The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 11 to 25.
Technological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment
<b>In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.</b>
<p><a href="http://www.wipo.int/enforcement/en/faq/technological/faq03.html">Technological Protection Measures</a> are sought to be introduced in India via the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010. This should be quite alarming for consumers for reasons that will be explained in a separate blog post on TPMs that will follow shortly.</p>
<p>In this post, I will restrict myself to a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Bill, which talks of "protection of technological measures". (Section 65B, which talks of Right Management Information will, similarly, be tackled in a later blog post.)</p>
<p>First off, this provision is quite unnecessary. There has been no public demand in India for TPMs to be introduced, and the pressure has come mostly from the United States in the form of the annual "Special 301" report prepared by the United States Trade Representative with input coming (often copied verbatim) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. India is not a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) which requires technological protection measures be safeguarded by law. That provision, interestingly, was pushed for by the United States in 1996 when even it did not give legal sanctity to TPMs via its copyright law (which was amended in 2000 by citing the need to comply with the WCT).</p>
<p>TPMs have been roundly criticised, have been shown to be harmful for consumers, creators, and publishers, and there is also evidence that TPMs do not really decrease copyright infringement (but instead, quite perversely through unintended consequences, end up increasing it). Why then would India wish to introduce it?</p>
<p>Leaving that question aside for now, what does the proposed law itself say?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>65A. Protection of Technological Measures </p>
<p> (1) Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.</p>
<p> (2) Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from:</p>
<p> (a) doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act:</p>
<p> Provided that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure for such a purpose shall maintain a complete record of such other person including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him and the purpose for which he has been facilitated; or</p>
<p> (b) doing anything necessary to conduct encryption research using a lawfully obtained encrypted copy; or</p>
<p> (c) conducting any lawful investigation; or</p>
<p> (d) doing anything necessary for the purpose of testing the security of a computer system or a computer network with the authorisation of its owner; or</p>
<p> (e) operator; or [<em>sic</em>]</p>
<p> (f) doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user; or</p>
<p> (g) taking measures necessary in the interest of national security.</p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Implications: The Good Part</h1>
<p>This provision clearly takes care of two of the major problems with the way TPMs have been implemented by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) it aligns the protection offered by TPMs to that offered by copyright law itself (since it has to be "applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act"). Thus, presumably, TPMs could not be used to restrict <em>access</em>, only to restrict copying, communication to the public, and that gamut of rights.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) and 65A(2) it aligns the exceptions granted by copyright law with the exceptions to the TPM provision. Section 65A(1) states that the act of circumvention has to be done "with the intention of infringing ... rights", and s.52(1) clearly states that those exceptions cannot be regarded as infringement of copyright. And s.65A(2)(a) states that circumventing for "a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act" will be allowed.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>A third important difference from the DMCA is that</p>
<ul>
<li>It does not criminalise the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools (including code, devices, etc.). (More on this below.)</li>
</ul>
<h1>Implications: The Bad Part</h1>
<p>This provision, despite the seeming fair-handed manner in which it has been drafted, still fails to maintain the balance that copyright seeks to promote:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>TPM-placers (presumably, just copyright holders, because of point 1. above) have been given the ability to restrict the activities of consumers, but they have not been given any corresponding duties. Thus, copyright holders do not have to do anything to ensure that the Film & Telivision Institute of India professor who wishes to use a video clip from a Blu-Ray disc can actually do so. Or that the blind student who wishes to circumvent TPMs because she has no other way of making it work with her screen reader is actually enabled to take advantage of the leeway the law seeks to provide her through s.52(1)(a) (s.52(1)(zb) is another matter!). Thus, while there are many such exceptions that the law allows for, the technological locks themselves prevent the use of those exceptions. Another way of putting that would be to say:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Bill presumes that every one has access to all circumvention technology. This is simply not true. In fact, Spanish law (in <a href="http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/rdleg1-1996.l3t5.html">Article 161 of their law</a>) expressly requires that copyright holders facilitate access to works protected by TPM to beneficiaries of limitations of copyright. Thus, copyright holders who employ TPMs should be required to:</p>
<ul>
<li>tell their customers how they can be contacted if the customer wishes to circumvent the TPM for a legitimate purpose</li>
<li>upon being contacted, aid their customer in making use of their rights / the exceptions and limitations in copyright law</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>How seriously can you take a Bill that has been introduced in Parliament that includes a provision that states: "Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from operator; or" (as s.65A(2)(e), read in its entirety, does)?</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Uncertainties</h1>
<p>As mentioned above, the provisions are not all that clear regarding manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools. Thus, the proviso to s.65A(2)(a) deserves a closer reading. What is clear is that there are no penalties mentioned for manufacture or dissemination of TPMs, and that only those who <em>circumvent</em> are penalised in 65A(1), and not those who produce the circumvention devices. However:</p>
<h2>On "shall maintain" and penalties</h2>
<p>In the proviso to s.65B(2)(a), there is an imperative ("shall maintain") requiring "any person facilitating circumvention" to keep records. It
is unclear what the implications of not maintaining such records are.</p>
<p>The obvious one is that the exemption contained in s.65(1)(a) will not apply if one were facilitated without the facilitator keeping records. Thus, under this interpretation, there is no independent legal (albeit penalty-less) obligation on facilitators. This interpretation runs into
the problem that if this was the intention, then the drafters would have written "Provided that any person facilitating circumvention ... for
such a purpose <em>maintain</em>/<em>maintained</em> a complete record ...". Instead, <em>shall maintain</em> is used, and an independent legal obligation seems,
thus, to be implied. But can a proviso create an independent legal obligation? And is there any way a penalty could <em>possibly</em> be attached
to violation of this proviso despite it not coming within 65A(1)?</p>
<h2>On "facilitating" and remoteness</h2>
<p>The next question is who all can be said to "facilitate", and how remote can the connection be? Is the coder who broke the circumvention a
facilitator? The distributor/trafficker? The website which provided you the software? Or is it (as is more likely) a more direct "the friend who sat at your computer and installed the circumvention software" / "the technician who unlocked your DVD player for you while installing it in your house"?</p>
<p>While such a record-keeping requirement is observable by people those who very directly help you (the last two examples above), it would be more difficult to do so the further up you get on the chain of remoteness. Importantly, such record-keeping is absolutely not possible in decentralized distribution models (such as those employed by most free/open source software), and could seriously harm fair and legitimate circumvention.</p>
<h1>More uncertainties</h1>
<p>It is slightly unclear which exception the bypassing of Sony's dangerous "Rootkit" copy protection technology would fall under if I wish to get rid of it simply because it makes my computer vulnerable to malicious attacks (and not to exercise one of the exceptions under s.52(1)). Will such circumvention come under s.65A(2)(a)? Because it does not quite fall under any of the others, including s.65(2)(b) or (f).</p>
<h2>On "purpose" as a criterion in 65A(2)(a)</h2>
<p>A last point, which is somewhat of an aside is that 65A(2)(a) states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There's something curious about the wording, since the Copyright Act generally does not prohibit any acts based on purposes (i.e., the prohibitions by ss.14 r/w s.51 are not based on <em>why</em> someone reproduces, etc., but on the act of reproduction). In fact, it <em>allows</em> acts based on purposes
(via s.52(1)). The correct way of reading 65A(2)(a) might then be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose expressly allowed by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But that might make it slightly redundant as s.65A(1) covers that by having the requirement of the circumvention being done "with the intention of infringing such right" (since the s.52(1) exceptions are clearly stated as not being infringements of the rights granted under the Act).</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>It would be interesting to note how leading copyright lawyers understand this provision, and we will be tracking such opinions. But it is clear that TPMs, as a private, non-human enforcement of copyright law, are harmful and that we should not introduce them in India. And we should be especially wary of doing so without introducing additional safeguards, such as duties on copyright holder to aid access to TPM'ed works for legitimate purposes, and remove burdensome record-keeping provisions.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightIntellectual Property RightsFLOSSTechnological Protection MeasuresPublications2012-05-17T16:51:38ZBlog EntrySubmission
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/submission%20to%20the%20DG%20clean%20Nov11th.pdf
<b></b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/submission%20to%20the%20DG%20clean%20Nov11th.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/submission%20to%20the%20DG%20clean%20Nov11th.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:13:59ZFileStatement of CIS on the Matter of the Treaty for the Blind
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty
<b>Through this paper the Centre for Internet and Society is giving its statement in the matter of the Treaty for the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled, proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:18:01ZFileSilicon Plateau: Volume Two
https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-volume-two
<b>Silicon Plateau is an art project and publishing series that explores the intersection of technology, culture and society in the Indian city of Bangalore. Each volume of the series is a themed repository for research, artworks, essays and interviews that observe the ways technology permeates the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants. This project is an attempt at creating collaborative research into art and technology, beginning by inviting an interdisciplinary group of contributors (from artists, designers and writers, to researchers, anthropologists and entrepreneurs) to participate in the making of each volume.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Download the book: <a href="https://files.cargocollective.com/c221119/SiliconPlateau_VolumeTwo.epub">Epub</a> and <a href="https://files.cargocollective.com/c221119/SiliconPlateau_VolumeTwo.pdf">PDF</a></h4>
<hr />
<p><em>Silicon Plateau Volume 2</em> explores the ecosystem of mobile apps and their on-demand services. The book investigates how apps and their infrastructure are impacting our relationship with the urban environment; the way we relate and communicate with each other; and the way labour is changing. It also explores our trust in these technologies, and their supposed capacity to organise things for us and make them straightforward—while, in exchange, we relentlessly feed global corporations with our GPS data and online behaviours.</p>
<p>The sixteen book contributors responded to a main question: what does it mean to be an app user today—as a worker, a client, or simply an observer?</p>
<p>The result is a collection of stories about contemporary life in Bangalore; of conversations and deliberations on how we behave, what we sense, and what we might think about when we use the services that are offered to us on demand, through just a tap on our mobile screens.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://siliconplateau.info/" target="_blank">siliconplateau.info</a></p>
<h4>Contributors</h4>
<p>Sunil Abraham and Aasavri Rai, Yogesh Barve, Deepa Bhasthi, Carla Duffett, Furqan Jawed, Vir Kashyap, Saudha Kasim, Qusai Kathawala, Clay Kelton, Tara Kelton, Mathangi Krishnamurthy, Sruthi Krishnan, Vandana Menon, Lucy Pawlak, Nicole Rigillo, Yashas Shetty, Mariam Suhail</p>
<h4>Editors</h4>
<p>Marialaura Ghidini and Tara Kelton</p>
<h4>Publisher</h4>
<p>Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society, India, 2018. ISBN: 978-94-92302-29-8</p>
<h4>Book and Cover Design</h4>
<p>Furqan Jawed and Tara Kelton</p>
<h4>Copyediting</h4>
<p>Aditya Pandya</p>
<h4>Supported by</h4>
<p>Jitu Pasricha, Bangalore; Aarti Sonawala, Singapore; and the Centre for Internet and Society, India.</p>
<hr />
<p>Cross-posted from <a href="https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/silicon-plateau-volume-two/" target="_blank">Institute of Network Cultures</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-volume-two'>https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-volume-two</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppSilicon PlateauRAW PublicationsWeb CulturesFeaturedPublicationsResearchers at Work2019-03-13T01:01:27ZBlog EntrySilicon Plateau Vol-1
https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1
<b>This book marks the beginning of an interdisciplinary artistic project, Silicon Plateau, the scope of which is to observe how
the arts, technology and society intersect in the city of Bangalore. Silicon Plateau is a collaboration between T.A.J. Residency & SKE Projects and the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India. Volume 1 has been developed in collaboration with or-bits.com.</b>
<p> </p>
<iframe src="//e.issuu.com/embed.html#21775460/31640028" frameborder="0" height="400" width="600"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<h4>For us this series has a two-fold core. One the one side, there is the city of Bangalore, the trigger for various reflections about the way in which technology (old or emerging, as a service or as infrastructure) informs
the socio-cultural and political environment; a city that is fascinating to us not just because we are located here but also for its characteristic fast-paced development shaped by the IT-boom and related industries. On the other side, there are the arts and creative thinking, for us the languages, lenses and methods to be used for interpreting
technological developments and discussing their role and impact in the present time.</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>Our hope is that of building a series based on tangible accounts revolving around the unresolved complexities inherent to the intermingling of the arts, technology and society, and in the context of local histories and occurrences rather than of global narratives and mass media constructs. Stories that for our audience, we hope, will be those of the encounters—fortuitous, anticipated or even inconvenient—that a wide variety of contributors will have had with this fascinating city.</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>— <em>Marialaura Ghidini</em> and <em>Tara Kelton</em></h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>High-resolution PDF: <a href="https://archive.org/download/SiliconPlateau-Vol1/SiliconPlateauVol1_highres.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (31.8 MB)</h4>
<h4>Low-resolution PDF: <a href="https://archive.org/download/SiliconPlateau-Vol1/SiliconPlateauVol1_lowres.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (4.7 MB)</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>T.A.J. Residency & SKE Projects: <a href="http://t-a-j.in/" target="_blank">Website</a></h4>
<h4>or-bits.com: <a href="http://www.or-bits.com/" target="_blank">Website</a></h4>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1'>https://cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroSilicon PlateauArtWeb CulturesResearchPublicationsResearchers at Work2019-03-13T00:56:36ZBlog EntrySarah Zia - Not knowing as pedagogy: Ride-hailing drivers in Delhi
https://cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Sarah Zia is the second among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). The essay is edited by Noopur Raval, who co-led the project.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on July 18, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Summary of the essay in Hindi: <a href="https://youtu.be/KSYcT8XD0H4" target="_blank">Audio</a> (YouTube) and <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/07/CASTAC_Sarah_audiotranscript.docx" target="_blank">Transcript</a> (text)</h4>
<hr />
<p>Ride-hailing [1] platforms such as Olacabs and Uber have “disrupted” public transport in India since their arrival. It has been almost seven years since app-based ride-hailing became a permanent feature of urban and peri-urban India with these aggregators operating in over a 100 Indian cities now. Akin to the global story, much has happened – there was a period of boom and novelty for passengers and drivers, then incentives fell. Ride-hailing work has become increasingly demanding with reduced payouts. But what hasn’t received enough attention (especially outside the US) is how these platforms create a deliberate regime of information invisibility and control to keep the drivers constantly on their toes which works to the companies’ advantage. What then are the implications of this uncertainty, which is fueled by app design as well as by the companies’ decision that drivers need little or no information about users? How does service delivery operate in a context where those actually delivering it have little or no idea about the workings of the system?</p>
<h3><strong>When algorithms make us not know</strong></h3>
<p>Algorithmic interactions form the core of the technology in ride-hailing apps through which service seekers and providers interact. As Lee et al. (2015) describe, “Algorithmic management allows companies to oversee myriads of workers in an optimized manner at a large scale, but its impact on human workers and work practices has been largely unexplored… Algorithmic management is one of the core innovations that enables these (cab-riding) services.”</p>
<p>Algorithms are procedural logics that produce different effects depending on the data they receive and the outputs they are optimized for (Wilson, 2016). Moreover, platform companies are not transparent about how their business logics contribute to these “optimizations”, which makes it difficult for all the stakeholders (passengers, drivers, police personnel, etc.) to make an accurate assessment of their functioning. This essay, then, explores how the lack of transparency around algorithmic structures not only prohibits drivers from knowing completely and surely about their work (“why did I get this ride?”, “why did my ratings drop?”) but also how they build tactics of coping and earning from a place of unknowing. Algorithms act as a regulator of work and their inherent structure constrains drivers from knowing fully about their work. Unknowing thus has two aspects: first, drivers do not have access or means to gather information; second, it is difficult to be sure of the existence of the said information in the first place.</p>
<p>In my research on ridehailing in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), there were three things that I asked drivers about which led to ambiguous and inconsistent replies: how rides were allocated, how fares were determined and how ratings worked. While some drivers told me upfront they did not know how these systems worked, others offered explanations that they had devised or heard from somewhere else. For instance, not knowing what they will make per trip means that drivers plan their day in terms of target earnings instead of number of trips. Nearly all drivers I spoke to said they aimed to make Rs 1500-2000 (approx USD 20-25) per day in order to break even, irrespective of whether that goal requires 10 or 15 trips in a day. Yet not knowing what the next trip will earn them means they can’t refuse rides easily. Many drivers expressed discomfort about this fact, especially when compared to other means such as auto-rickshaws and traditional cabs where drop destination is known beforehand and fares can also be pre-negotiated, Unlike ride-hailing drivers, auto rickshaw drivers have the right to refuse passengers.</p>
<p>Many drivers now call passengers after accepting their booking to find out the destination. According to some drivers, this call also helped them understand the kind of passengers they were about to get and sometimes even allowed re-negotiation of the drop location to a mutually convenient spot if it was originally in a congested area. They also felt that assessing passengers before a trip was important so that they could act as mediators in the information gatekeeping process, because the passengers would have seen the fare already. For a driver, the lack of information added many layers of constant negotiation in a single trip—starting from the call to find out the destination to conversations during the trip to gauge potential earnings to finally suggesting alternative drop locations if there are any constraints in accessing the original destination—before they can claim their rightful earnings.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01.jpeg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01" />
<h5>Ridehailing drivers only get the user’s name and pickup location as details about an upcoming trip. <em>Photo by Noopur Raval</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Knowing the terms of work—such as when work ends and begins, how the good jobs are being allocated and to whom, and an explanation of one’s income—is a foundation of formal and informal work. Such information is crucial because it allows us to separate our work and personal lives. Knowledge of these obviously quantifiable parameters can help drivers plan their earnings and investments and, crucially, when they can take a break based on much more or less work they have to do in order to meet their income targets.</p>
<p>Furthermore, as drivers showed me, ride-hailing companies spontaneously change the revenue model for “driver-partners” (as they are called) by sending them an SMS right before the change happens, thereby altering trip and mileage targets frequently to keep a degree of unknowability in drivers’ work. This unknowability disincentivizes drivers from going off the road as per their will and helps maintain a steady supply of cabs on the road. As Alex Rosenblat has demonstrated in her study of US Uber and Lyft drivers, they are compelled to accept rides without knowing their profitability. While the app design gives them an option to “choose” to accept or reject a ride, drivers are constrained by lack of adequate information pertaining to the trip as well as the rider in making this choice. The ‘information asymmetry’, as Rosenblat calls it, also feeds into drivers’ mistrust of the companies and their policies (Rosenblat, 2018). Moreover, these feelings and the uncertainty fed by unknowing were not limited to drivers. Passengers also noticed that a ride between two points could cost different prices at different times of day and they were not sure why or how this cost was calculated.</p>
<h3><strong>Unknowability as a form of knowing: A pedagogy of coping</strong></h3>
<p>As I observed in my interactions with drivers online and offline, new drivers often struggled with the degree of uncertainty and unknowability while more experienced drivers had accepted ‘not knowing’ and the opacity of the system as features of their work.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02.jpg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02" />
<h5>Not knowing enough about how much will a ride earn them means drivers are forced to be on the roads, often without a break. <em>Photo by author</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Similar to what Rosenblat, Gray et al. and others have observed in the US, in India drivers were constantly engaged in meaning-making through communicative labor, i.e., sharing their experiences with other local drivers online and offline. Agreeing, reassuring, and repeating that drivers actually do not know enough through these discussions also gave them shared confidence in their own abilities and how they were approaching work despite being firmly rooted in unknowing. For instance, when I asked one Uber driver about how ratings worked, they said that all 5-star drivers were matched with 5-star passengers. Another Uber driver said that the higher a passenger’s ratings, the less time they would have to wait for pick-up.</p>
<p>Other forms in which this kind of unknowing manifested was the lack of a fare chart or any minimum or uniform rating system, leaving drivers to offer their own interpretations and coping strategies. For instance, a driver pointed out how very few rides are likely to be available in a specific suburb during hot afternoons and therefore he avoided dropping passengers to that location after 2PM.</p>
<p>How, then, does one learn to cope with such unknowable systems as a worker? And what values does such a pedagogy of coping with algorithmic opacity imbibe? In my fieldwork, apart from answering my questions, drivers were extremely interested in talking about the companies, including news about companies’ stock value, their futures, profits, etc. A persistent rumour in the field was that Reliance, the country’s largest telecom provider, was soon coming up with a competitor ride-hailing app, suggesting that there could be an incentive boom again. In online Facebook groups, drivers often discussed company CEOs’ salaries, comparing them to their own. On the flipside, when videos of ride-hailing and food-delivery drivers getting beaten up or arrested or cheated surfaced, drivers would comment with advice on how to safeguard oneself, how to deal with errant customers and so on. I interpret these practices of making sense of long and short-term work, framed as responses to constant ambiguity and uncertainty, as the development of an “algorithmic gut”.</p>
<p>This gut responds to the anxieties produced by platform infrastructure through a keen awareness of the shifts, the tweaks, the changes and the errors. And it orients how drivers approach and cope with their work by acknowledging that there is a lot unknown (and unknowable) in this kind of daily work. It also guides how drivers focus on the short-term (daily) goal of making profit, such as by tuning into peer groups both online and offline where grievances are discussed, collective action planned, and floating rumours assessed. This gut is an affective, sensorial attunement to how platforms are allocating and shifting power among drivers and plays a generative role in guiding drivers’ work decisions.</p>
<h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
<p>Uncertainty is an embedded part of a ride-hailing cab’s model of service delivery. For ride-hailing drivers, this ambiguity translates into less control over everyday negotiation of work as well as planning of financial assets for the future.</p>
<p>In my interactions, I discovered that drivers are certain that they will never know more than the company. What this has led to is a driver who is cynical but not entirely pessimistic. Drivers acknowledge that while companies and their structures may be problematic, what will keep them employed is passengers’ appetite for a service like this. They would like to imagine the future of their work but are cognizant of the dual challenge of the present: making money while struggling for self-preservation in order to perform immediate activities. Drivers are cognizant of an ambiguous future and even hesitant to engage in long-term planning. For now, they would prefer better earnings and greater control over how they perform labour. Hence, their focus is on devising specific strategies for known, short-term challenges instead of running after an unknown future.</p>
<h3><strong>Endnotes</strong></h3>
<p>[1] Uber and homegrown Ola both started operations in India as ride-hailing services with the sharing options being added in 2015. Hence, the term ride-hailing has been used to describe these services which also includes ride sharing.</p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
<p>Davis, Jenny L. 2014. “Triangulating the Self: Identity Processes in a Connected Era.” Symbolic Interaction 37 (4): 500-523.</p>
<p>Dodge, Martin and Kitchin, Rob. 2005. “Codes of life: identification codes and the machine-readable world.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2005 (23): 851-881</p>
<p>Gray, Mary L., et al. 2016. “The Crowd is a Collaborative Network.” Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work & social computing. ACM, 2016.</p>
<p>Kitchin, Rob. 2017. “Thinking critically about and researching algorithms.” Information, Communication & Society 20 (1): 14-29.</p>
<p>Lee, Min Kyung, et al. 2015. “Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data-Driven Management on Human Workers.” Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.</p>
<p>Rosenblat, Alex & Stark, Luke. 2016. “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers.” International Journal of Communication 10: 3758–3784.</p>
<p>Ruckenstein, Minna and Mika Pantzar. 2017. “Beyond the Quantified Self: Thematic exploration of a dataistic paradigm.” New Media & Society 19(3): 401-418.</p>
<p>Willson, Michele. 2016. “Algorithms (and the) everyday”. Information, Communication & Society 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1200645</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi'>https://cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherSarah ZiaDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesPublicationsResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:35:21ZBlog EntrySagie Chetty- Report
https://cis-india.org/telecom/publications/SC%20Study%20Tour%20Report%202009-11-08%20_2_.pdf
<b></b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/telecom/publications/SC%20Study%20Tour%20Report%202009-11-08%20_2_.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/telecom/publications/SC%20Study%20Tour%20Report%202009-11-08%20_2_.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaTelecomPublications2011-08-23T03:30:41ZFileRight to Knowledge for Persons with Print Impairment: A Proposal to Amend the Indian Copyright Regime
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Case%20for%20Amendment%20of%20Copyright%20Regime%20in%20India%20November%2022-%202009.pdf
<b>This research paper argues the need for amending the Indian Copyright provisions for enabling the print impaired to gain access to published works. The paper was submitted to the Ministry of Human Resource and Development in November to appraise it of the needs of the print disabled community. The paper is up for public comments and we welcome your feedback for this ongoing campaign.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Case%20for%20Amendment%20of%20Copyright%20Regime%20in%20India%20November%2022-%202009.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Case%20for%20Amendment%20of%20Copyright%20Regime%20in%20India%20November%2022-%202009.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:17:33ZFileResponse to the Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance
https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response
<b>Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, authored a response to the draft Open Standards Policy document published by the National Informatics Centre,
Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.</b>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">The National Informatics Centre (NIC),
Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has recently published a <a class="external-link" href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/Policy_Open_Std_review">Draft Policy on Open Standards for eGovernance</a>. Members of the public have been invited to provide feedback to the document. The last date for feedback is 21st November 2008.</span></p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society has prepared a draft response to the draft policy. This response letter only deals
with the policy document from the perspective of the global FLOSS
movement. This is not meant to be comprehensive feedback to the
document itself.</p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Institutional Co-signatories</h3>
<ol><li>Richard Stallman, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.fsf.org">Free Software Foundation</a>, USA</li><li>Mishi Choudhary, Partner, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sflc.org">Software Freedom Law Centre</a>, USA <br /></li><li>Dr. Alvin Marcelo, Director for Southeast Asia, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iosn.net">International Open Source Network</a>, the Philippines <br /></li><li>Lawrence Liang, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.altlawforum.org">Alternative Law Forum</a>, Bangalore, India<br /></li><li>Dr. G. Nagarjuna, Chaiman, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gnu.org.in">Free Software Foundation of India</a>, Mumbai, India<br /></li><li>Vinay Sreenivasa, Member, <a class="external-link" href="http://itforchange.net">IT for Change</a>, Bangalore, India <br /></li></ol>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Individual Co-signatories<strong> </strong></h3>
<ol><li>Shahid Akhtar, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iosn.net">International Open Source Network</a>, Canada</li><li>Denis Jaromil Rojo, Developer, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dyne.org">Dyne</a>, Netherlands<br /></li><li>Raj Mathur, Consultant, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.kandalaya.org">Kandalaya</a>, New Delhi, India<br /></li><li>Marek Tuszynski, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tacticaltech.org">Tactical Technology Collective</a>, United Kingdom</li></ol>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Text <br /></h3>
<p>Dear Sir or Madam,</p>
<p>The government had done a commendable job of releasing a progressive and forward-looking policy on the usage of open standards in e-governance. Globally the European Union's Electronic Interoperability Framework (EIF) guidelines (version 2 of which is currently in the draft stage) is considered to be the gold standard as far as open standard policy is concerned. The draft National Policy on Open Standards meets all of the EIF's four open standard requirements. However, there is still some room for improvement as discussed below.</p>
<p>While the document talks of the standard being royalty free (4.1 and 5.1.1) and without any patent-related encumbrance (4.1), it limits those requirements "for the life time of the standard" (5.1.1), which seems a bit ambiguous and is not defined in the appendix either. It would be preferable to make it royalty-free for the lifetime of the patents (if any) as open archival material shouldn't one day (after the end of "life time of the standard", and before the expiry of the patents) suddenly be forced to become paid archives. It would be desirable to make declarations of patent non-enforcement irrevocable (as the EU EIF does), by incorporating a wording such as: "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis, without any patent-related encumbrance". </p>
<p>There should also be a separate provision in the "policy statement on open standards adoption in e-governance" section of the document making explicit that there can be no restraint on use or implementation of the standard (as has been stated in the "guiding principles" section). </p>
<p>Perhaps when talking of specification documents (5.1.5) the words "any restrictions" could be amended to include a few examples of what the term "any restrictions" would include. The document could make explicit that it must be permissible for all to copy, distribute and use the specifications freely, without any cost or legal barriers. </p>
<p>Sometimes private companies can interfere with the standardisation process, the document could perhaps be more explicit regarding remedial measures that could be undertaken in the event – for example use of competition law, as in the case of the EU EIF which states: "Practices distorting the definition and evolution of open standards must be addressed immediately to protect the integrity of the standardisation process." </p>
<p>As it stands, the draft document addresses many notions of openness (freely accessible, at zero cost, non-discriminatory, extensible, and without any legal hindrances, thus preventing vendor lock-in), and there is much to applaud in it. It has a clear implementation mechanism, with a laudable aim of establishing a monitoring agency and an Open Source Solutions Laboratory. It is applicable not only to future e-governance initiatives, but to existing ones as well. Furthermore, it also has an in-built review mechanism, which is crucial given the rate of change of technologies and consequently of the requirements of the government. Thus, the draft policy document very clearly encourages competition and innovation in the software industry and promotes the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and industry. As researchers from UNU MERIT have pointed out, even a nominal fee for usage of a standard can lead to exclusion of open source software implementations, leading to less competition in the software industry. Thus, all in all this draft document represents a commendable effort by the Indian government towards a sustainable and robust e-governance structure based on open standards. However, a few small amendments as suggested in this letter would make it an even greater guarantor of openness.</p>
<p><br />Yours sincerely,<br />Sunil Abraham<br />Director (Policy)<br />Centre for Internet and Society<br /><br /></p>
<p>Please download the draft response in the format you prefer.</p>
<ol><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-10-sept-2008.odt" class="internal-link" title="Oo.org Format">Open Office </a><br /></li><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-10-sept-2008.doc" class="internal-link" title="MS Format">MS Office</a></li><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-09-sept-2008.pdf" class="internal-link" title="PDF Format">PDF</a><br /></li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response'>https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response</a>
</p>
No publishersunilOpen StandardsPublications2011-08-23T03:05:56ZPageReport on Open Standards for GISW 2008
https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf
<b>A report on Open Standards prepared by Sunil Abraham, for the Global Information Society Watch 2008. As on their site, GISWatch focuses on monitoring progress made towards implementing the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) action agenda and other international and national commitments related to information and communications. It also provides analytical overviews of institutions involved in implementation. </b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsPublications2011-08-23T02:57:53ZFileReply comments of CIS in the matter of the WIPO draft proposal
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal
<b>Reply comments of CIS, Daisy Forum of India and Inclusive Planet to the comments filed by Steven J Metaliz in the matter of the WIPO draft proposal.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:18:38ZFileRe:Wiring Bodies
https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies
<b>Asha Achuthan initiates a historical research inquiry to understand the ways in which gendered bodies are shaped by the Internet imaginaries in contemporary India. Tracing the history from nationalist debates between Gandhi and Tagore to the neo-liberal perspective based knowledge produced by feminists like Martha Nussbaum; Asha’s research offers a unique entry point into cyberculture studies through a feminist epistemology of science and technology. The monograph establishes that there is a certain pre-history to the Internet that needs to be unpacked in order to understand the digital interventions on the body in a range of fields from social sciences theory to medical health practices to technology and science policy in the country.</b>
<p><br />Section I (<strong>Attitudes to Technology</strong>) attempts to trace the trajectories of the critiques of technology standing in for science in the Indian context. This section traces the methodology of critique itself that animates the political in India and shows the ways in which these critiques access anterior difference, the ways in which they posit resistance as providing the crisis to closure of hegemonic western science and the ways in which this resistance fails to meet the promise of crisis.</p>
<p>Section II (<strong>Mapping Transitions</strong>) explores in detail the responses to science and technology in feminist and gender work in India. Here, Asha presents an ‘attitude’ to technology as discrete from ‘man’. Feminist and gender work in India have articulated four responses to technology across state and civil society positions. These being the presence of women as agents of technological change, the demand for improved access for women to the fruits of technology, the demand for inclusion of women as a constituency that must be specifically provided for by technological amendments a need for recognition of technology’s ills particularly for women and the consequent need for resistance to technology on the same count.</p>
<p>Keeping in mind that woman’s lived experiences have served as the vantage point for all four of the responses to technology in the Indian context, Asha suggests the need to revisit the idea of such experience itself, and the ways in which it might be made critical, rather than valorising it as an official counterpoint to scientific knowledge, and by extension to technology. Section III (<strong>Working towards an Alternative</strong>) does not address the ‘technology question’ in a direct sense but makes an effort to make that exploration.</p>
<p>Asha concludes by saying that she treats technology as a part of the philosophy of modern western science and the relationship between technology and bodies is the more obvious relationship upon which the formulations of human-technology relationships are built.</p>
<p>Download the monograph <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Re:Wiring Bodies">here</a> [PDF, 2.58 MB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies'>https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies</a>
</p>
No publisherAsha AchuthanRAW PublicationsInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at WorkPublications2015-04-14T12:49:46ZBlog EntryPrivacy IT Act
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.pdf
<b>pdf</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPublications2011-08-21T13:43:02ZFilePrivacy and IT Act (PDF)
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it.pdf
<b>pdf</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it.pdf'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPublications2011-08-21T16:17:47ZFilePrivacy and IT Act (ODT)
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.odt
<b>open office</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.odt'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/publications/privacy-it-act.odt</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPublications2011-08-21T13:52:15ZFile