Centre for Internet and Society

Regulating Social Media: Unrealistic, Impossible, Necessary?

praskrishna — 2013-04-30T16:50:13Z

The Press Council of India Chairperson Justice Markandey Katju calls for regulating social media, saying it will prevent offensive material coming into the public domain. But is it really necessary to regulate the social media? If yes, is it possible to do it?

This was published by NDTV on April 11, 2013.

NDTV aired a discussion by Ashwin S Kumar, Co-editor, Columnist, The Unreal Times; Kunal Majumder, Assitant Editor, Tehelka.com and Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society on April 11, 2013 in response to Justice Katju's comments on bringing 'social media' under the Press Council of India.

Pranesh Prakash laid out four brief points:

'Social media' allows coffee house discussion and toilet wall scrawls to seem like print publications, but it's a mistake to treat it the same way we do print publications. The UK is now planning on using prosecutorial flexibility to refrain from prosecuting simple offensive speech on social media.
The same laws should apply online as they do offline (but how the apply, can differ), and that is currently the case. Most content-related offences in the IPC, etc., are offences online as well as offline.
Editors and journalists exist for most print publications and broadcast programmes, while that isn't true for most 'social media'. So guidelines applicable to the press mostly won't be applicable online.
Electronic publications (like Medianama, The Daily Dish, Huffington Post) which consider themselves engaged in a journalistic venture present a special problem that we do need to have a public conversation about.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-video-april-11-2013-the-social-network-regulating-social-media-unrealistic-impossible-necessary

Public Debate on 'Differential Pricing': Series 1

vidushi — 2016-01-27T13:51:06Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, in association with ICRIER and the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai, is pleased to announce “A Series of Public Debates on Differential Pricing” in the cities of Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. The first public debate will be held at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore on February 1, 2016.

In light of the recent consultation paper released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the objective of these debates will be to deconstruct the issue of differential pricing through a discussion on the variety of views this subject has attracted. Speakers will also discuss possible implications of differential pricing policy on questions of access, diversity, competition and entrepreneurship.

Each debate will comprise three rounds. In the first round, speakers will present the body of their arguments over 10 minutes each. The second round will be a rebuttal round, with each speaker being given 5 minutes. The third and final round will see the floor being opened to the audience who will engage the speakers with comments and questions.

Download the Invite

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/a-series-of-public-debates-on-differential-pricing-series-1

The Internet Has a New Standard for Censorship

jyoti — 2016-01-30T09:17:54Z

The introduction of the new 451 HTTP Error Status Code for blocked websites is a big step forward in cataloguing online censorship, especially in a country like India where access to information is routinely restricted.

The article was published in the Wire on January 29, 2016. The original can be read here.

Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 opens with the declaration, “It was a pleasure to burn.” The six unassuming words offer a glimpse into the mindset of the novel’s protagonist, ‘the fireman’ Guy Montag, who burns books. Montag occupies a world of totalitarian state control over the media where learning is suppressed and censorship prevails. The title alludes to the ‘temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns,’ an apt reference to the act of violence committed against citizens through the systematic destruction of literature. It is tempting to think about the novel solely as a story of censorship. It certainly is. But it is also a story about the value of intellectual freedom and the importance of information.

Published in 1953, Bradbury’s story predates home computers, the Internet, Twitter and Facebook, and yet it anticipates the evolution of these technologies as tools for censorship. When the state seeks to censor speech, they use the most effective and easiest mechanisms available. In Bradbury’s dystopian world, burning books did the trick; in today’s world, governments achieve this by blocking access to information online. The majority of the world’s Internet users encounter censorship even if the contours of control vary depending on the country’s policies and infrastructure.

Online censorship in India

In India, information access blockades have become commonplace and are increasingly enforced across the country for maintaining political stability, for economic reasons, in defence of national security or preserving social values. Last week, the Maharashtra Anti-terror Squad blocked 94 websites that were allegedly radicalising the youth to join the militant group ISIS. Memorably, in 2015 the NDA government’s ham-fisted attempts at enforcing a ban on online pornography resulted in widespread public outrage. Instead of revoking the ban, the government issued yet another vaguely worded and in many senses astonishing order. As reported by Medianama, the revised order delegates the responsibility of determining whether banned websites should remain unavailable to private intermediaries.

The state’s shifting reasons for blocking access to information is reflective of its tendentious attitude towards speech and expression. Free speech in India is messily contested and normally, the role of the judiciary acts as a check on the executive’s proclivity for banning. For instance, in 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the Maharashtra High Court’s decision to revoke the ban on the book on Shivaji by American author James Laine, which, according to the state government, contained material promoting social enmity. However, in the context of communications technology the traditional role of courts is increasingly being passed on to private intermediaries.

The delegation of authority is evident in the government notifying intermediaries to proactively filter content for ‘child pornography’ in the revised order issued to deal with websites blocked as result of its crackdown on pornography. Such screening and filtering requires intermediaries to make a determination on the legality of content in order to avoid direct liability. As international best practices such as the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability point out, such screening is a slow process and costly and intermediaries are incentivised to simply limit access to information.

Blocking procedures and secrecy

The constitutional validity of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2008 which grants power to the executive to block access to information unchecked, and in secrecy was challenged in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. Curiously, the Supreme Court upheld S69A reasoning that the provisions were narrowly-drawn with adequate safeguards and noted that any procedural inconsistencies may be challenged through writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution. Unfortunately as past instances of blocking under S69A reveal the provisions are littered with procedural deficiencies, amplified manifold by the authorities responsible for interpreting and implementing the orders.

Problematically, an opaque confidentiality criteria built into the blocking rules mandates secrecy in requests and recommendations for blocking and places written orders outside the purview of public scrutiny. As there are no comprehensive list of blocked websites or of the legal orders, the public has to rely on ISPs leaking orders, or media reports to understand the censorship regime in India. RTI applications requesting further information on the implementation of these safeguards have at best provided incomplete information.

Historically, the courts in India have held that Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India is as much about the right to receive information as it is to disseminate, and when there is a chilling effect on speech, it also violates the right to receive information. Therefore, if a website is blocked citizens have a constitutional right to know the legal grounds on which access is being restricted. Just like the government announces and clarifies the grounds when banning a book, users have a right to know the grounds for restrictions on their speech online.

Unfortunately, under the present blocking regime in India there is no easy way for a service provider to comply with a blocking order while also notifying users that censorship has taken place. The ‘Blocking Rules’ require notice “person or intermediary” thus implying that notice may be sent to either the originator or the intermediary. Further, the confidentiality clause raises the presumption that nobody beyond the intermediaries ought to know about a block.

Naturally, intermediaries interested in self-preservation and avoiding conflict with the government become complicit in maintaining secrecy in blocking orders. As a result, it is often difficult to determine why content is inaccessible and users often mistake censorship for technical problem in accessing content. Consequently, pursuing legal recourse or trying to hold the government accountable for their censorious activity becomes a challenge. In failing to consider the constitutional merits of the confidentiality clause, the Supreme Court has shied away from addressing the over-broad reach of the executive.

Secrecy in removing or blocking access is a global problem that places limits on the transparency expected from ISPs. Across many jurisdictions intermediaries are legally prohibited from publicising filtering orders as well as information relating to content or service restrictions. For example in United Kingdom, ISPs are prohibited from revealing blocking orders related to terrorism and surveillance. In South Korea, the Korean Communications Standards Commission holds public meetings that are open to the public. However, the sheer volume of censorship (i.e. close to 10,000 URLs a month) makes it unwieldy for public oversight.

As the Manila Principles note, providing users with an explanation and reasons for placing restrictions on their speech and expression increases civic engagement. Transparency standards will empower citizens to demand that companies and governments they interact with are more accountable when it comes to content regulation. It is worth noting, for conduits as opposed to content hosts, it may not always be technically feasible for to provide a notice when content is unavailable due to filtering. A new standard helps improve transparency standards for network level intermediaries and for websites bound by confidentiality requirements. The recently introduced HTTP code for errors is a critical step forward in cataloguing censorship on the Internet.

A standardised code for censorship

On December 21, 2015, the Internet Engineering Standards Group (IESG) which is the organisation responsible for reviewing and updating the internet’s operating standards approved the publication of 451-’An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles’. The code provides intermediaries a standardised way to notify users know when a website is unavailable following a legal order. Publishing the code allows intermediaries to be transparent about their compliance with court and executive orders across jurisdictions and is a huge step forward for capturing online censorship. HTTP code 451 was introduced by software engineer Tim Bray and the code’s name is an homage to Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451.

Bray began developing the code after being inspired by a blog post by Terence Eden calling for a censorship error code. The code’s official status comes after two years of discussions within the technical community and is a result of campaigning from transparency and civil society advocates who have been pushing for clearer labelling of internet censorship. Initially, the code received pushback from within the technical community for reasons enumerated by Mark Nottingham, Chair of the IETF HTTP Working Group in his blog. However, soon sites began using the code on an experimental and unsanctioned basis and faced with increasing demand for and feedback, the code was accepted.

The HTTP code 451 works as a machine-readable flag and has immense potential as a tool for organisations and users who want to quantify and understand censorship on the internet. Cataloguing online censorship is a challenging, time-consuming and expensive task. The HTTP code 451 circumvents confidentiality obligations built into blocking or licensing regimes and reduces the cost of accessing blocking orders.

The code creates a distinction between websites blocked following a court or an executive order, and when information is inaccessible due to technical errors. If implemented widely, Bray’s new code will help prevent confusion around blocked sites. The code addresses the issue of the ISP’s misleading and inaccurate usage of Error 403 ‘Forbidden’ (to indicate that the server can be reached and understood the request, but refuses to take any further action) or 404 ‘Not Found’ (to indicate that the requested resource could not be found but may be available again in the future).

Adoption of the new standard is optional, though at present there are no laws in India that prevent intermediaries doing so. Implementing a standardised machine-readable flag for censorship will go a long way in bolstering the accountability of ISPs that have in the past targeted an entire domain instead of the specified URL. Adoption of the standard by ISPs will also improve the understanding of the burden imposed on intermediaries for censoring and filtering content as presently, there is no clarity on what constitutes compliance. Of course, censorious governments may prohibit the use of the code, for example by issuing an order that specifies not only that a page be blocked, but also precisely which HTTP return code should be used. Though such sanctions should be viewed as evidence of systematic rights violation and totalitarian regimes.

In India where access to software code repositories such as Github and Sourceforge are routinely restricted, the need for such code is obvious. The use of the code will improve confidence in blocking practices, allowing users to understand the grounds on which their right to information is being restricted. Improving transparency around censorship is the only way to build trust between the government and its citizens about the laws and policies applicable to internet content.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-jyoti-panday-january-29-2016-internet-has-a-new-standard-for-censorship

Facebook’s Fight to Be Free

praskrishna — 2016-01-31T09:11:52Z

In India, Mark Zuckerberg can’t give Internet access away.

The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Shrivastava was published in Bloomberg Businessweek on January 15, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Thanks mostly to its mobile-ad profits, Facebook has had a great couple of years. According to its most recent earnings report, in November, the company’s quarterly ad revenue rose 45 percent, to $4.3 billion, from the same period in 2014. It has more than 1.5 billion monthly users, just over half of all the people online anywhere. Keeping up its rate of user growth—more than 100 million people each year—will only get tougher.

A big part of the problem is that a lot of potential new eyeballs are in places where Internet access is patchy at best. Some of Facebook’s grander projects anticipated that issue: It has satellites and giant solar-powered planes that beam Wi-Fi down to areas that don’t have it. And then there’s Free Basics, the two-year-old project Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has called an online 911. In about three dozen countries so far, Free Basics—also known as Internet.org—includes a stripped-down version of Facebook and a handful of sites that provide news, weather, nearby health-care options, and other info. One or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans.

Facebook says Free Basics is meant to make the world more open and connected, not to boost the company’s growth. Either way, online access is an especially big deal in India, where there are 130 million people using Facebook, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t. (The social network remains blocked in China.) That may help explain why Zuckerberg spent part of the first few weeks of his paternity leave appealing personally to Indians to lobby for Free Basics. On Dec. 21 the Indian government suspended the program, offered in the country by carrier Reliance Communications, while it weighs public comments and arguments from Internet freedom advocates who say preferential treatment for Facebook’s services threatens to stifle competition.

“An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet.” —Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum

Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook has bought daily full-page ads in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-ed, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service. “If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services,” the CEO wrote in a column published in the Times of India, the nation’s largest daily paper, shortly before the new year. “Who could possibly be against this?”

Opponents, including some journalists and businesspeople, say Free Basics is dangerous because it fundamentally changes the online economy. If companies are allowed to buy preferential treatment from carriers, the Internet is no longer a level playing field, says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Indian mobile-payment company Paytm. A spokesman for Sharma confirmed that Zuckerberg called to discuss the matter but declined to comment further.

India’s Internet base will grow with or without Facebook’s help, says Nikhil Pahwa, a tech blogger and co-founder of the Save the Internet coalition, which opposes Free Basics. “We don’t see Free Basics as philanthropy. We see it as a land grab,” says Pahwa. When dealing with the famously protectionist Indian government, that’s a pretty good argument. An April attempt by India’s top mobile carrier to underwrite data costs for certain apps drew heavy criticism, and the carrier, Bharti Airtel, has put the program on hold.

None of that means Facebook can’t help get more Indians online, says Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum. “An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet,” she says. “What Facebook Free Basics is doing is a bit extreme, but what you do need is a bit of a middle path.”

Internet sampler packages such as Free Basics can also help carriers like Reliance, the fourth-largest in India, upgrade their often-struggling networks, Dharia says. That’s a symbiotic process, because customers may quickly grow frustrated with the bare-bones service and demand more. Free Basics doesn’t have Gmail, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, or Bollywood music streaming. (Video will account for 64 percent of India’s data traffic by March 2017, consulting firm Deloitte estimates.) It’s meant to be a steppingstone. Facebook says about 40 percent of Free Basics users start paying for data plans within a month.

But again, if Free Basics catches on in India, people may just keep paying for data to use more Facebook and forget about some of those other services, says Dharia. “Facebook is the Internet” to a lot of people in India, she says. Google, whose services are most conspicuously absent from the Free Basics roster, declined to comment.

India’s telecommunications regulator says Facebook’s advocates and opponents have until Jan. 14 to file public comments; it’s received about 2.4 million responses so far, most of them form letters supporting Free Basics. The government’s decision could also ripple beyond India, says Pranesh Prakash, a Free Basics opponent and the policy director at the nonprofit Centre for Internet & Society in Bengaluru. In the weeks since India suspended Free Basics, Egypt, which had done the same back in October, once again shut down the Facebook plan, though the government wouldn’t say why. The India fight “will be a reputational challenge for Facebook,” says Prakash. “It will set the tone for Free Basics debate in other countries.”

The bottom line: Facebook’s free data plan in India faces strong opposition from local businesses and Internet freedom advocates.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-businessweek-adi-narayan-bhuma-shrivastava

India, Egypt say no thanks to free Internet from Facebook

praskrishna — 2016-02-03T01:49:25Z

ALWAR, India — Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on January 28, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.

But when Manzar tried Facebook’s limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services such as weather reports and job listings.

“I feel betrayed — not only betrayed but upset and angry,” Manzar said. “He said we’re going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.”

Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he says he sees as a basic human right.

But the initiative has hit a major snag in India, where in recent months Free Basics has been embroiled in controversy — with critics saying that the app, which provides limited access to the Web, does a disservice to the poor and violates the principles of “net neutrality,” which holds that equal access to the Internet should be unfettered to all.

Activist groups such as Save the Internet, professors from leading universities and tech titans such as Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, have spoken out against it. Another well-known Indian entrepreneur dubbed it “poor Internet for poor people.”

The debate escalated in recent weeks after India’s telecommunications regulator suspended Free Basics as it weighs whether such plans are fair, with new rules expected by the end of the month.

A week later, Free Basics was banned in Egypt with little explanation, prompting concern that the backlash could spread to other markets. More recently, Google pulled out of the app in Zambia after a trial period. An estimated 15 million people are using Free Basics in 37 countries, including 1 million in India.

[India’s Modi wants to woo Silicon Valley, but privacy fears grow at home]

“It’s a very important test case for what will be India’s network neutrality regime,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

India’s debate could affect the way other countries address the question of whether it is fair for Internet service providers to price websites differently. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s rules on net neutrality went into effect only in June.

Officials at Facebook launched an advertising blitz to counteract the negative publicity. “Who could possibly be against this?” Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on Dec. 28.

“I think we’ve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction,” said Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org. “Fundamentally, the reason for the surprise is that the program is doing good. It’s bringing people online who are moving onto the broader Internet.”

India, a country of 1.2 billion, has the second-highest number of Internet users in the world, but an estimated 80 percent of the population does not have Internet access.

India’s tech-savvy prime minister, Narendra Modi, is trying to combat this with an ambitious “Digital India” plan to link 250,000 village centers with fiber-optic cable and extend mobile coverage. He has turned to the Indian tech community as well as Silicon Valley for help, securing an agreement with Google to provide free WiFi in railway stations.

India has 130 million Facebook users, second only to the United States, and is a key market as the social-media giant looks to expand beyond the developed world, where its growth has slowed.

“If Facebook manages to get another half a billion users in India, that’s a valuable set of eyeballs to sell to a political party or corporation,” Abraham said.

[Is India the next frontier for Facebook?]

Facebook has long said that its program is about altruism, not eyeballs.

But it does reap new customers. Those who buy a SIM card from Facebook’s local mobile partner, Reliance Communications, are then prompted to pay for additional data. About 40 percent who sign up for Free Basics buy a data plan to move to the wider Web after 30 days, Daniels said.

The service is still running despite the India suspension. A Reliance spokesman said it is in “testing mode” and is not being promoted.

“The thing people forget about Free Basics is that it’s intended to be a temporary transition for people to give them a taste of the Internet and sign up. It’s a marketing program for the carrier in some sense,” said David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect.” But he added: “The idea that it’s some kind of alternative Internet that’s a discriminatory gesture to the poor is the prevailing view among the Indian intelligentsia. It’s fundamentally misunderstood.”

Facebook has pledged to open up to new scrutiny the selection process for companies with new applications, Daniels said. That is a response to concerns by many in India’s tech community that Facebook’s process put India’s fledgling start-ups at a disadvantage.

The project’s proponents say that India’s needs are so great it cannot afford to suspend one program that could help.

Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications consultant, notes that more than 10 percent of the country does not have mobile phone coverage and that India’s progress in extending fiber-optic cable to village centers is proceeding at a glacial pace. Modi had set a goal of linking all 250,000 by 2016, but only 27,000 have cable so far and it is ready for use in only 3,200, according to a government report.

In comparison, some 80 percent of China’s villages are linked by broadband.

[Inside the Indian temple that draws America’s tech titans]

In Alwar district in the northern state of Rajasthan, many remember when Zuckerberg came to visit but fewer know about Free Basics.

“I’ve heard it’s free and by Facebook and you don’t have to pay for it,” said Umer Farukh, 43, a folk musician. “But I don’t think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody.”

Farukh has only been computer literate for two years, but he’s already emailing and using YouTube to post videos and promote his band.

He’s become such a proponent that he has donated space for one of Manzar’s computer centers — part of a government initiative to build cyber-hubs in minority communities — and encouraged the female members of his family to take classes, which is rare in his conservative community.

Farukh says that challenges to connecting India go far beyond data plans and fiber-optic cable or the government broadband that often sputters out. Wages are low, and hours are long. Only about half of the women in his state are literate, and about a quarter of the young women in his neighborhood are kept at home and not educated.

“This place is very backward,” he said. “India as a society is lagging far behind in terms of Internet.”

In the small nearby community of Roja Ka Baas, ringed by fields of blooming mustard greens, residents are still awaiting the opening of their planned WiFi center. They are struggling along on cheap mobile phones with slow 2G spectrum until then, they said.

Sakir Khan, 14, said that once the Internet finally arrived in this village, the first thing he would do would be to sign up for Facebook.

Farheen Fatima and Subuhi Parvez contributed to this report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook

A Megacorp’s Basic Instinct

praskrishna — 2016-02-04T13:53:05Z

Bolstered by academia and civil society, TRAI stands its ground against FB’s Free Basics publicity blitz.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Hours before the January 31 deadline for telecom regulator TRAI to give its opinion on Facebook’s controversial and expensive Free Basics pitch—which seeks to give India’s poor “free” access to certain partner websites—the consensus seems to be building up against the social media giant. “If there is cannibalising of the internet through services like Free Basics, the internet will be split; it will parcel out and slice the internet. Its future is at stake,” says a senior government official on condition of anonymity.

In a climate where the tech-savvy Modi government is seen to be close to the online trinity of Facebook, Google and Twitter, TRAI’s defiant stance in favour of net neutrality stands out. There’s a lot at stake. India’s position becomes crucial as few countries in the world have clearly defined laws on net neutrality or have taken a stand on it. For Facebook, there’s a lot more at stake. India is its second-largest user base after the US (it is banned in China), so it is leaving no stone unturned. The massive Rs 300-crore electronic and print media campaign is an indication of that.

TRAI sources say they are ready for any adverse onslaught and they are under no pressure from the PMO. The view gaining ground in government is that FB is trying to create a walled garden where it controls what people see and surf and what they can access online. While this will be offered to consumers for free—the technical term is differential pricing—the websites part of Free Basics will have to pay for being on the platform. Outlook’s queries to FB remained unanswered at the time of going to press.

At an ‘open house’ meeting to discuss TRAI’s consultation paper on differential pricing last week, regulator Ram Sevak Sharma stood firm against the barrage of pro-Free Basics opinions that flowed from FB, telecom operators and some members of the public. TRAI’s message was clear: FB’s tactics of moulding public opinion by stealth will not be acceptable in India. In the past few weeks, there have been bitter exchanges between TRAI and FB over the latter’s responses to a consultation paper on differential pricing.

TRAI’s defiant stand draws from an unprecedented show of strength by civil society against Free Basics and FB’s intentions. Says former Aadhar man Nandan Nilekani, “Free Basics is certainly against net neutrality. How can a solution be neutral, if it disproportionately benefits a particular website or business on the internet? Today, 400 million Indians are online. They came online because of the inherent value the internet offers. How can a walled garden of 100-odd websites provide the same value?”

What does Free Basics mean for PM Modi’s Digital India campaign? Being a walled garden, thousands of start-ups without adequate budgets to pay for such dedicated service will be forced to stay out of it. Similar questions are being raised about government services that are increasingly coming online. The concern is that all government traffic will have to pass through FB servers. The senior government official quoted above agrees, “In such a scenario, the government will have to approach FB to make its websites accessible on the free service which is neither desirable nor safe.”

The other fear is what happens to public data if it goes through a service like Free Basics. There is fear that a lot of government and public data will be put through Free Basics once government services start coming online. If Free Basics is for the poor who are also beneficiaries of government services, FB too can access this data. Says Prabir Purkayastha, chairman, Knowledge Commons, “FB says public service will be available through Free Basics but can public service be given through a private initiative? Public data is valuable and can’t be handed over to a private company.”

Few again are convinced by FB’s claim that Free Basics aims to make the internet accessible to the poor, with the many services offered through it. “The claim that the poor will get access to the internet is false,” warns Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Free Basics gives access to less than 100 of the one billion plus websites on the world wide web. Those in the walled garden will be treated quite differently.”

What gives TRAI a shot in the arm is that, for the first time, academia has put its weight behind Free Basics opponents. In a signed statement, several IIT and IISc Bangalore professors have said that Free Basics won’t serve the purpose FB is proposing and is not good for the country. “The problem is the internet being provided (via Free Basics) is a shrunken and sanitised version of the real thing. Free Basics is not a good proposal for the long-term development of a healthy and democratic internet setup in India,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT Delhi professor and one of the signatories to the memo.

Of course, many of the experts Outlook spoke to say that the government, and not FB, should be responsible for providing free internet to the people. Says Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change, “The government is sitting on Rs 40,000 crore of USO funds. It can surely utilise that to provide a free basic data package to people in India. Basic government services and emergency services should essentially be free.” Nilekani is also in favour of the government providing free internet to people. “The internet is a powerful poverty alleviation tool.... Government can do a direct benefit transfer for data, a more market-neutral way of achieving the goal of getting everyone on the internet,” he told Outlook.

Legally, though, there may be issues in stopping FB from introducing its Free Basics platform in India. Says Singh, “Technically, the Indian government may not be able to stop FB from introducing Free Basics in India as it is just a platform. What the government has to do is to stop telcos from collaborating with it for free internet because Indian telcos, not FB, mediate access to the internet.”

The demand for the government and TRAI to come clean on net neutrality has reached fever pitch. Experts like Nilekani feel that net neutrality, which does not allow zero rating and differential pricing based on telcos looking at the contents of the subscriber’s data packets, should be enshrined in law through an act of Parliament, the way countries like the US have done. TRAI has also proposed two models where the internet is provided free initially and charged at a later stage and another where content providers and websites reimburse the cost of browsing directly to consumers. Both these proposals have not found favour with experts who say that these are unworkable and only the government should disburse free internet.

In any case, all this is a matter of detail—important, no doubt. The key question is, what happens to Free Basics if TRAI rules in favour of net neutrality and goes against FB? “This is going to be a long-drawn-out battle as FB will certainly challenge this in court,” says the government official. After spending Rs 300 crore on publicity, there is no way it will roll over and die.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct

India bans Facebook’s ‘free’ Internet for the poor

praskrishna — 2016-02-10T02:53:49Z

India’s telecom regulator said Monday that service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet services, a blow to Facebook’s global effort to provide low-cost Internet to developing countries.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs. The article was also mirrored by NDTV.

Facebook’s “Free Basics” program provides a pared-down version of Facebook and weather and job listings to some 15 million mobile-phone users in 37 countries around the world.

When it debuted in India in April, however, Free Basics immediately ran afoul of Internet activists who said it violated the principle of “net neutrality,” which holds that consumers should be able to access the entire Internet unfettered by price or speed.

On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India agreed, prohibiting data service providers from offering or charging different prices for data — even if it’s free. The Free Basics program has run into trouble elsewhere in the world recently — with Egypt banning it and Google clarifying that it pulled out of the application during a testing phase in Zambia.

In a statement, Facebook said that while the company was “disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

In an interview before the ruling, Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org — the umbrella organization of the global effort — said India’s negative reaction has been “unique versus other markets we’ve seen. We’ve been welcomed with open arms in many countries.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg launched the program to great fanfare in 2013, partnering with other international tech firms on a mission to connect the 4 billion people in the world without Internet access — which he says is a basic human right.

India has 300 million mobile Internet users but still has close to 1 billion people without proper Internet access. But it is second only to the United States in number of Facebook users, with 130 million, with vast expansion potential as Facebook works to increase its user base beyond the developed world.

Yet the Free Basics program was controversial from the start in India, where critics accused Facebook of creating a “walled garden” for poor users that allowed them access to only a portion of the web that Facebook controlled.

Dozens of well-known tech entrepreneurs, university professors and tech industry groups spoke out against it, saying that the curated app, with its handpicked weather, job and other listings, put India’s scrappy start-ups and software developers at a disadvantage.

On Monday, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and creator of India’s payment application PayTM, applauded the regulator’s move.

He had been among the program’s fiercest critics, dubbing Free Basics “poor Internet for poor people” and comparing Facebook’s actions to that of British colonialists and their East India Co.

“India, Do u buy into this baby internet?” Sharma tweeted in December. “The East India company came with similar ‘charity’ to Indians a few years back!”

“In a country like India that’s just taking off, it’s important that there is an equal playground for every app developer,” he said in an interview.

In December, India’s regulator put out a position paper on differential pricing and asked for public comment on whether such programs were fair.

In response, Facebook launched a public relations blitz, with television and newspaper advertisements, billboards and an opinion piece by Zuckerberg in the Times of India in which he argued against criticism that the social-media giant was providing the service simply to expand its user base.

Facebook also engineered a prompt to users that sent “robo” letters of support for Free Basics to India’s telecommunications regulator. The regulator, flooded with form letters, was not amused.

Facebook’s behavior may not have helped its cause, some analysts said.

“Facebook went overboard with its propaganda [and] convinced ‘the powers that be’ that it cannot be trusted with mature stewardship of our information society,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Yet David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect,” says that Zuckerberg is determined to see the program succeed.

“Facebook is relentless,” he said. “Zuckerberg has said from the beginning his goal is to make the world more open and connected. And that’s a phrase he continues to repeat 10 years later.”

The regulator had asked Facebook, and its local telecom partner, Reliance Communications, to suspend Free Basics’ operations during the public comment period. But the social-media giant and its partner appeared to flout the suspension order, with the program continuing to be operational on Reliance SIM cards.

A spokesman for Reliance earlier said that the applications was in “testing mode” and that it was not commercially promoting the product.

The regulatory body said Monday that anybody violating the order in the future will be subject to a fine of about $735 a day. It will return to review the policy in two years to see if it is effective.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor

India Sets Strict New Net Neutrality Rules

praskrishna — 2016-02-11T01:53:19Z

In India, advocates of net neutrality have welcomed new rules by the telecom regulator that have blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In a widely awaited ruling, the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday that “no service provider shall charge differential pricing on the basis of application, platforms or websites or sources." It will impose penalties of $735 a day if the regulations are broken.

Kiran Jonnalagadda, who was among a group of 10 that launched an impassioned campaign called Save the Internet, says they have won a “fabulous” victory against large corporations to ensure equal web access for millions.

“We were up against the most powerful companies in the world, we had no chance of fighting Airtel last year, we had no chance of fighting Facebook. I think the only reason it worked is that we were on the side of facts, the opposition was not,” says Jonnalagadda.

Debate on Airtel

The campaign on net neutrality snowballed into a nationwide public debate after an Indian telecom company, Airtel, launched a marketing platform last April on which it planned to offer customers access with no data charges to certain Internet services and sites.

In recent weeks, the focus turned to “Free Basics”, a service being offered by Facebook on mobile phones to a handful of sites in areas such as communication, healthcare, and education.

Saying it wanted to vastly expand Internet access in poor, rural areas, Facebook had launched a massive advertising campaign in support of the platform. Only about 300 million in the country of 1.2 billion people have access to the net, many just through mobile devices.

But campaigners slammed Free Basics as “poor Internet for poor people” and said it would create a “walled garden” in which Facebook would control the content it offered users. Leading Indian technology entrepreneurs and university professors also called on the government to guard against attempts by Internet giants to turn the country into a “digital colony.”

Many of them have applauded the regulator’s move to strengthen net neutrality.

Ban on differential pricing

However, some are raising questions about the the complete ban on differential pricing announced by the regulator. That includes the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society research group, which says India has put in place the most stringent net neutrality regulations across the world. Its executive director, Sunil Abraham, says TRAI cited the examples of the Netherlands and Chile, but the ban on differential pricing in those countries is not as absolute as the one notified in India.

“We think that if proper technological safeguards and other market safeguards are put in place, it would be possible to have both — to have rapid growth in Internet access and reduced harm that emerge[s] from network neutrality violations,” says Abraham.

Indeed, the last word may not have been said on net neutrality in India as big telecom operators are expected to mount legal challenges to the regulator’s ruling in the coming months.

Expressing disappointment with India’s ruling, the Cellular Operators Association of India has called the ban on differential pricing a “welfare reducing measure” that could block an avenue for “less advantaged citizens to move to increased economic growth and prosperity by harnessing the power of the Internet.”

In a statement, Facebook has said “we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

But after having tasted victory, the volunteers at Save the Internet, who have grown from about 10 to 100 in the last year, have already set their sights on another aspect of net neutrality besides differential pricing.

“The campaign is not going to retire because this is not the end of it. There is also discrimination on the basis of speed, which the regulator has not taken up yet,” says Jonnalagadda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules

Free Speech and Public Order

Gautam Bhatia — 2016-02-18T06:23:38Z

In this post, Gautam Bhatia has explained the law on public order as a reasonable restriction to freedom of expression under Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India.

Article 19(2) of the Constitution authorises the government to impose, by law, reasonable restrictions upon the freedom of speech and expression “in the interests of… public order.” To understand the Supreme Court’s public order jurisprudence, it is important to break down the sub-clause into its component parts, and focus upon their separate meanings. Specifically, three terms are important: “reasonable restrictions”, “in the interests of”, and “public order”.

The Supreme Court’s public order jurisprudence can be broadly divided into three phases. Phase One (1949 – 1950), which we may call the pre-First Amendment Phase, is characterised by a highly speech-protective approach and a rigorous scrutiny of speech-restricting laws. Phase Two (1950 – 1960), which we may call the post-First Amendment Expansionist Phase, is characterised by a judicial hands-off approach towards legislative and executive action aimed at restricting speech. Phase Three (1960 - present day), which we may call the post-First Amendment Protectionist phase, is characterised by a cautious, incremental move back towards a speech-protective, rigorous-scrutiny approach. This classification is broad-brush and generalist, but serves as a useful explanatory device.

Before the First Amendment, the relevant part of Article 19(2) allowed the government to restrict speech that “undermines the security of, or tends to overthrow, the State.” The scope of the restriction was examined by the Supreme Court in Romesh Thappar vs State of Madras and Brij Bhushan vs State of Delhi, both decided in 1950. Both cases involved the ban of newspapers or periodicals, under state laws that authorised the government to prohibit the entry or circulation of written material, ‘in the interests of public order’. A majority of the Supreme Court struck down the laws. In doing so, they invoked the concept of “over-breadth”: according to the Court, “public order” was synonymous with public tranquility and peace, while undermining the security of, or tending to overthrow the State, referred to acts which could shake the very foundations of the State. Consequently, while acts that undermined or tended to overthrow the State would also lead to public disorder, not all acts against public order would rise to the level of undermining the security of the State. This meant that the legislation proscribed acts that, under Article 19(2), the government was entitled to prohibit, as well as those that it wasn’t. This made the laws “over-broad”, and unconstitutional. In a dissenting opinion, Fazl Ali J. argued that “public order”, “public tranquility”, “the security of the State” and “sedition” were all interchangeable terms, that meant the same thing.

In Romesh Thappar and Brij Bhushan, the Supreme Court also held that the impugned legislations imposed a regime of “prior restraint” – i.e., by allowing the government to prohibit the circulation of newspapers in anticipation of public disorder, they choked off speech before it even had the opportunity to be made. Following a long-established tradition in common law as well as American constitutional jurisprudence, the Court held that a legislation imposing prior restraint bore a heavy burden to demonstrate its constitutionality.

The decisions in Romesh Thappar and Brij Bhushan led to the passage of the First Amendment, which substituted the phrase “undermines the security of, or tends to overthrow, the State” with “public order”, added an additional restriction in the interests of preventing an incitement to an offence, and – importantly – added a the word “reasonable” before “restrictions”.

The newly-minted Article 19(2) came to be interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ramji Lal Modi vs State of UP (1957). At issue was a challenge to S. 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalised insulting religious beliefs with an intent to outrage religious feelings of any class. The challenge made an over-breadth argument: it was contended that while some instances of outraging religious beliefs would lead to public disorder, not all would, and consequently, the Section was unconstitutional. The Court rejected this argument and upheld the Section. It focused on the phrase “in the interests of”, and held that being substantially broader than a term such as “for the maintenance of”, it allowed the government wide leeway in restricting speech. In other words, as long as the State could show that there was some connection between the law, and public order, it would be constitutional. The Court went on to hold that the calculated tendency of any speech or expression aimed at outraging religious feelings was, indeed, to cause public disorder, and consequently, the Section was constitutional. This reasoning was echoed in Virendra vs State of Punjab (1957), where provisions of the colonial era Press Act, which authorised the government to impose prior restraint upon newspapers, were challenged. The Supreme Court upheld the provisions that introduced certain procedural safeguards, like a time limit, and struck down the provisions that didn’t. Notably, however, the Court upheld the imposition of prior restraint itself, on the ground that the phrase “in the interests of” bore a very wide ambit, and held that it would defer to the government’s determination of when public order was jeopardised by speech or expression.

In Ramji Lal Modi and Virendra, the Court had rejected the argument that the State can only impose restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression if it demonstrates a proximate link between speech and public order. The Supreme Court had focused closely on the breadth of the phrase “in the interests of”, but had not subjected the reasonable requirement to any analysis. In earlier cases such as State of Madras vs V.G. Row, the Court had stressed that in order to be “reasonable”, a restriction would have to take into account the nature and scope of the right, the extent of infringement, and proportionality. This analysis failed to figure in Ramji Lal Modi and Virendra. However, in Superintendent, Central Prison vs Ram Manohar Lohia, the Supreme Court changed its position, and held that there must be a “proximate” relationship between speech and public disorder, and that it must not be remote, fanciful or far fetched. Thus, for the first time, the breath of the phrase “in the interests of” was qualified, presumably from the perspective of reasonableness. In Lohia, the Court also stressed again that “public order” was of narrower ambit than mere “law and order”, and would require the State to discharge a high burden of proof, along with evidence.

Lohia marks the start of the third phase in the Court’s jurisprudence, where the link of proximity between speech and public disorder has gradually been refined. In Babulal Parate vs State of Maharashtra (1961) and Madhu Limaye vs Sub-Divisional Magistrate (1970), the Court upheld prior restraints under S. 144 of the CrPC, while clarifying that the Section could only be used in cases of an Emergency. Section 144 of the CrPC empowers executive magistrates (i.e., high-ranking police officers) to pass very wide-ranging preventive orders, and is primarily used to prohibit assemblies at certain times in certain areas, when it is considered that the situation is volatile, and could lead to violence. In Babulal Parate and Madhu Limaye, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Section 144, but also clarified that its use was restricted to situations when there was a proximate link between the prohibition, and the likelihood of public dirsorder.

In recent years, the Court has further refined its proximity test. In S. Rangarajan vs P. Jagjivan Ram (1989), the Supreme Court required proximity to be akin to a “spark in a powder keg”. Most recently, in Arup Bhuyan vs State of Assam (2011), the Court read down a provision in the TADA criminalizing membership of a banned association to only apply to cases where an individual was responsible for incitement to imminent violence (a standard borrowed from the American case of Brandenburg).[GB1]

Lastly, in 2015, we have seen the first instance of the application of Section 144 of the CrPC to online speech. The wide wording of the section was used in Gujarat to pre-emptively block mobile internet services, in the wake of Hardik Patel’s Patidar agitation for reservations. Despite the fact that website blocking is specifically provided for by Section 69A of the IT Act, and its accompanying rules, the Gujarat High Court upheld the state action.

The following conclusions emerge:

(1) “Public Order” under Article 19(2) is a term of art, and refers to a situation of public tranquility/public peace, that goes beyond simply law-breaking

(2) Prior restraint in the interests of public order is justified under Article 19(2), subject to a test of proximity; by virtue of the Gujarat High Court judgment in 2015, prior restraint extends to the online sphere as well

(3) The proximity test requires the relationship between speech and public order to be imminent, or like a spark in a powder keg

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/free-speech-and-public-order-1

World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development

pranesh — 2016-02-17T17:03:42Z

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had published a book in 2014 that examines free speech, expression and media development. The chapter contains a Foreword by Irina Bokova, Director General, UNESCO. Pranesh Prakash contributed to Independence: Introduction - Global Media Chapter. The book was edited by Courtney C. Radsch.

Foreword

Tectonic shifts in technology and economic models have vastly expanded the opportunities for press freedom and the safety of journalists, opening new avenues for freedom of expression for women and men across the world. Today, more and more people are able to produce, update and share information widely, within and across national borders. All of this is a blessing for creativity, exchange and dialogue.

At the same time, new threats are arising. In a context of rapid change, these are combining with older forms of restriction to pose challenges to freedom of expression, in the shape of controls not aligned with international standards for protection of freedom of expression and rising threats against journalists.

These developments raise issues that go to the heart of UNESCO’s mandate “to promote the flow of ideas by word and image” between all peoples, across the world. For UNESCO, freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that underpins all other civil liberties, that is vital for the rule of law and good governance, and that is a foundation for inclusive and open societies. Freedom of expression stands at the heart of media freedom and the practice of journalism as a form of expression aspiring to be in the public interest.

At the 36^th session of the General Conference (November 2011), Member States mandated UNESCO to explore the impact of change on press freedom and the safety of journalists. For this purpose, the Report has adopted four angles of analysis, drawing on the 1991 Windhoek Declaration, to review emerging trends through the conditions of media freedom, pluralism and independence, as well as the safety of journalists. At each level, the Report has also examined trends through the lens of gender equality.

The result is the portrait of change -- across the world, at all levels, featuring as much opportunity as challenge. The business of media is undergoing a revolution with the rise of digital networks, online platforms, internet intermediaries and social media. New actors are emerging, including citizen journalists, who are redrawing the boundaries of the media. At the same time, the Report shows that the traditional news institutions continue to be agenda-setters for media and public communications in general – even as they are also engaging with the digital revolution. The Report highlights also the mix of old and new challenges to media freedom, including increasing cases of threats against the safety of journalists.

The pace of change raises questions about how to foster freedom of expression across print, broadcast and internet media and how to ensure the safety of journalists. The Report draws on a rich array of research and is not prescriptive -- but it sends a clear message on the importance of freedom of expression and press freedom on all platforms.

To these ends, UNESCO is working across the board, across the world. This starts with global awareness raising and advocacy, including through World Press Freedom Day. It entails supporting countries in strengthening their legal and regulatory frameworks and in building capacity. It means standing up to call for justice every time a journalist is killed, to eliminate impunity. This is the importance of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, spearheaded by UNESCO and endorsed by the UN Chief Executives Board in April 2012. UNESCO is working with countries to take this plan forward on the ground. We also seek to better understand the challenges that are arising – most recently, through a Global Survey on Violence against Female Journalists, with the International News Safety Institute, the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the Austrian Government.

Respecting freedom of expression and media freedom is essential today, as we seek to build inclusive, knowledge societies and a more just and peaceful century ahead. I am confident that this Report will find a wide audience, in Member States, international and regional organizations, civil society and academia, as well as with the media and journalists, and I wish to thank Sweden for its support to this initiative. This is an important contribution to understanding a world in change, at a time when the international community is defining a new global sustainable development agenda, which must be underpinned and driven by human rights, with particular attention to freedom of expression.

Executive Summary

Freedom of expression in general, and media development in particular, are core to UNESCO’s constitutional mandate to advance ‘the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication’ and promoting ‘the free flow of ideas by word and image.’ For UNESCO, press freedom is a corollary of the general right to freedom of expression. Since 1991, the year of the seminal Windhoek Declaration, which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, UNESCO has understood press freedom as designating the conditions of media freedom, pluralism and independence, as well as the safety of journalists. It is within this framework that this report examines progress as regards press freedom, including in regard to gender equality, and makes sense of the evolution of media actors, news media institutions and journalistic roles over time.

This report has been prepared on the basis of a summary report on the global state of press freedom and the safety of journalists, presented to the General Conference of UNESCO Member States in November 2013, on the mandate of the decision by Member States taken at the 36th session of the General Conference of the Organization.[*]

The overarching global trend with respect to media freedom, pluralism, independence and the safety of journalists over the past several years is that of disruption and change brought on by technology, and to a lesser extent, the global financial crisis. These trends have impacted traditional economic and organizational structures in the news media, legal and regulatory frameworks, journalism practices, and media consumption and production habits. Technological convergence has expanded the number of and access to media platforms as well as the potential for expression. It has enabled the emergence of citizen journalism and spaces for independent media, while at the same time fundamentally reconfiguring journalistic practices and the business of news.

The broad global patterns identified in this report are accompanied by extensive unevenness within the whole. The trends summarized above, therefore, go hand in hand with substantial variations between and within regions as well as countries.

Download the PDF

[*]. 37 C/INF.4 16 September 2013 “Information regarding the implementation of decisions of the governing bodies”. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002230/223097e.pdf; http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002230/223097f.pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unesco-world-trends-in-freedom-of-expression-and-media-development

Why India snubbed Facebook's free Internet offer

praskrishna — 2016-02-27T07:49:08Z

The social media giant wanted to give the people of India free access to a chunk of the Internet, but the people weren't interested.

The blog post by Daniel Van Boom was published by Cnet on February 26, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious mission to provide free Internet access to rural India was rejected by the people it was intended to help long before the country's regulators banned it earlier this month.

Around the country, farmers, labourers and office workers scorned Facebook's offer. Called Free Basics, it provided only limited access to the Internet through a suite of websites and services that, unsurprisingly, included Facebook. They felt the limited service didn't follow the open nature of the Internet, where all sites and online destinations should be equally accessible, so they organized real-world protests and an online Save The Internet campaign, with the message that Zuckerberg's efforts weren't welcome.

You might think people would jump at the opportunity to access Facebook for free, especially since more than a billion people use the social network every day. But it's that hitch -- that they can't access everything else -- which is precisely the problem, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society India. "Even if somebody spends 90 percent of their time on Facebook, that 10 percent is equally as important."

Indian regulators sided with popular opinion and cut off Free Basics in the world's second-most populous country on February 8. The ruling by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) forbids all zero-rating plans, meaning anyone offering customers free access to only a limited set of services of sites are banned. It was championed as a victory for Net neutrality, the principle that everyone should have equal access to all content on the Internet.

The decision was undoubtedly a blow for Facebook, which says it wants to connect the billions of have-nots around the world to the Internet through the program. While more than half the world's online population uses Facebook each month, the company's efforts to connect with the developing world -- with Free Basics also being available in over 30 other countries, such as Kenya and Iraq -- could be a boon for business.

"[The Internet] must remain neutral for everyone, individuals and businesses alike. Everyone must have equal access to it," said Rajesh Sawhney, a Mumbai-based tech entrepreneur, in support of TRAI's decision to reject Free Basics. He believes the zero-rating scheme can be misused by telcos and other companies to create divisive ecosystems, where certain brands or companies are included and others aren't.

The package wasn't without its supporters though, with some being disappointed with the government's intervention in the marketplace.

"It is generally assumed that there is something sinister behind violations of Net neutrality...but that is not always true," says software engineer Shashank Mehra. "ISPs trying to match consumer demand isn't something sinister, it is a market process."

The social media giant further defends itself by pointing out that Free Basics is open to any and all developers, including competitors Twitter and Google, as long as they meet the program's technical standards. This evidently wasn't enough to convince much of India.

The problem persists

Facebook disputes claims that its interest in India is commercial, saying its efforts are humanitarian. In speeches over the past few months, Zuckerberg has painted Internet access as a tool for global good. "The research has shown on this that for every 10 people who get access to the internet, about one person gets a new job, and about one person gets lifted out of poverty," he said at a Townhall Q&A in Delhi last October. "Connecting things in India is one of the most important things we can do in the world."

Zuckerberg appears to have taken the loss in stride. During a keynote address at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona earlier this week, he admitted to being disappointed by the ruling, but added, "We are going to focus on different programs [in India]...we want to work with all the operators there." A Facebook spokesperson said the company "will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet and the opportunity it brings."

Those ideals could certainly help in India, where around 68 percent of its population -- about 880 million people -- live in rural conditions or poverty. The promise of free access to health, education, local and national news through an Internet connection could potentially improve quality of live. So what's the problem?

The service providers would also be granting free Facebook.

Peggy Wolff, a volunteer coordinator at education NGO Isha Vidhya, says Facebook is just the latest in a long line of international companies hoping to crack rural India, where the bulk of the country's poor live.

While admitting that low cost or free Internet is imperative in rural areas, that "smart villages" are needed to help ease the human burden on India's increasingly overcrowded cities, she says, "Free basics is just a bit suspicious to most people. There's just too much vested interest."

"The big question." Sawhney says, "is how do we give fast and free Internet to a large section of society in India?"

There are alternatives. United States-based Jana, for instance, developed an Android app called mCent that allows its growing userbase of 30 million to earn data by downloading and using certain apps or watching advertisements from sponsors. Unlike Free Basics, that data can be expended on any online destination.

Jana's CEO Nathan Eagle, like Zuckerberg, says his mission is to bring Internet connectivity to the next billion people. "Today, Internet connectivity in emerging markets is much more an issue of affordability, rather than access," he explains. "1.3 billion people in emerging markets now have Android phones...it's the cost of data that is prohibitive."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/why-india-snubbed-facebooks-free-internet-offer

Why the Internet is Making India Furious

praskrishna — 2016-02-28T03:01:59Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore is a kind of hacker club for wonks and lawyers obsessed with issues of digital rights and global development. Not exactly the mainstream kids’ lunch table. But the Center was brought into sudden relief this week, thanks to … Mark Zuckerberg.

Read Sanjena Sathian's blog post published by Ozy on February 19, 2016

In a splashy bit of news, India’s telecom authority rejected a program called Free Basics, which the Facebook team had been promoting as a way to get free Internet to the masses. (Here on the subcontinent, more than 300 million people use the Internet — but that’s only about a quarter of the population.) The idea: Facebook would allow free access to a handful of websites (the “basics”) to everyone; users would pay for further content. The objections: On the dramatic end came comparisons to colonialism; on the wonkier, objections based on the principles of net neutrality, or the idea that all Internet content should be treated the same. The threat the critics saw in Free Basics was that of the Web as a two-lane highway — the free stuff for the poor folks, and the good stuff for those who can afford it.

Mumbai-based Sanjena Sathian spoke to CIS cofounder and policy director Pranesh Prakash about the changing landscape of web rights that led up to the news.

OZY:

Tell us what you’re thinking in the wake of India’s decision.

Pranesh Prakash:

The order seemed to fix the issue with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. It over-regulates and bans things that are beneficial along with that that aren’t. They should have aimed for discriminatory pricing, but they’ve instead eliminated all differential pricing, even when it’s not discriminatory.

What should come next, in my opinion — it is imperative to ensure that governmental resources are used to provide free access to the Internet. If you’ve taken away something that could have helped and said no, no, no, it’s not good for you, then you are under an obligation to provide a replacement.

OZY:

How do you think the larger political conversations going on in India right now seep into the debates about digital rights?

PP:

Many people think the largest divider is between those who are from a developing country or a developed country. I think the larger divide is between those who are politically skeptical of states — more libertarian — versus those who are more trusting of states and see states as having a role to play in Internet governance. How you think the poor in India should get Internet — should that be provided by government or by market mechanisms — well, your political philosophies will play a role. In India, one tends to find fewer free-market fundamentalists than one would meet in, say, San Francisco.

OZY:

I think, increasingly, post-Snowden in particular, people think of digital rights as human rights. Where do you see things going wrong on a rights front here in India?

PP:

Oh, wow … so many ways. In India we have a situation where, right now, more than 3,000 websites were blocked by the government, but no one knows what these sites are. No one knows whether they were blocked through mechanisms that ensure accountability. There is no transparency around any of these. And this is just the visible tip of the iceberg. And how do I know this? I sent a right-to-information request to the government and they gave me this answer. But beyond this, they put in place a few years ago a law which allows for websites and any kind of web content to be censored by anyone. And all they have to do is send a request to any “intermediary,” which could be anything from your ISP to your web host to your DNS provider.

OZY:

Wait, so what does that mean? I get annoyed at a site — where do I go to lodge my complaint?

PP:

All these websites are required by the law to appoint a particular person as a “grievance redressal officer.”

OZY:

What a title!

PP:

Yes … and there are more than 40 grounds for grievances that have been listed in the law, including things such as “causing harm to minors” and certain speech being “disparaging.” Now, I engage in disparaging speech at least 12 times a day. And that’s perfectly legal under Indian law!

OZY:

Eep. Any good news, though?

PP:

A case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, [involving a young woman named] Shreya Singhal. There was a section 66A, quite an odious provision, that allowed for any kind of “offensive” or “annoying” speech to cause that person to be put in prison for up to three years.

Two teenage girls in Maharashtra, upon the death of a politician, put out a comment on social media. The death had caused a bandh, a curfew of sorts in Mumbai, and done not officially by the government but by political party workers. One girl said on Facebook, sure, go ahead, respect this politician, but why inconvenience so many citizens? Her friend liked this. And a case was launched against them. Similarly, some cartoons by an anticorruption activist were challenged and he was imprisoned briefly and released on bail.

OZY:

It’s always the cartoonists.…

PP:

Yes, and one professor in Calcutta — for forwarding a cartoon, he was placed under this law too. Many cases of perfectly fine political speech were made illegal thanks to this law. Eventually, though, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court struck down this law, and this is the first time in almost three decades that the Supreme Court has struck off an entire law for being unconstitutional.

But, yes. Mostly? It’s not been pretty.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ozy-february-19-2016-sanjena-sathian-why-internet-is-making-india-furious

Rankathon on Digital Rights (Delhi, January 08)

amber — 2016-12-29T07:10:09Z

Please join us on Sunday, January 08, at the CIS office in Hauz Khas, Delhi, for a rankathon to visualise, and contribute to the findings of the Ranking Digital Rights study, and critique the underlying methodology. The event will begin at 10:00 in the morning and participants can focus on one or more of three kinds of tasks: 1) visualising the CIS and Ranking Digital Rights data, 2) evaluating additional companies using the RDR methodology, and 3) evaluating the RDR methodology and its suitability for independent use.

Download: Invitation (PDF)

The Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Responsibility Index is a project hosted by the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation that aims to rank Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) companies with respect to their Governance, Freedom of Expression, and Privacy practices. The inaugural Corporate Accountability Index, released in November 2015, evaluated 16 companies based on the project’s methodology that included 31 indicators in total.

Towards developing an understanding of how Indian ICT companies are recognising and upholding digital rights of their users, and to raise public awareness about the same, the Center for Internet and Society (CIS), with the support of Privacy International, has studied 8 Indian ICT companies, using the same methodology as the 2015 Corporate Accountability Index, to gain greater insight into company practices and initiate public dialogues.

visualising the CIS and Ranking Digital Rights data,
evaluating additional companies using the RDR methodology, and
evaluating the RDR methodology and its suitability for independent use.

The event is open to all but the venue has limited space. The participants are requested to RSVP by sending an email to nisha@cis-india.org. The final date for registering for the event is January 04.

All visualisations and other outputs produced at the event will be published under open licenses. All participants are expected to bring their own laptop or any other items needed for their work. CIS will offer data, help with understanding how the Ranking Digital Rights methodology work, refreshments, and any other support as needed.

We are also organising a discussion event on Saturday, January 07, at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, Delhi, to present our findings on digital rights practices of 8 Indian ICT companies, followed by an open structured discussion on the methodology of the Ranking Digital Rights study. Please find more details about this here.

We look forward to your participation and contribution to the discussion. Please support us by sharing this invitation with your colleagues and networks.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/rankathon-on-digital-rights-delhi-jan-08-2017

India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook

praskrishna — 2012-01-17T09:46:25Z

It's hardly the sort of Internet policy statement one hopes to hear from judges in major democracies. "Like China, we can block all such websites [who don't comply]," Justice Suresh Cait told Facebook and Google lawyers in India yesterday. "But let us not go to that situation."

No, let's not. But it's what the government wants if Internet companies won't start screening and censoring all user-generated material on social network and user-generated content sites. And they'd better do their screening by hand, not with machines.

The New York Times reported last December that India's Telecommunications and Human Resources Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, has been battling hard with Internet companies on pre-emptive screening and censorship.

About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.

At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.

In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.

The Internet companies insist that they can't possibly pre-screen everything that goes up. If something truly is illegal under local laws, they are generally willing to take it down when a court rules.

The main concern is obscenity (though criticism of government officials appears to touch a sore spot, too); in the current case against Facebook, Google, and others, the obscenity involves pictures of gods, goddesses, and Mohammed.

"At present it's obscene images of Gods and Goddesses, tomorrow it can be an image of someone in your family posted online. There has to be some control," Justice Cait said at yesterday's hearing. He allowed the case against the Internet companies to proceed.

Who's pressing for the court case? A journalist. NDTV has a new interview with him, in which the man presses for quick action. (Note: the actual interview portion is not in English.)

Can we censor dissent while we're at it?

Between January and June 2011, India requested that Google remove 358 bits of content by filing 68 different complaints. One was from Google Maps (for "national security"); almost every other was from YouTube, social network Orkut, and Google's Blogger platform. Almost none came with a court order.

"We received requests from state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders," Google explained.

"We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities. In addition, we received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from Orkut that were critical of a local politician. We did not comply with this request."

This is hardly an inspiring track record. While in public the companies are criticized for obscenity, Google's most recent records show only 3 requests to remove pornographic material. Government criticism and defamation were actually the two largest categories of requested material.

As the Financial Times "beyondbrics" blog notes, the Internet companies are coming under increasing attack for content they host, despite the vagueness of the demands for censorship. For instance, "Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all 'anti-social' or 'anti-religious' content by February 6. As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews."

Photograph by Diganta Talukdar

The blog post by Nate Anderson was published in ars technica on 14 January 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/obsecene-pics-of-gods-require-massive-human-censorship

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs

praskrishna — 2012-05-24T09:45:43Z

The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 (The Rules) continue to breathe after the statutory motion to annul them moved by member of parliament (MP) from Kerala P Rajeeve was defeated by voice vote in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.

This blog post by Prachi Shrivastava was published in Legally India on May 18, 2012

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal was heard on Rajya Sabha TV saying: “We are more liberal than US and Europe but let’s not cut our arms.”

Sibal countered Rajeeve’s annulment motion arguing that the government needs to be armed to meet the “new challenges” posed by “new media”, according to Mint.

"Kapil Sibal reminds me of badly briefed counsels fumbling in the High Court" tweeted Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) as Sibal was mid-delivery in contending that online media not registered in India escaped the ambit of Indian legislation and thus created the peril of terrorism and increased drug peddling.

Another person tweeted: "The gist of Sibal’s argument was that we need to censor the internet because people are doing drugs."

Sibal’s answer to MP Ram Yadav’s attack on The Rules for being inconsistent with their parent act – the Information Technology Act 2000 (IT Act) – was that Rule 3(2) which prescribes “due diligence” to be observed by an internet intermediary, originates from Section 66A of the IT Act, thus making the rules consistent with the parent act.

Section 3(2) obligates the intermediary to take down content posted on a website, on the basis of several undefined criteria.

"Minister you have created perverse incentives for censoring speech through law. That is regulation, not merely a definition of due diligence” proclaimed Supreme Court advocate Apar Gupta in a tweet posted during Sibal’s defense of the rules.

Prakash tweeted: "The IT Rules don’t just prescribe ‘due diligence’ but create a takedown mechanism. That’s not the same thing Mr. Sibal."

Sibal went on to establish that the government’s motive was not censorious by stating: “It is your choice, you are free to work with the user who complains to an intermediary. Where does the government come in?”

To which quipped Prakash: “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”

Jaitley in-perspective

Leader of the opposition senior advocate Arun Jaitley objected to The Rules holding that terms such as “disparaging”, ”libellous”, “defamatory” not defined in the Act or the Rules but enabling take-down of content, could be misused, according to Times of India.

IBN Live reported him as urging Sibal to "reconsider the language of restraints".

Sibal addressed the house inviting objections from MPs on specific “words” contained in The Rules which provide for control of speech over the internet, according to PTI.

He further proposed to call a meeting of “stakeholders” to discuss the MPs’ objections, and assured that the consensus that emerges from the meeting will be implemented.

Draconian Censorious Rules

Legally India reported last month how Rajeeve was trying to spread awareness among MPs about the draconian effect of the Rules which censor free speech and expression, by over-scrutinising users of the internet, over-authorising intermediaries to monitor content posted over the internet, and letting the government, individuals and institutions by-pass the due process of law.

The Rules in their present form require intermediaries - providers of internet, telecom, e-mail or blogging services, including cyber cafes - to publish terms of use prohibiting users from publishing content of the nature specified in the Rules.

Once the intermediaries have knowledge of posted content that is in violation of such terms of use, they are liable for compensation if they fail to initiate action for removal of the posted content.

Some of the categories of prohibited content specified in the Rules are undefined, are not an offence under existing law, and are claimed to be in violation of article 19(1) of the Constitution guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression.

CIS uncovered an additional problem the rules pose - that of “over-complying” intermediaries who in order to minimize the risk of liability may block more content than required, adversely impacting the fundamental right guaranteed under article 19(1).

"By and large, the impression is that India is going in the direction of censorship," Mint reported cyber law expert and supreme court lawyer Pavan Duggal as saying, yesterday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sibal-shoot-down-motion-to-kill-it-rules