013.

[3]. European Parliament and Council Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (22 May 2001).

[4]. European Parliament and Council Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (29 April 2004). This Directive was transposed into the UK domestic law primarily by the Intellectual Property (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2006, SI 2006/1028.

[5]. Hereinafter referred to as the IT Act.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/john-doe-orders-isp-blocking-websites-copyright-3

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India: An Evaluation of COVID-19 Relief for Migrants

ankan — 2021-06-03T12:53:57Z

With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all State Governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures.

A majority of workers were dependent on relief provided by NGOs, Civil Society Organizations and individuals or credit via kinship networks. With mounting domestic and international pressures, various relief and welfare schemes were rolled out but they were too little, too late and more often than not characterised by poor implementation.

The aim of this report is to qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The primary focus is on the host states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. 20 in-depth interviews were conducted remotely with migrant workers working in various sectors. Their access to welfare schemes of the Central Government as well as of their host states was ascertained. Emphasis was also laid on their access to healthcare facilities in relation to COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 ailments.

The findings of the report showcase a dismal state of affairs. No one in our sample group received any kind of dry ration or cooked food in a sustained manner and, in the rare occasions when they did, it was woefully inadequate. Of the three states considered, we found that relief distribution was the best in Tamil Nadu followed by Maharashtra and then Haryana. Even the Direct Cash Transfer Scheme of the Central Government under ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ did not reach the migrant workers. Moreover, the migrant workers were apprehensive to report any COVID-19 related symptom due to the draconian treatment that followed therein and the crumbling healthcare sector made it impossible to avail facilities in non-COVID-19 related issues. Lastly, a case has been made for the creation of bottom-level infrastructures to further dialogue between various stakeholders, including associations of migrant workers, for the implementation of schemes and policies which can consolidate migrant workers as a relevant political subject. As migrant workers reel from the impact of the second wave, pushing for on-ground infrastructure and supporting community-based organisations becomes even more urgent.

Click here to read the report authored by Ankan Barman and edited by Ayush Rathi. [PDF, 882 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/migrant-workers-solidarity-network-and-cis-ankan-barman-atmanirbhar-bharat-meets-digital-india-an-evaluation-of-covid-19-relief-for-migrants

Intellectual Property Rights — Open Access for Researchers

nehaa — 2015-03-24T01:22:20Z

In the year 2013, Nehaa Chaudhari had worked on a module on Intellectual Property Rights for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s Open Access Curriculum (Curriculum for Researchers) as part of a project for the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia. UNESCO published the module this year. Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga were among the Module preparation team. Nehaa Chaudhari was the writer for Units 1, 2 and 3: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright and Alternative to a Strict Copyright Regime.

This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en).

Module Introduction

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are set of rights associated with creations of the human mind. An output of the human mind may be attributed with intellectual property rights. These are like any other property, and the law allows the owner to use the same to economically profit from the intellectual work. Broadly IPR covers laws related to copyrights, patents and trademarks. While laws for these are different in different countries, they follow the international legal instruments. The establishment of the Wold Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has established the significance of IPR for the economic growth of nations in the knowledge economy.

This module has three units, and while the Unit 1 covers the basics of IPR, Unit 2 expands in detail the components of copyright and explains the origins and conventions associated with it. Unit 3 discusses the emergence of liberal licensing of copyrighted work to share human creation in the commons. In the last unit, we discuss the Creative Commons approach to licensing of creative works within the structures of the copyright regime that permits the authors to exercise their rights to share in the way they intend to. Creative Commons provides six different types of licenses, of which the Creative Commons Attribution license is the most widely used in research journals part of the Open Access framework.

At the end of this module, you are expected to be able to:

Understand intellectual property rights and related issues
Explain copyright, authors’ rights, licensing and retention of rights; and
Use the Creative Commons licensing system

Acknowledgements

Nehaa would like to thank Varun Baliga and Anirudh Sridhar for their research and writing support in Unit 1, and Samantha Cassar for Unit 2.

Click to download the PDF containing the Modules. Also read UNESCO’s Open Access (OA) Curriculum is now online

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/unesco-nehaa-chaudhari-march-19-2015-communication-and-information-resources-news-and-in-focus-articles-unesco-open-access-curriculum-is-now-online

No more 66A!

geetha — 2015-03-26T02:01:31Z

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has struck down Section 66A. Today was a great day for freedom of speech on the Internet! When Section 66A was in operation, if you made a statement that led to offence, you could be prosecuted. We are an offence-friendly nation, judging by media reports in the last year. It was a year of book-bans, website blocking and takedown requests. Facebook’s Transparency Report showed that next to the US, India made the most requests for information about user accounts. A complaint under Section 66A would be a ground for such requests.

Section 66A hung like a sword in the middle: Shaheen Dhada was arrested in Maharashtra for observing that Bal Thackeray’s funeral shut down the city, Devu Chodankar in Goa and Syed Waqar in Karnataka were arrested for making posts about Narendra Modi, and a Puducherry man was arrested for criticizing P. Chidambaram’s son. The law was vague and so widely worded that it was prone to misuse, and was in fact being misused.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A in its judgment on a set of petitions heard together last year and earlier this year. Stating that the law is vague, the bench comprising Chelameshwar and Nariman, JJ. held that while restrictions on free speech are constitutional insofar as they are in line with Article 19(2) of the Constitution. Section 66A, they held, does not meet this test: The central protection of free speech is the freedom to make statements that “offend, shock or disturb”, and Section 66A is an unconstitutional curtailment of these freedoms. To cross the threshold of constitutional limitation, the impugned speech must be of such a nature that it incites violence or is an exhortation to violence. Section 66A, by being extremely vague and broad, does not meet this threshold. These are, of course, drawn from news reports of the judgment; the judgment is not available yet.

Reports also say that Section 79(3)(b) has been read down. Previously, any private individual or entity, and the government and its departments could request intermediaries to take down a website, without a court order. If the intermediaries did not comply, they would lose immunity under Section 79. The Supreme Court judgment states that both in Rule 3(4) of the Intermediaries Guidelines and in Section 79(3)(b), the "actual knowledge of the court order or government notification" is necessary before website takedowns can be effected. In effect, this mean that intermediaries need not act upon private notices under Section 79, while they can act upon them if they choose. This stops intermediaries from standing judge over what constitutes an unlawful act. If they choose not to take down content after receiving a private notice, they will not lose immunity under Section 79.

Section 69A, the website blocking procedure, has been left intact by the Court, despite infirmities such as a lack of judicial review and non-transparent operation. More updates when the judgment is made available.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/no-more-66a

Centre for Internet and Society

CIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia

Highlights

Increased editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia

Increased number of articles on Konkani Wikipedia

Translated Media Wiki messages

Re-release of Konkani Vishwaksh under Creative Commons License

Initiated & Completed 30% of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project

Signed an MoU with Goa University

White paper by a Linguist

14 Outreach session, over 450 participants, in 3 months

Got consensus from field experts

Wikipedians Speak

University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License

Media Coverage

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia

Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia – CIS-A2K and ALC join hands

International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft

Consultation Draft, May 2015

Preamble

Principle 1: Open Data by Default

Principle 2: Quality and Quantity

Principle 3: Accessible and Usable by All

Principle 4: Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens

Principle 5: Collaboration for Development and Innovation

Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation

Video

India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched

India Becomes the First Country to Ratify the Marrakesh Treaty

Accessible Books Consortium Launched

What Does it Do?

India, WBU and IPA delighted

Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Amended ITRs

The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation

Click to download the below resources:

Clarification on the Information Security Practices of Aadhaar Report

The report concerned can be accessed here, and the first clarificatory statement (dated May 16, 2017) can be accessed here.

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 2)

Primary and Secondary Infringement

Mere Conduit ISPs – Secondary Infringement Absent

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 3)

Fair Use Provisions Introduced by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012

The Information Technology Act – An Inapplicable Scheme for Website Blocking

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India: An Evaluation of COVID-19 Relief for Migrants

Intellectual Property Rights — Open Access for Researchers

Module Introduction

Acknowledgements

No more 66A!