Centre for Internet and Society

Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-11-01T13:23:54Z

The Wikipedia India Community Consultation 2014 was organized by the Wiki Media Foundation (WMF) and Wikipedia India Chapter in collaboration with Centre for Internet Society (CIS A2K) Bangalore on The venue was Movenpick Hotel and scheduled for October 4th and 5th here.

The article was published in the Siasat Daily on October 24, 2014.

The objectives of the meet up according to the organizers are “to share views and preferences on the most effective ways to pursue our shared vision of creating and sharing free knowledge in India and in the Indian languages, and to arrive at an agreement on a road map for a future where its resources are better utilized, its volunteers are better served and progress on its mission is more steadily attained. “

I reached Bangalore on 3rd October and invited Urdu speaking people and the Urdu media from Bangalore for a general meet up. Mr. Azeez Belgaumi a renowned Urdu Poet & writer and Mr. Syed Tanveer Ahmed, as senior Journalist heading “Karnataka Muslims” News portal approached me and we had a good conversation to know more about Urdu Wikipedia. They appreciated Wikipedia and promised to extend their support to the Urdu Wikipedia.

Mr. Syed Tanveer Ahmed and Mr. Azeez Belgaumi promised to take up the initiative to conduct some Wiki workshops in collaboration with Salam foundation and CIS A2K. Mr. Vishnu the Project Director CIS has also agreed to extend his best support to organize the outreach programmes in Bengaluru and other parts of India to develop Urdu Wikipedia.

An introductory meeting was held in the evening of 3rd October in which members of WMF and the Wikipedians representing languages viz. English, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Konkani, Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, and Gujarati attended.

On 4th October after noon the scheduled meet up was conducted wherein WMF Senior Director Grantmaking Mrs. Anasuya Sengupta from US, Head of Wikimedia Grants & Global South Partnerships Mr. Asaf Bartov from US, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Garfiled Byrd from France and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees Mr. Petricio Lorente from Argentina Trustee Bishakha Datta participated. Mr. Gagan Sethi from Counterviews Gujarat facilitated the programme.

The Indic language bureaucrats, sysops and representatives participated actively and focused on the topic how to improve the Wikipedia in Indic languages. This session gone up to 7 p.m. and in the night too, the delegates had the get together to discuss on various issued related to Wikimedia programmes in India.

On the 5th October morning the work shop continued with dignified discussions. Various user groups from different languages took part and presented their views and successes. The discussions focused on wiki tools, various practical problems, do’s and don’ts. It’s a fabulous meet to take part, comprehend, and show the spirit of volunteerism towards Wikipedia.

During discussion on Urdu language, Mr. Asaf appreciated the contributions of Mr. Muhammad Shuaib. Mr. Nisar Ahmed Syed administrator in Telugu Wikipedia represented Urdu Wikipedia too as he is a contributor to Urdu Wikipedia. He discussed issues and stressed the need of outreach and developmental activities for Urdu Wikipedia in India. Mr. Muzammil Ahmed from Hindi and Urdu Wikipedia advocated its importance.

Ms. Anasuya and Mr. Asaf Bartov accepted the need of Urdu Wiki development programmes in India and they said they are ready to prepare a road map for the same.

Finally with the initiations of Mr. Nisar Ahmed Syed and with the kind cooperation of Mr. Asaf Bartov and Mrs. Anasuya Sengupta, an Urdu user group was set and introduced. The user group initially was gathered by backing of Mr. Asaf Bartov. The group has Mr. Syed Nisar Ahmed (Pune), Mr. Muzammil Ahmed (Hyderabad), Mr. Azeez Belgaumi (Bengaluru) and Mr. Satdeep Gil (Punjab).

The contributions of Muzammil Ahmed and Nisar Ahmed to Urdu Wikipedia were appreciated. The WMF team thanked all the Urdu users from India who rendered their best contributions.

Emphasis was laid to improve the Urdu Wikipedia India group.

As WMF intends to focus on the online encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA in the Indian languages Urdu users too expressed willingness to work for the mother tongue Urdu by enriching Urdu Wikipedia.

Mr. Nisar Ahmed said, “It is true that the awareness among the Urdu speaking community about Urdu Wikipedia is very less.” He emphasized the need to take a small step to lead to a large extent to bring awareness by means of outreach programmes, meet ups, seminars. It was accepted and appreciated to initiate outreach work among the Urdu speaking states and clusters in India.

In India about 450 newspapers and magazines are being published in Urdu language. And it is an amazing fact that many of the Urdu newspapers are using the Wikipedia as their source material from English Wikipedia as it has a large and authentic content, but they are not aware about the need to enrich Urdu Wikipedia. It should be known that everyone can edit, resource and enrich it. Hence it is decided to start a user group for Urdu Wikipedia India and to bring the same message to the masses.

“Bring Urdu Wikipedia from budding stage to a blooming stage.”Courtesy:Karnataka Muslims

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/siasat-daily-october-24-2014-wiki-media-foundation-keen-on-developing-urdu-wikipedia

Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-11-01T13:29:32Z

The article by Nisar Ahmed Syed was originally published on the website of Karnataka Muslims on October 22, 2014.

India Community Consultation 2014 held in Bangalore

Ms. Anasuya and Mr. Asaf Bartov accepted the need of Urdu Wiki development programmes in India and they said they are ready to prepare a road map for the same.

The contributions of Muzammil Ahmed and Nisar Ahmed to Urdu Wikipedia were appreciated. The WMF team thanked all the Urdu users from India who rendered their best contributions.

Emphasis was laid to improve the Urdu Wikipedia India group.

As WMF intends to focus on the online encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA in the Indian languages Urdu users too expressed willingness to work for the mother tongue Urdu by enriching Urdu Wikipedia.

“Bring Urdu Wikipedia from budding stage to a blooming stage.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/karnataka-muslims-nisar-ahmed-syed-october-22-2014-wiki-media-foundation-keen-on-developing-urdu-wikipedia

Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia

dorothy — 2014-07-25T10:56:38Z

Since Wikipedia’s gender gap first came to light in late 2010, Wikipedians have taken the issue to heart, developing projects with a focus on inclusivity in content, editorship and the learning environments relevant to new editors.

Click to read the original published on Wikimedia blog here.

Wiki Loves Pride started from conversations among Wikipedians editing LGBT topics in a variety of fields, including history, popular culture, politics and medicine, and supporters of Wikimedia LGBT - a proposed user group which promotes the development of LGBT-related content on Wikimedia projects in all languages and encourages LGBT organizations to adopt the values of free culture and open access. The group has slowly been building momentum for the past few years, but had not yet executed a major outreach initiative. Wiki Loves Pride helped kickstart the group’s efforts to gather international supporters and expand its language coverage.

Pride Edit-a-Thons and Photo Campaigns Held Internationally

We decided to run a campaign in June (LGBT Pride Month in the United States), culminating with a multi-city edit-a-thon on June 21. We first committed to hosting events in New York City and Portland, Oregon (our cities of residence), hoping others would follow. We also gave individuals the option to contribute remotely, either by improving articles online or by uploading images related to LGBT culture and history. This was of particular importance for users who live in regions of the world less tolerant of LGBT communities, or where it may be dangerous to organize LGBT meetups.

We decided to run a campaign in June (LGBT Pride Month in the United States), culminating with a multi-city edit-a-thon on June 21. We first committed to hosting events in New York City and Portland, Oregon (our cities of residence), hoping others would follow. We also gave individuals the option to contribute remotely, either by improving articles online or by uploading images related to LGBT culture and history. This was of particular importance for users who live in regions of the world less tolerant of LGBT communities, or where it may be dangerous to organize LGBT meetups.

In addition to New York City and Portland, offline events were held in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., with online activities in Houston, Seattle, Seoul, South Africa, Vancouver, Vienna and Warsaw. Events will be held in Bangalore and New Delhi later this month as part of the Centre for Internet and Society’s (CIS) Access to Knowledge (A2K) program. Other Wikimedia chapters have expressed interest in hosting LGBT edit-a-thons in the future.

Campaign Results

The campaign’s “Results” page lists 90 LGBT-related articles which were created on English Wikipedia and links to more than 750 images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Also listed are new categories, templates and article drafts, along with “Did you know” (DYK) hooks that appeared on the Main Page and policy proposals which may be of interest to the global LGBT community.

The campaign also attracted participation from Wikimedia projects other than Wikipedia. Wikimedia Commons hosted an LGBT photo challenge, which received more than 50 entries and an LGBT task force was created at Wikidata. So far the group, which also seeks to improve LGBT-related content, has gathered 10 supporters and has adopted a rainbow-colored variation of the Wikidata logo as its symbol.

	Continuing Efforts Our hope is that the campaign will continue to grow and evolve, galvanizing participation in more locations and in different languages. Wiki Loves Pride organizers will continue to provide logistical support to those interested in hosting events and collaborating with cultural institutions. Contiguous with the events of Wiki Loves Pride, Wikimedia LGBT has an open application to achieve user group status from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee and looks forward to expanding its members and efforts on all fronts.

Continuing Efforts

Our hope is that the campaign will continue to grow and evolve, galvanizing participation in more locations and in different languages. Wiki Loves Pride organizers will continue to provide logistical support to those interested in hosting events and collaborating with cultural institutions.

Contiguous with the events of Wiki Loves Pride, Wikimedia LGBT has an open application to achieve user group status from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee and looks forward to expanding its members and efforts on all fronts.

Jason Moore, Wikipedian

Dorothy Howard, Wikipedian

Copyright notes: "SF Pride 2014 - Stierch 6.jpg" by SarahStierch , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons, "Portland Pride 2014 - 036.JPG" by Another Believer , under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikimedia-blog-dorothy-howard-wiki-loves-pride-2014-and-adding-diversity-to-wikipedia

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

Pavan Santhosh — 2017-06-07T09:24:35Z

On the 60th anniversary of the movie Mayabazar, Telugu Wikimedians celebrated Wiki Loves Mayabazar, an event to commemorate the cult Telugu film Mayabazar. As part of the celebrations, an edit-a-thon of the same name was held at Ravindra Bharathi in Hyderabad. Interestingly, the Cultural Department of Telangana Government sponsored the entire event.

In the Telugu speaking regions, there is a well-known appreciation of the cinematic arts. Mayabazar, released in 1957 captured the imagination of fans like no other film had before. Telugu Wikipedians decided to pay tribute to the movie by improving articles and content related to it on Telugu Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

The edit-a-thon was held on 30 April, 2017 at the monthly Wikimitra Vedika meetup of Telugu Wikipedians. A screening of the film took place followed by discussions on references, citations, film studies and articles related to the film. From 1 May 2017, the edit-a-thon took place online.

There were 15 participants of which only one member was female. Telugu Wikipedian, Kasyap hoped for more participation as this "is an interesting event."

However, the event was made popular by the wide ranging media coverage in print and electronic media.

Media pieces on the event:

1. ‘మాయాబజార్‌’కు వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి

(Eenadu Newspaper; 1 May, 2017)

2.‘మాయాబజార్’కు 60 ఏళ్లు.. వినూత్న షష్టిపూర్తి వేడుకకు సిద్ధమవుతున్న వికీపీడియన్లు! (Ap7am.com; 1 May 2017)Wiki Loves Mayabazaar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-loves-mayabazaar

Wiki donors

praskrishna — 2013-07-01T04:19:13Z

Time Out finds out what Wikipedia’s doing to turn the info mammoth Kannada friendly

The article by Akhila Seetharaman was published in TimeOut Bengaluru on June 21, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja are quoted.

Some Wikipedia numbers: Two hundred and eighty-six languages, 42 lakh articles in English. 2.6 crore articles totally. One lakh articles in Hindi, 50,000 in Telugu and Tamil each. Forty thousand in Marathi; 30,000 in Malayalam; 14,000 articles in Kannada. Number of Kannada Wikipedia contributors: 25. Kannadaspeaking population: 47 million. “That’s half a person working to build this public knowledge repository for every million Kannada speakers,” said Vishnu Vardhan, who directs the Access for Knowledge programme in India, a programme that is anchored by the Centre for Internet and Society. “While Hindi Wikipedia gets 60 lakhs page views per month, Kannada gets nine lakh eyeballs monthly.”

Vardhan and his team do outreach programmes, training college studentsin Karnataka on Wikipedia and encouraging them to contribute to its growing body of knowledge in Kannada. So far they’ve had 16 programmes and reached out to 2,500 people. Vardhan admits that there’s a mixed response. “It’s not a labour of love for everyone. Some people are excited to contribute, others feel it’s too much work.”

But he believes it’s important to get across the main message: that Wikipedia is a public knowledge infrastructure for the future. “In our minds libraries, books, newspapers, archives are knowledge repositories,” he said. “But the book is a relatively recent phenomenon, only about a hundred years old. And now everything is becoming the Internet. What is going to happen to our language or culture in the digital era?” Vardhan explains to people that this is the gap they could be filling by taking part in Indian language Wikipedia.

On the agenda for the coming year is growing the content in five Indian language Wikipedias, including Kannada. It’s a gargantuan task. Nobody gets paid to write on Wikipedia and there are technical challenges: you need browser support, Kannada fonts, and most keyboard layouts are in English. But as Vardhan says the Kannada font can be downloaded for free.

But free knowledge communities in each language have to overcome hurdles if there’s to be a valuable repository of knowledge for the public in Indian languages. “We are all netizens. We are all educated, metro people. We’re comfortable accessing the Internet but how many of us use it in our own language? Do we type in Kannada or write in Kannada? While access to knowledge happens in English there is still a large population that does its business in Kannada,” he said. Visit kn.wikipedia.org.

Tech’s messages
UB Pavanaja was among the first eggheads to take Kannada content online. Time Out spoke to him about the city’s lingo

Could you tell us about a little about yourself?
I worked as a scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Mumbai for 15 years before getting into the emerging field of computers and Indian languages. I started the first Kannada website, and the first Kannada online magazine. I also created the first Indian language version (Kannada) of Logo software, a popular programming language for children and advised the Government of Karnataka on standarising Kannada on computers. I now work with the Centre for Internet and Society as part of the Access to Knowledge team.

How has Kannada changed in the past two decades?
There have been lots of changes. It is mostly Kanglish now, no more Kannada. Most people have replaced common Kannada words like “appa”, “amma”, “anna”, “akka”, “chikkappa”, “atte”, with dad, mom, bro, sis, uncle, aunty. Nobody uses Kannada numbers. Go to any shop and the shopkeeper will give you the price in English and not in Kannada. Even the display boards in shops are now in English. Common vegetables and fruits names are now displayed in English. I don’t know the names of common vegetables and fruits in English so I can’t rely on the boards for information. I either know the vegetable by looking at it or I don’t. If the price board is moved slightly, then I won’t know the price of the vegetable. For example, in Reliance Fresh, they write “coccinea” for our common vegetable which we know as “tondekaayi”. Let them write coccinea in English script. But why do they write that in Kannada script?

How have information and communication technologies influenced Kannada language over the years? About ten or 15 years ago when developments in IT were rapid, the implementation of Kannada in IT was not keeping pace with time. Hence people thought it was not possible to use Kannada in IT. But that has changed now. Whatever is possible with English in IT is now possible with Kannada also. But people lack awareness and willingness to adopt it. Wherever there is computerisation, it is automatically in English and not Kannada. For, example, the online booking of tickets by KSRTC is in English only. Technically it is now possible to develop a data-driven website in Kannada. But KSRTC is not willing to do so.

Any Kannada lingo that didn’t exist two decades?
There are many. Some samples: “message maadu”, “delete maadu”, “missed call kodu”, “update maadu”, “copy maadu”. Most of them are derived from using technology.

What have been the biggest influences on the Kannada language in recent times?
Mobile phones, smart phones, FM radio, TV channels, and movies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/timeout-bengaluru-akhila-seetharaman-june-21-2013-wiki-donors

Why Parallel Importation of Books Should Be Allowed

pranesh — 2019-02-01T17:41:26Z

There has been much controversy lately with some publishers trying to stop the government from amending s.2(m) of the Indian Copyright Act, clarifying that a parallel import will not be seen as an "infringing copy". This blog post argues that the government should, keeping in mind the larger picture, still go ahead and legalise parallel imports.

[Updated Wednesday, February 2, 2011, to respond to Thomas Abraham's extensive and thoughtful rebuttal of the earlier version this post.]

First off, here is the controversial clause, with the proposed amendment (the insertion of a "proviso", in legalese) being emphasised in bold font-face:

The amendment

2(m) "infringing copy" means,—

    (i) in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, a reproduction thereof otherwise than in the form of a cinematographic film;

    (ii) in relation to a cinematographic film, a copy of the film made on any medium by any means;

    (iii) in relation to a sound recording, any other recording embodying the same sound recording, made by any means;

    (iv) in relation to a programme or performance in which such a broadcast reproduction right or a performer's right subsists under the provisions of this Act, the sound recording or a cinematographic film of such programme or performance, if such reproduction, copy or sound recording is made or imported in contravention of the provisions of this Act;

Provided that a copy of a work published in any country outside India with the permission of the author of the work and imported from that country shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy.

Some claim that this amendment to s.2(m) ("provided that... copy") has the potential to destroy the publishing industry. The most lucid explanation of this was in a recent op-ed by Thomas Abraham in the Hindustan Times, very ominously titled The Death of Books. However it seems to us that the publishing industry—especially foreign publishers with distributorships in India—don't want to open themselves up to competition in the distribution market, and are opposing this most commendable move.

What is parallel importation?

Before getting into explanations of why allowing for parallel importation is good, and how the arguments otherwise fall short, we should examine what parallel importation is.

"Parallel import, insofar as copyright is concerned, involves an “original” copyright product (i.e. produced by or with the permission of the copyright owner in the manufacturing country) placed on the market of one country, which is subsequently imported into a second country without the permission of the copyright owner in the second country. For instance, the copyright owner of a book produced in India places the book on the market in India. A trader buys 100 copies of the book from India and imports them to China without the permission of the copyright owner of the book in China. This act of the trader bringing the books into China is called parallel import, the legality of which depends on the copyright law of the importing country (namely China in this example)." (Consumers International, Copyright and Access to Knowledge: Policy Recommendations on Flexibilities in Copyright Laws 23 (2006).)

Some fear-mongers try to equate parallel importation with 'anarchy' in markets, and some confusedly claim that this amendment would allow infringing copies of books would be permitted. That is simply not true. For parallel importation to be said to happen, the sale must itself be legal. If it is an an illegally sold copy (a pirated copy of a book, for instance) that is imported, then it will count as a black market import—not as a parallel import. Allowing for parallel imports will only dismantle monopoly rights over importation, and the amendment makes that amply clear.

Harms on existing books of not allowing parallel importation

Libraries/second-hand bookshops/consumers have no way of knowing if a book was originally imported legally or not, since there is no easy way of telling a parallel-ly imported copy apart from a exclusively imported copy. If one of them, even unknowingly buys/sells a foreign edition about which they am not sure and it turns out it was not legally imported (and there are literally thousands of such books, and I personally own at least a couple dozen foreign editions bought from various second-hand bookshops) then they are committing copyright infringement.

This precisely was argued by the library associations and others in amici briefs to the US Supreme Court in the Costco v. Omega case. For instance, the brief for the the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libaries, and the Association of Research Libraries in Support of Petitioner argues that:

By restricting the application of [the first sale doctrine] to copies manufactured in the United States, the Ninth Circuit’s decision threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections. Over 200 million books in U.S. libraries have foreign publishers. Moreover, many books published by U.S. publishers were actually manufactured by printers in other countries. Although some books indicate on their copyright page where they were printed, many do not. Libraries, therefore, have no way of knowing whether these books comply with the Ninth Circuit’s rule. Without the certainty of the protection of the first sale doctrine, librarians will have to confront the difficult policy decision of whether to continue to circulate these materials in their collections in the face of potential copyright infringement liability. For future acquisitions, libraries would be able to adjust to the Ninth Circuit’s narrowing of [the first sale doctrine] only by bearing the significant cost of obtaining a “lending license” whenever they acquired a copy that was not clearly manufactured in the United States.

and, the brief for the Public Knowledge, American Association of Law Libraries, American Free Trade Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association in Support of Petitioner states:

The uncertainty created by the Ninth Circuit’s holding [against parallel importation] will harm used bookstores, libraries, yard sales, out-of-print book markets, movie and video game rental markets, and innumerable other secondary markets. Owners of copyright works or goods containing copyrighted elements manufactured abroad will be unable to dispose of these products without authorization at the risk of liability under copyright law’s extensive damages provisions. Furthermore, the chilling effects of the Ninth Circuit’s holding will extend beyond works manufactured abroad. Owners of copies of works will be unable to determine whether they are protected by [the first sale doctrine], as they will not always know where their goods were manufactured. Copyright holders will have little incentive to make clear the location of manufacturing of their copyrighted works,3 as greater uncertainty means a greater ability to sell the right to distribute the goods within the United States. Secondary market sellers who cannot afford to purchase this right will be unable to do business unless they are prepared to engage in lengthy and expensive litigation with an uncertain result. A wide variety of important secondary markets in copyrighted works and goods with copyrighted elements will suffer without the protection of the first sale doctrine.

Benefits of parallel importation

Dismantling distribution monopoly rights

The benefits that will accrue from allowing for parallel importations are huge. Currently a large percentage of educational books in India are imported, but with different companies having monopoly rights in importation of different books. If this was opened up to competition, the prices of books would drop, since one would not need to get an authorization to import books—the licence raj that currently exists would be dismantled—and Indian students will benefit. This is especially important for students and for libraries because even when low-priced editions are available, they are often of older editions.

Allowing people to import goods without permissions (with appropriate duties) is taken for granted in all other areas, so why not copyrighted works? After all, it is not the act of publication that gets affected, but the right of exclusive distribution. And if that goes away after first sale internationally, that's not a bad thing at all.

Generally, there are two main benefits of allowing for parallel importation: faster introduction of the latest international releases into the domestic country, and lowered prices by decreasing the costs imposed by a monopoly right over distribution.

All the foreign books that an online bookseller like Flipkart delivers in India are procured from international sources. Without parallel importation, Flipkart will have to ask for permission from the book publishers for each foreign book each time it makes a sale. This would cripple Flipkart's business model.

Helping book publishers

Book publishers will be benefited by parallel importation, just as they are benefited by the existence of libraries and second-hand book stores. Libraries and second-hand book stores help with market segmentation, providing access to people who can't afford expensive books at much lower rates, often free. However, the existence of second-hand book stores in almost every city in India—I have personally bought second-hand books everywhere from Jhansi (Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace) to Delhi's Darya Ganj market (Edmund Wilson's Letters on Literature and Politics)—does not prevent me from buying books first hand. Indeed, Wilson's Letters is out of print, and cannot be bought in a store like Crosswords or Gangaram's.

Why do I emphasise second-hand books and libraries? They are artefacts of something variously known as the "first sale doctrine" or the "doctrine of exhaustion" in copyright law: After the first sale of a book, subsequent sales, rentals, etc., cannot be controlled by the copyright owner. Parallel importation is simply a matter of applying this doctrine to the first sale of the book internationally rather than its first sale in India.

Thus we see that the existence of second-hand books, libraries, and parallel imports, are all dependent on the same rule of copyright law: the first sale doctrine. This doctrine is enshrined in s.14(b)(iv) of the Indian Copyright Act, and has been interpreted by the Delhi High Court to mean first sale in India. The present amendment changes that to mean first sale internationally.

The introduction of the modern "public library" in the mid-19th century led to a surge in literacy, readership, and book sales, and not a decline. Similarly, there is no reason to suppose that allowing parallel importations will lead to a decline in book sales.

Helping libraries and the print-disabled

Even currently, many people buy books directly from abroad and have them shipped to India. This is especially necessary for libraries whose patrons—scholars and students—very often need access to the latest books. Currently, libraries often buy books from abroad from Amazon, Flipkart, Alibris, etc. Such acts, within a strict reading of the law, are not legal, since they fall afoul of s.51(b)(iv), since the import is not for the "private and domestic use" of the libraries. This is also of especial concern for organizations working with print-disabled individuals, since the number of books legally available domestically in formats accessible by the print-disabled is very small, and often need to be imported.

Helping all consumers

An excellent report was prepared in 2006 by Consumers International, in which they studied the costs of textbooks in eleven countries, including India, by average purchasing power of each country's citizens, instead of absolute cost. Based on that study, and a detailed investigation of international treaties on copyright and the flexibilities allowed in them, Consumers International recommended that India should amend our law to make it clear that parallel importation of copyrighted works is legal (on page 51 of the report).

Rebutting objections

I will address a few specific objections raised by Mr. Abraham, Nandita Saikia, and others.

1. Authors' won't lose out on royalties

Authors do not lose out on royalties because of parallel importation, just as they do not lose out on royalties because of libraries, nor because of second-hand book stores. For parallel importation to take place, the books have to be purchased legally, and that first sale itself ensures that authors are paid royalties.

Of course, publishing contracts often have a clause that remaindered books will not garner royalties. But in that case, the problem is not parallel importation, but the overstocking and subsequent remaindering of books. The authors wouldn't be paid (or would be paid very little) for remaindered books even if the books weren't imported into India. Parallel importation does not in any way change that.

Indian authors

There is a worry that an Indian author would be hit if remaindered copies of his/her books started entering the Indian market. That would mean that foreign publishers had overstocked that Indian author's book, i.e., that the expectation from the book was much higher than the actual demand. If this happens infrequently, then the author hasn't much to worry about (since remainders aren't a big problem). If it happens frequently, then firstly the publisher should re-adjust to the market and realize that demand is low. Secondly, the author needs to worry more about quality of the book (and whether it caters to foreign audiences) than the possible effects that the availability of cheaper copies of that book would have.

2. Remaindered books are in publishers' control

India has amongst the cheapest book prices in the world. Then why would book publishers be wary of even cheaper books overrunning the Indian market? The reason, Mr. Abraham tells us, is remaindered books. He believes that remaindered books have the potential to destroy the Indian book market. Remaindering of books has been happening for decades. If remaindered books haven't already destroyed all book markets worldwide, then it is unlikely that they will do so suddenly just because parallel importation of books is permitted in India.

Remainders happen because of a miscalculation by the publisher: expecting more demand than was actually present. What happens with that excess stock is controlled by the publishers. They can choose to pulp them, burn them, or even push them into other channels of commerce that Mr. Abraham points out exist in the mature, frontline markets where remaindering happens:

And the reason why they have not destroyed book markets worldwide is because the mature markets exist with multiple strands (chains and high street stores, independents, direct sellers, online sellers, and supermarkets)—so a direct seller will sell the same book a high street store is selling at a much reduced price without it affecting the business of each strand. Each strand is discrete and price sensitivity does not matter the same way.

Since those multiple strands of commerce exist, each of which would enable the seller to get a better profit (being in a developed country) than in India, there is no reason to fear overrunning of the market with remainders.

3. Dumping of books should be tackled separately

An extension of the remaindered books concern is that of India becoming a land where all books will be dumped. This hasn't happened in case of countries like New Zealand, Mexico, Chile, Egypt, Cameroon, Pakistan, Argentina, Israel, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and a host of other countries, all of which allow for parallel importation of books. In a 1998 judgment, the United States Supreme Court, some parallel imports of copyrighted goods were legal. That ruling did not cause the downfall of the US book market, despite cheaper books being available outside the US. Australia has allowed for parallel importation of books in one form or another since 1991 (when the law was changed to allow for all parallel of all books that weren't introduced in the Australian market within 30 days of it being released elsewhere in the world). New Zealand did a study after removing the ban on parallel importation, and declared that cheaper books were available on a more timely basis than previously. None of these countries have been overrun by grey market books.

Customs laws are better suited

Even assuming that this fear is well-founded, copyright law is not the best way to deal with the problem. Dumping of books should be regulated by customs laws (anti-dumping and countervailing duties). Using copyright law to regulate apprehended book dumping practices (which might not even happen) is like using a trawler hoping to catch only shrimp: it is naive to think that there won't be unintended bycatch, and the consequences can be disastrous for the knowledge environment in case of books.

Customs laws are more flexible because they are imposed by the executive, and unlike copyright law, can be more easily changed as per requirements. So even if copyright law allows for parallel importation of copyrighted works, a special case can be made out by publishers in case of trade publishing, for instance, and that can be targetted specifically by imposing duties. However, the inverse cannot happen, since we are not aware of any mechanism whereby libraries, consumers and others can get to 'override' the provision in the Copyright Act.

Additionally, these duties can be made to operate only if the book is already being sold in India; these duties can be made to operate only on new books. A ban on parallel importation, on the other hand will apply equally to books that are out of print, to books that the original copyright owner has not even granted an exclusive Indian distributorship and are not even being sold in India. It goes right to the heart of freedom of speech, which the Supreme Court has held includes the right to receive information.

4. Non-printing of low-priced editions for India because of "unsecure" market won't happen

Parallel importation, which is what the amendment to s.2(m) allows for, affects only importation. It does not in any way affect publication in India or exports. Exporting low-priced Indian editions to countries which allow for parallel importation of books, is currently of doubtful legality. [Update: Earlier an incorrect claim was made in this post that such export was legal. The legal status is not that clear. While there is a Delhi High Court case that makes exports of low-priced editions illegal in the context of sale to the United States, it specifically states that the decision does not depend on whether India allows for parallel importation or not.] The amendment does not change that position, for reasons explained at greater length in a separate post. The incentives to print low-priced editions hence does not decrease. If anything it will increase because currently books that are not available as low-priced editions cannot be imported without exclusive licensing, and with a change in this position, the incentive to compete in the form of low-priced editions will increase.

Indeed, even before that 2009 Delhi High Court judgment prohibiting exports to the United States, many low-priced editions were being printed in India. And even before the 2005 Bombay High Court judgment prohibiting parallel imports, many low-priced editions were being printed in India. This won't change, regardless of the law, because India is an increasingly profitable and expanding market, and low-priced editions are a necessity in this market due to lower average income.

5. Rhetoric flourish and the law: Open and closed markets

Mr. Abraham asks how many authors one can name from open markets like Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as a sign of the 'history of creativity' in each of these countries and territories. It might be just as well to ask how many authors he can name from closed markets like Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Jordan, and Ukraine. One's ability to name authors from a country has less to do with the open/closed nature of its market and more to do with one's general knowledge.

Additionally, the 'mature' markets which he wishes India to emulate—United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia—are more ambiguous on parallel importation than he would have us believe. In the United States, the legality of a segment of parallel importation of copyrighted goods reached the United States Supreme Court in Quality King v. L'anza in 1998, in which the court held in favour of the importer.

The question reached the US Supreme Court again last year in Costco v. Omega, but the court split on it 4-4, and did not deliver a binding precedent on parallel importation. Thus, for all intents and purposes, under copyright law, the United States is an open market.

In the United Kingdom, as per European Union law, parallel importation is permitted from anywhere within the EU. And in Australia, parallel importation of parallel goods is largely allowed, with some conditions to encourage faster publishing in Australia of foreign books.

Most importantly, none of the markets held up as role models are developing countries. India is. This makes all the difference, as the Consumers International report underscores.

Standing Committee consultations

Lack of wide consultation

On one point we are in complete agreement with Mr. Abraham, which is his point regarding lack of adequate consultation. While there was a good amount of consultation during the drafting stage, when a wide-ranging public consultation was held in 2006, this was not repeated in 2010 by the Standing Committee. Further, the Standing Committee only gave fifteen days for responses to its call for comments.

Publishers were represented

While Mr. Abraham states that only the Authors Guild was represented before the Standing Committee, by going through the report prepared by it, we see that the Federation of Indian Publishers and the Association of Publishers in India were also called to testify before the Standing Committee.

Libraries, students, consumers were not represented

However, while the authors supported it, and the publishers opposed it, no one got to hear the voice of the readers, the students, the libraries, the book buyers. For instance, not a single consumer rights organization or library association was called before the Standing Committee. Internationally, organizations like Consumers International, the International Federation of Library Associations, and EIFL (an international library organization) are invited to meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization and their views are taken with seriousness as they are a very important part of the copyright environment.

Department's and Standing Committee's reasoning

We reproduce below four paragraphs from the Standing Committee's report, which elucidate many of the reasons for going in for this particular amendment.

7.10
All the reservations/objections raised by the various stakeholders [including the Federation of Indian Publishers and the Association of Publishers in India, whose objections are quoted in an earlier paragraph of the report -ed.] were taken up by the Committee with the Department with the intent of having full understanding of the background necessitating the proposed amendment and its exact impact on the various stakeholders. As clarified by the Department, the main purpose of this amendment was to allow for imports of copyright materials (e.g. books) from other countries. It was in accordance with Article 6 of the TRIPS Agreement relating to exhaustion of rights whereunder developing countries could facilitate access to copyright works at affordable cost. Exhaustion of rights (popularly called as parallel import) was a legal mechanism used to regulate prices of IPR protected materials. This was viable only if the price of the same works in the Indian market was very high when compared to the price in other countries from where it was imported to India.

7.11
Committee's attention was drawn to the fact that majority of educational books used in India were imported from other countries particularly from US and EU. There was an increasing tendency by publishers to give territorial licence to publish the books at very high rates. The low price editions were invariably the old editions than the latest ones. This provision would compel the Indian publishers to price the works reasonably so that it would not be viable for a distributor to import same works to India from other countries. This would also save India foreign exchange on the payment of royalties (licence fee) by the Indian publishers to foreigners.

7.12
Committee was also given to understand by the representatives of the publishing industry that Scheme of the Copyright Law was entirely different from the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Patent Act, 1970. The application of the standards and principles of these two laws through the proposed amendment of section 2(m) would completely dismantle the business model currently employed, rendering several industries unviable. On a specific query in this regard the Department informed that the concept of international exhaustion provided in section 107 A of the Patent Act, 1971 and in section 30 (3) of the Trademarks Act, 1999 and in section 2 (m) of the copyright law were similar. This provision was in tune with the national policy on exhaustion of rights.

7.13
After analysing the viewpoints of all the stakeholders along with the clarifications given thereupon by the Department, the Committee is of the view that proposed inclusion of the proviso in the definition of the term 'infringing copy' seems to be a step in the right direction, specially in the prevailing situation at the ground level. The present practice of publishers publishing books under a territorial license, resulting in sale of books at very high rates cannot be considered a healthy practice. [Emphasis added.] The Committee also notes that availability of low priced books under the present regime is invariably confined to old editions. It has been clearly specified that only those works published outside India with the permission of the author and imported into India will not be considered an infringed copy. Nobody can deny the fact that the interests of students will be best protected if they have access to latest editions of the books. Thus, apprehensions about the flooding of the primary market with low priced editions, may be mis-founded as such a situation would be tackled by that country's law. [emphasis added.] The Committee would, however, like to put a note of caution to Government to ensure that the purpose for which the amendment is proposed, i.e., to protect the interest of the students is not lost sight of.

Conclusion

It is clear that allowing for parallel imports is not likely to hurt publishers, but will result in an expansion of the reading market. It is mainly foreign publishers' monopoly rights over distribution which will be harmed by this amendment, while Indian publishers, Indian authors, and Indian readers, especially students, will stand to gain. Furthermore, in the long run, even foreign publishers will stand to gain due to market expansion. Any legitimate worries that publishers may have are better dealt with under other laws (such as the Customs Act) and not the Copyright Act.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/parallel-importation-of-books

Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

subha — 2016-05-28T06:52:53Z

On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290 languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million article mark). But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as Indians.

This was published by Huffington Post on January 25, 2016. Also mirrored on Global Voices on February 26, 2016. The post was translated into Greek by Maria Souli. It was translated into Spanish by Daniela Diaz and into Russian by GV Russian

First, what is the state of Indian-language Wikipedia projects? What does India have to take from and give to Wikipedia?

With the growth of free and open source software in India, people are equipped with more freedom than ever. Especially with the recent federal policy-level changes, the nation is enjoying better collaboration with people of different cultures speaking different languages.

According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage.

However, there is a huge gap in the access to knowledge on the internet domain. Of a population of about 1.26 billion only about 15-18% people are connected online, largely from mobile devices. A tiny fraction of this population comprises the technical community. It would be useful to have a metric on the percentage of this community's contribution to grow the languages of this country and its cultural heritage.

Wikipedia as a family

Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia. It is also a "family" of several other Open Knowledge members. Wikipedia itself is available in over 290 languages, but it also has other multilingual sister projects such as Wikisource (an online library of many public domain and other important texts), Wikimedia Commons (the world's largest repository of media files and documents), Wikibooks (a free library of educational textbooks), Wikivoyage (a free and open travel guide) and Wiktionary (a database of various languages).

These projects don't just house millions of images, videos, documents and texts, but allow anyone to contribute their knowledge to this ever deepening pool of information. Four Indian languages made an early entry to the Wiki-world back in 2002 -- Assamese, Malayalam, Odia and Punjabi.

Language neutrality

According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage. It's quite shocking. In a blog post on content localisation, social entrepreneur Rajesh Ranjan asks if free and open source software can help save these dying languages. In the context of Wikipedia, there are already 23 South Asian-language projects. Out of these 20 are languages listed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India. Many might not have noticed that the "en" in the URL of Wikipedia that denotes the language code of English could be altered with "or" for Odia Wikipedia or "pa" for Punjabi Wikipedia.

Most Wikipedia projects in Indian language projects are relatively small compared to their counterparts. But the Wikimedia communities are thriving.

There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages.

When only parts of government websites are available in Hindi, the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already. The Tamil and Malayalam Wikipedia communities have played a central part in implementing Wikipedia basics learning in the state-run school syllabus. Needless to say that these communities have played a significant role in implementing several free and open source software by pushing for policy-level change. Many Indian languages are in the pipeline to become active Wikipedia projects under the scope of the Wikimedia Incubator.

Maithili Wikipedia and Goan Konkani Wikipedia are the two Indian-language Wikipedias that have gone live in recent years. The world has seen how digital activism has brought a new life to the Hebrew language. There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out there to access knowledge in their own languages. Wikipedia could be a great tool for digital activism with openness and sharing.

Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India

India tops South Asia in the gender inequality index in the entire South Asia. The female literacy rate is an alarmingly low 65.46% as compared to 82.14% for men. This disparity is evident in many other sectors as well as in politics.

Digital India aims at digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal....

But gender bias is not just a problem in India. The global free and open source software (FOSS) community has always been worried about the low presence of women contributors -- in the range of 2-5% range. Wikimedia Foundation's former executive director admitted that Wikipedia, like many other collaborative and open projects, does not have a conducive environment for women. But the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation are both working on improving this state of affairs. Indian-language Wikipedia projects are directly impacted by this global drive, be it the Women's History Month edit-a-thon where Wikipedia content largely related to women are improved every year or the Lilavati's Daughters project where biographies of Indian women scientists were created and enriched in Wikipedia projects.

Complementing Digital India

With a population of over 354 million netizens India still has a long way to go in increasing Indian language content on the web. The Government of India's new campaign Digital India aims at digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. This is closely aligned with the Wikimedia movement's goal to provide free access to the sum of all human knowledge. In addition to Wikipedia, many other open educational resources and free knowledge projects that are not already a part of the Digital India campaign signal the need for the federal-run campaign to be more collaborative and open. Community-government collaborations like the NROER project to make NCERT books under Creative Commons licenses and IT@School project in the state of Kerala to provide education using free and open tools have gained massive traction and helped more Indian language content come online.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/huffington-post-subhashish-panigrahi-january-25-2016-why-its-essential-to-grow-indian-language-wikipedias

Why aren’t Indians using Wikipedia to hold the government to account?

praskrishna — 2016-02-14T11:07:49Z

Despite its popularity, the site's benefits are going unutilised.

Madhav Gadgil's post was published by Scroll.in on February 6, 2016. CIS work was quoted.

Thanks to modern science and technology, the treasury of human material as well as intellectual and cultural wealth is overflowing. Enormous quantities of information are exchanged today at lightning speed, and incredible numbers of people separated by great distances are in constant touch with one another. Two contrasts characterise this world: on the one hand, disparities are growing in material wealth, and on the other, there is growing equality in access to informational and cultural resources.

The inequities in material wealth has accelerated the rate of degradation of the natural world, but at the same time progressive laws flowing from equality in intellectual wealth are helping people combat the degradation. This is one reason why, as much as ever, a well-informed citizenry is the lifeblood of social progress. Ensuring that citizens have ready access to reliable information is the prime responsibility of all of us, including obviously of our governments.

Wayward rulers

Regrettably, the government machinery is failing to discharge its responsibility.

Consider, for instance, Maharashtra’s irrigation scam, in which thousands of crores were siphoned off or wasted on dud irrigation projects. The statistics provided at various times by the state’s agriculture and irrigation departments are inconsistent. It is probable that none of them reflect the ground reality. Most rivers in Maharashtra are polluted well beyond legally permissible levels, yet the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board hardly acknowledges this sorry state of affairs. Such pollution often results in mass deaths of fish, but neither the fisheries department nor the Pollution Control Board maintains reliable records.

Or consider these two examples. After the people of Kerala succeeded in moving the government machinery, a committee of the legislature reported that 90% of the stone crushers in the state were operating without permission from local panchayats or without registering with district collectors. Another time, when the Central government-appointed Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel revealed similar irregularities with solid evidence, the Centre first suppressed its report and then, pushed by a Delhi High Court order, made only an English version available. To top it all, the Maharashtra government uploaded on its website a Marathi summary full of distortions.

Clearly then, with the government machinery failing, people must work on their own to bring to light the true state of affairs. Fortunately, our media provides a good deal of reliable information on issues of public interest. For instance, it was newspaper reports that forced the Goa Forest Department to accept the presence of tigers in the state. It is again the media that often records large-scale fish deaths in our rivers.

Such information gets recorded on social media too, but this remains scattered, barring systematic efforts like as the one launched by the Hyderabad-based “Save Our Urban Lakes” coalition. Besides, much of the material on social media like Facebook is often self-centred and prejudiced, making it difficult to ascertain the veracity. On the other hand, newspapers and TV channels are continually exposed to sceptical public scrutiny, ensuring that, by and large, they deliver reliable information.

On balance then, people at large can wean genuine, reliable information only by carefully collating it from newspapers and TV channels, official documents and scientific studies and systematically organising it through some responsible social media.

Starting a discussion

Wikipedia is just such a reliable social medium. It is an entirely voluntary, cooperative, web-based enterprise aimed at freely and readily delivering all the knowledge in the world to all the citizens of the world in their own languages. The platform started off in 2000 with a call to experts to contribute articles on the pattern of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but without any remuneration. When experts showed little interested, Wikipedia was thrown open to citizens in 2001, converting it into an anyone-can-edit enterprise. After all, experts too acquire much of their knowledge reading what others have written.

Wikipedia operates on the understanding that laypeople may make mistakes, but these can be eliminated by ensuring open scrutiny and giving full scope for additions, deletions and corrections. That this system has resulted in material of a quality on a par with expert-written encyclopaedias has been established by studies by respected scientific journals. Moreover, not being constrained by the page limits of a printed encyclopaedia, it has generated greater amount of material with a broader scope.

All this has been achieved due to the dedication of 50,000-odd voluntary editors improving existing and writing new articles. This community of editors follow a set of conventions arrived at over the years through consensus. It has been decided that Wikipedia will not include material based on original observations, but instead verifiable information compiled from published studies or reports. Wikipedia believes in a “neutral point of view” presenting the different perspectives, provided these are supported by good evidence. Besides reliability, Wikipedia articles aim for speed (Wiki means quick). For instance, the article on the December 2004 tsunami was composed in two days through contributions of some 1,000 editors largely relying on newspaper and TV reports.

Every Wikipedia article is accompanied by a “discussion” page, on which a variety of issues can be explored without the strict constraints of neutrality and verifiability. This is in addition to the “discussion” page accompanying the “User” page that automatically gets assigned to anyone who registers on the website as a user. On all these debating platforms the site imposes only one major discipline – that they will not be used for self-promotion or abusing others.

Because of these noteworthy conventions, the information on Wikipedia has acquired a special significance. For instance, in Europe and the United States, it has served to subject the performance of political leaders to careful scrutiny. Biographical articles on leaders often include documentation of the promises made before election and the extent to which these were fulfilled. In the past, whenever agents of these leaders tried to delete unfavourable content, they were caught out quickly because Wikipedia preserves all versions of any article, including a record of the IP address of the computer employed to make changes.

The grassroots

Since Wikipedia is unconstrained by governmental control and cannot be subjected to commercial pressures because of its donation-based ad-free model, it is an outstanding medium to document what is happening on the ground. This information can be accumulated through incremental, asynchronous micro-contributions. In India, it presents an excellent instrument for common citizens to document their experiences and issues of concern on the English and the 21 Indian language editions.

The articles could deal with specific geographical localities such as cities (e.g. Pune), wards in a city (e.g. Kothrud in Pune), villages (e.g. Warkhand in Pedne taluka of Goa), talukas (e.g. Dodoamarg in Maharashtra), districts (e.g. Kolhapur or North Goa), rivers (e.g. Panchaganga, Mula-Mutha, Zuari). All we need is some official information source to initiate such articles. The 2011 Census of India is one such excellent database. Every census locality in this database is assigned a unique Census Location Code.

To explain with an example: each of the many villages named Loni, Wadgaon or Mendha in Maharashtra has a different Census Location Code. Similarly, there is a district and a city in Madhya Pradesh as also a town and a taluka in Karnataka, all sharing the name Sagar. Again, these are assigned four different Census Location Codes. This facility permits us to refer unambiguously to any geographical locality at various spatial scales such as district, taluka or city or village. In addition, on their Wikipedia entries, one could readily add the latitude, longitude and altitude off Google Earth.

As it happens, there exists a code – developed by Prashant Pawar – to automatically generate base articles on census localities. Three such Marathi articles, on villages Haladi (Karavir), Rukadi (Hatkangale) and Parite in the Panchaganga basin of Kolhapur district, have been uploaded on the Marathi Wikipedia.

No less than 40,000 such articles were automatically uploaded on the English Wikipedia around 2003-’04 and were then quickly developed further by other interested citizens. However, that was not the norm. While Bollywood celebrates Wikipedia with Shah Rukh Khan singing Mere bareme Wikipediape padh lo, Indians participate little in editing or creating new Wikipedia articles. For instance, an article on the Pune Bus Rapid Transit System on the English Wikipedia is merely based on an official pamphlet. It ignores the vigorous discussion on the subject, including the many news reports in the past several years. The discussion page accompanying the article is almost blank. Surely, the more aware citizens of Pune could put the powerful medium to good use to provide a more detailed and balanced account of their city’s Rapid Transit System.

Bonding across languages

We could, of course, follow the American pattern of automatically generating articles on all Indian localities covered in the 2011 Census. But Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia – it is a community, and in the absence of awareness about the enterprise, this approach might not be fruitful. The communal effort was visible when the residents of Haladi in Maharashtra initiated a base article on their locality.

Besides creating base articles, interested citizens can upload photographs, audio and video clips on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license, permitting anybody to freely use or modify the material after giving due credit to the original creator. Aside from this, citizens can also augment information on issues of their concern through Right to Information queries or enquiries from forums like zilla parishads, municipalities, state legislatures or the Parliament. The Centre for Internet and Society has developed excellent resource material to support citizens taking up Wikipedia-related activities. A group of volunteers led by Subodh Kulkarni is also promoting this participation, as is Goa University.

Much could be accomplished if Indians become active participants on Wikipedia. People could use their articles and their discussion pages to draw the attention of journalists or scholars to their concerns. For instance, people in the command area of a dam could call attention to the fact that no canals have been constructed to bring water to them. A journalist could then investigate the issue and develop a news story, which in turn could provide a verifiable reference for a Wikipedia article. Such interaction could constitute an effective and transparent social audit. One can visualise an array of topics for a social audit, ranging from the status of wage payments in rural employment guarantee works, pending forest rights claims, encroachment of real estate on river beds, privatisation of public beaches, and availability of public toilets for women.

The newly emerging facility of Wikidata can strengthen this social audit. Wikidata permits integration of data not only from English but from multiple languages, such as Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Kannada. For instance, sacred groves – forest fragments that are communally protected – constitute a traditional conservation practice not only in India, but also in Bhutan, Myanmar and even Nigeria. This tradition is still relevant – indeed, new sacred groves have recently been constituted in villages granted Community Forest Rights such as Pachgaon in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra.

Using Wikidata and keywords such as Devari (Marathi), Devpan (Konkani), Nagarbana or Devarakadu (Kannada), Sarpakavu (Malayalam), Oran (Hindi), one can quickly compile quantitative information on this practice, helping bring together people from across the country. Similarly, using keywords in different languages for a phenomenon such as mass fish mortalities, one may compile systematic information on this phenomenon that Pollution Control Boards deliberately ignore.

Of course, the objective of the Wikipedia enterprise is to compile objective, verifiable information from a neutral point of view and the Wikipedia community will not be involved in any activism. Nevertheless, such an exercise of putting together information could serve a useful function of organising a social audit. This could help, say, scattered members of fishing communities that are adversely affected by pollution-related fish mortalities to organise themselves.

Democratic approach

This is a golden age for those fascinated by knowledge. And Wikipedia is a triumphant manifestation of the age, a progressive enterprise of good-faith collaboration with the noble objective of making all knowledge available to people all over the world. The English Wikipedia has taken giant strides towards such a goal. The key to this success of science has been the rejection of all authority other than empirical facts and logical inferences, and its aim is to engage all those interested in knowledge regardless of their social, economic or educational background. It is this democratic approach that has facilitated the rapid accumulation of knowledge. Yet there are continual attempts by so-called experts to monopolise knowledge.

It is the duty of true lovers of knowledge to resist such attempts. Knowledge has a vast canvas. Our environment, our social settings are legitimate subject matters of knowledge and every citizen can be involved in nurturing it. Wikipedia is an important step in the direction of bringing on board all citizens in the pursuit of knowledge. The ability of the Wikidata facility to bring together knowledge scattered in multiple Indian languages is one manifestation of this progressive development. All of us Indians should join hands in developing a reliable understanding of the nature around us and of our society, polity and economy. This enterprise of taking Wikipedia to the grassroots would be a worthy contribution to the cause of nation building.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/scroll.in-february-6-2016-madhav-gadgil-why-arent-indians-using-wikipedia-to-hold-the-government-to-account

Where is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Headed?

sinha — 2016-09-17T14:15:05Z

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the Asian answer to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is still being furiously scripted.

The blog post was originally published in Spicy IP on September 7, 2016. It can be read here.

The US-led TPP and China-led RCEP were always touted as rivals racing to set global trade standards before the conclusion of the other. Well, TPP gunned ahead and is currently in the ratification phase, where as RCEP is yet to be concluded and talks may very well enter 2017. The latest round of RCEP talks ended last month and paints a worrisome picture for the global south, given that it will bring 3.5 billion people and 12% of world trade into its fold.

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) do not enable zero-sum free trade. In fact, each country leaves with disproportionate gains and losses in their kitty, after the conclusion of the agreement. And the worst casualties are environment, public health, labour rights, SMEs and local markets. Since there is plenty of give and take occurring in a context of fluid foreign policy relations, it becomes imperative to locate the ‘barter’. Last month, Balaji wrote an excellent comparative analysis(I & II) of the RCEP IPR text, and this post complements that. I present a regional overview of negotiations and the impact on course of the agreement, as gathered from press coverage of the meetings and the leaks; and to provide a more wholesome picture of the barters, I discuss other relevant chapters at the end of this post. Further, as the negotiations are conducted in secrecy, different organisations and individuals have ‘leaked’ draft texts. KEI and bilaterals.org are two such organizations that regularly collate and release latest RCEP texts. I rely on RCEP’s IP Chapter(October 15, 2015 version) and Terms of Reference by the Working Group on Electronic Commerce(August 2015 version). Analysing the Telecommunications Services chapter is outside the scope of the post, and I link it here for the interest of our readers.

Impact on E-commerce

What is currently available are the terms for reference establishing the Working Group’s mandate on drafting a chapter on e-commerce. The document acknowledges the need for inclusion of a provision for special and differential treatment, and additional flexibilities to the least developed ASEAN countries. It draws a list of relevant elements for possible inclusion in the RCEP. I reproduce the list here (emphasis supplied is mine):

I. General Provisions

Cooperation
Electronic Supply of Services

II. Trade Faciliation

Paperless Trading
Electronic Signature and Digital Certification

III. Creating a Conducive Environment for Electronic Commerce

Online Consumer Protection
Online Personal Data Protection
Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
Domestic Regulatory Frameworks
Custom Duties
Non-Discriminatory Treatment of Digital Products

IV. Promoting Cross Border Electronic Commerce

Prohibition on Requirements Concerning the Location of Computing Facilities
Prohibition on Requirements Concerning Disclosure of Source Code
Cross- Border Transfer of Information by Electronic Means

While there is no clarity on customs duties, there is a mention of non-discriminatory treatment of digital products. While India has no law on non-discriminatory treatment of digital products, this may conflict with the Indian government’s policy on adoption of open source software for government use.

More alarmingly, the first prohibition restrains governments from mandating data localisation. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) also bar governments from making rules on data localisation, i.e. requiring physical situation of servers and storage in their countries’ territories. This is a worrisome provision because it may effectuate surreptitious surveillance. The prohibition on disclosure of source code is also troublesome and is aimed to stop examination and review of code in computing devices. This would effectively ban security researchers from finding security vulnerabilities in devices, and the if the provision is drafted like its counterpart in the TPP, there will also be prohibitions on checks by regulating authorities.

Re ‘Cross- Border Transfer of Information by Electronic Means’, the provision will be most likely drafted to favour big data and advertising companies’ operations enabling unrestricted transfer of personal data(like the TPP). If that is the case, then it will be in conflict with Rule 7 of the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011, which permits cross-border flow of personal information only in situations where the recipient of the information complies with Indian data protection standards as a bare minimum.

Impact on farmer's seeds

RCEP is bound to hit farmers the worst: not only are countries reducing tariffs for increased import of agricultural products, there also exists an obligation to join the International Union for Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV system), which would mandate members to introduce a new IPR: the breeders’ right over new plant varieties. Japan and Korea want RCEP members to join UPOV 1991, and Japan has proposed criminal penalties for the infringement of breeders’ rights.

While India has applied to become a member to the UPOV Convention, in 2001 it passed the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, and thereby built a sui generis system of protection (ambitiously trying to balance breeders’ rights and farmers’ rights). It will be naive to expect a similar attempt in balanced lawmaking by other countries. Furthermore, “…India’s current legislation is less stringent than UPOV 1991. It allows farmers to continue with their seed practices, except they cannot sell packaged seeds of protected varieties. The space for both small farmers and public breeders to freely work with seeds will be lost of RCEP goes the way of what Korea and Japan are proposing.” Using FTAs to reduce farmers’ freedom has been well documented, and you may read more on that here.

The text also desires all RCEP members to codify traditional knowledge and make it available to various patent offices. This push is widely regarded as problematic, as it is feared that documenting and digitization of existing knowledge may propel companies to use that information for commercial gains, to the detriment of the indigenous people and farming communities. On the other hand, it would be feasible to share such data in a confidential manner with patent offices, as India has done under the TKDL.

Massive reduction in tariffs

Tariffs emerged as an enormous sticking point in the August round, and there was pressure on India to eliminate tariffs completely. India proposed a differential tariff reduction plan, but countries kept pushing for a single-tier plan – particularly Japan. Finally, in what is seen as a big loss, India offered tariff cuts as high as 80% goods trade for all RCEP partners, except China. With China, India said that it was only comfortable with a 65% tariff cut initially, given the skewed trade deficit between China and India. It is worth noting that for India, RCEP will become the first FTA to forge trade partnerships with China, Australia,and New Zealand.

As a result of the heavy concession in tariffs, the Kerala Agriculture Minister has moved a cabinet note, and written a letter to the Centre expressing serious concerns on lowering of tariffs for agricultural products. He also requested to include Kerala in the RCEP pre-negotiation talks.

Staving off ISDS

Provisions on investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) are being pushed by Japan and South Korea. Countries are not convinced about agreeing to this, especially India. In fact, India is in the process of rolling back on bilateral investment treaties, and has already moved for BIT termination with 57 countries. We’ve already seen ISDS being (mis)used by private entities against governments – there have been enough challenges to countries’ IPR laws and policies as well.

Mobilised Movements against the RCEP

Individuals and organizations are advocating for scrapping the RCEP, given the impact that it is expected to have on people’s rights and freedoms. A ‘People’s Strategy Meeting’ last month conducted large-scale sessions to inform civil society organizations, NGOs, trade unions, farmers groups and other peoples’ movements in the Asia-pacific region. Many have also been persistently calling out for a meeting with negotiators of their respective countries and for a public hearing on the RCEP. The Asia Pacific Research Network has released a policy brief on the RCEP, and you may read that here.

The road ahead

Looking at the larger picture, it is evident now that neo-FTAs’ focus on trade has descended into attacks on sovereign states’ economic and social policies.

With respect to the RCEP IPR text, India is trying to eliminate TRIPS plus provisions from the text. And after heavy concessions on the tariff front, it will be bargaining for liberalisation in services in the next rounds. India’s aim is to clinch a deal allowing for free-er movement of its workers and professionals. Further, the negotiations are going to proceed quickly now. Members are becoming desperate to lock down the text, and therefore, this year we will see more rounds than the usual scheduled ones. The urgency is driven largely by Japan and Korea – both of which wish to ratify the TPP soon and would like the RCEP to work in tandem.

In another worrisome development, Phillipines, Thailand and Indonesia have met with US trade officials on what they need to do to join the TPP, once it is implemented. These countries are considering making serious changes to their labour, environmental, IP, and other standards. Yesterday, US Prez. Obama arrived in Vietnam for the Asean summit, trying hard to sell the TPP. Japan and Korea are already TPP members, and if ASEAN countries come under TPP’s fold as well, we may see an upping of standards at the RCEP.

India will have to deploy serious negotiating chops at the upcoming rounds if it is remotely hopeful of steering the RCEP standards away from the TPP.

Author’s note: Added the sentence “On the other hand, it would be feasible to share such data in a confidential manner with patent offices, as India has done under the TKDL.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/spicy-ip-september-7-2016-anubha-sinha-where-is-the-regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership-headed

Whats & Hows of Wiki

praskrishna — 2013-10-25T07:00:23Z

The Kings School students of class 10 were blessed to have Nitika Tandon & Subhashish Panigrahi of Wikipedia Foundation to conduct a workshop on the whats & hows of Wiki, creating & editing Wiki pages, etc. Our students also got a hands on experience, and they edited the Bibinca page on Wiki.

This was published in the King's School Portal on July 26, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-kings-school-july-26-2013-whats-and-hows-of-wiki

What is Wikimedia Education SAARC Conference?

sailesh — 2019-06-22T09:37:23Z

The Wikimedia Education SAARC conference is on 20th June 2019. A conference for Wikimedians, Wikimedia education leaders, educators and researchers engaged with Open Education and free knowledge movement.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the regional union of nations in South Asia. Wikimedians belonging to these nations share several common challenges and many of them are emerging communities within the Wikimedia movement. The community members to attend the Wikimedia Education SAARC conference are involved in Indic language Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia Education SAARC conference will be the first of its kind conference in SAARC countries which will engage Wikimedians, education program leaders, educators and researchers engaged with Open Education and free knowledge movement. We believe that the students of all ages should not only consume the knowledge available on the Internet but also be a part of the larger Open Internet movement, and help in creating open knowledge resources.

The event will be organised in and by the Christ (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru from 20th June 2019 to 22nd June 2019. CIS-A2K team has been working with the department of languages in this university from 2013, where students of the university are contributing to multiple Wikimedia projects. Our education activity at this university has inspired us to plan this event. To know more about this university, Please see here.

This conference will allow us to understand the different efforts made by the SAARC communities involved in the Wikimedia Education movement. This will help us to create models, templates and documents that can be replicated in by other institutions or programs.

Conference Goals:

To know the Wikimedia Education activities happening in South Asia by different community members/Languages.
Sharing the knowledge and best practices of how to build "trust relationship" with new partners/teachers and how to improve trust in Wikimedia projects.
Challenges on student retention and how to engage them in the broader Wikimedia movement.
The best method to evaluate and measure the quality of the work done by the students.
To introduce tools like the dashboard, not in your language, and other tools which will be useful for the tracking, assessment, allocation of the topics and others.

The program structure for Wikimedia Education SAARC conference has been developed by keeping the general and specific challenges and opportunities in South Asia, and the submission selected from the participants.

Follow the hashtag #EduWikiSAARC19 for more updates.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/what-is-wikimedia-education-saarc-conference-1

What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India

subha — 2016-10-22T04:12:40Z

The number of internet users in India was expected to reach 460 million by 2015, as the growth in the previous year was 49 percent. The total number of users for Hindi content alone reached about 60 million last year.

This was published by Your Story on October 20, 2016.

State of Indian languages on the internet

Based on a study, Internet activist Anivar Aravind mentioned that in 2014, although 89 percent of Indian population used mobile phones, only 10 percent of the population used smartphones (contributing to 13 percent of total mobile users). This means we can safely assume that a large section of online activity in India is through mobile devices ‑ thanks to the declining data charges because of high competition. That said the mobile internet connectivity in rural India is growing at a fast pace and vernacular content plays an important role in this great journey. With over 90 percent of the users being comfortable in their own native languages, websites that are producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this bandwagon.

Why open access is important for Indian languages?

Open access, in a nutshell, would mean research outputs and other educational resources that are free from restriction of access and use. The former includes resources like journals that are not paywalled, and the latter is freedom from copyright restriction. Open access as a movement encourages license migration ‑ a process of migrating from several copyrighted license terms to Creative Commons licenses and several other licenses that provide freedom to use, share and remix. In a country like India where there are only a handful of research journals available in vernacular languages, the need for open content becomes much more important. The more the restricted content, the less will be the access to knowledge. Creating more vernacular content with open licenses is like digging a well in a dessert.

Indian language Wikipedias as open access journals

It’s been almost a decade since most largely spoken Indian languages started having a Wikipedia project of their own. Presently, there are 23 Indian language Wikipedias, including newest entrants like Konkani and Tulu. That said, these projects are growing with more and more encyclopedic content written with a neutral point of view, which any internet user will find useful. Wikipedia is considered as the people’s encyclopedia and hence can have quite contrasting content ‑ some being poor because some volunteer editors lack expertise in high quality articles written by professionals. A great example of creating very high quality content in one particular subject area is Open Textbook of Medicine ‑ an offline encyclopedia consisting of Wikipedia articles related to medicine that was created by a group of dedicated volunteer medical professionals that happened to be Wikipedia editors. There is enormous potential to grow Wikipedia in multiple languages with high quality content.

How to grow open access in Indian languages using Wikipedia as a tool

The list of challenges to grow Wikipedia-like projects with volunteer effort could be endless. And one of the biggest challenges is bringing self-motivated people who are willing to contribute as volunteers. Also, there are many such people who are not aware that they can contribute to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community has created an ecosystem by having several Wikimedia chapters and other affiliates that are run by both volunteers and paid staff ‑ the Wikimedia Foundation, a paid staff-run organisation that is responsible for fundraising, major technological and some community support. In India, Wikimedia India, Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K) and Punjabi Wikimedians are three such official affiliates that are working on catalysing the growth of the content and the communities. Where the affiliate Punjabi Wikimedians focuses on Punjabi language (in both Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi scripts), both Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K focus on all the Indian languages. CIS-A2K also specially focuses on five languages; Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu. Indian language Wikipedia projects can only grow if people can edit their own language Wikipedias.

With the Open Access Week—a week dedicated for promoting Open Access globally—around the corner with “Open in Action” as the theme of the year, there is no better time for anyone who can read and write in their native Indian language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/your-story-subhashish-panigrahi-october-20-2016-what-indian-language-wikipedias-can-do-for-greater-open-access-in-india

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective

nirmita — 2012-09-25T05:33:25Z

G3ict and CIS are pleased to announce the publication of a new, improved edition of the Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective. The report published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and websites are accessible to persons with disabilities.

The report contains a Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict, an introduction and studies from countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union. The report contains contributions from Prashanth Ramadas, Asma Tajuddin, G Aravind, Katie Reisner, Sucharita Narasimhan, Bama Balakrishnan and Nirmita Narasimhan. Axel Leblois, Donal Rice, Immaculada Placienca Porrero, Kevin Carey, Licia Sbattella and Sunil Abraham are the expert reviewers.

Foreword by Axel Leblois

This third edition of our joint report with CIS “WEB ACCESSIBILITY POLICY MAKING: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE” provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and web sites are accessible to persons with disabilities. With 153 countries parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as of December 2011, an increasing number of governments are now in the midst of developing policies and programs to ensure that web sites and services under their jurisdictions are accessible.

Indeed, the Preamble of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes “the importance of accessibility to the physical, social, economic and cultural environment, to health and education and to information and communication, in enabling persons with disabilities to fully enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms”. Its article 9 stipulates that: “To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems” (1). It further specifies that “State Parties shall also take appropriate measures to … Promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet” (2.g).

There is therefore no doubt that all State Parties have an obligation to act upon those commitments. However, as this report demonstrates it clearly, web accessibility policies and their levels of enforcement vary considerably among countries with some common denominators such as the compliance with the W3C – WAI guidelines on web accessibility.

G3ict and CIS hope that this new, improved edition, which will now be available in print as well as in electronic format, will help accelerate the development of web accessibility policies and programs around the world. We want to express our sincere appreciation to Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at CIS and editor of the G3ict Publications and Reports for her dedication to this report which would not have been made possible without her incredible work and motivation as Disability Advocate.

Download a PDF of the Web Accessibility Policy Making here [335 KB]

Download the Daisy File [23412 KB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility-policy-making-an-international-perspective

We’ve All Got Some Baggage

lawrence — 2014-05-29T07:22:29Z

America’s newest trade agreement is not going to kill only iPods. The article appeared in the Tehelka Magazine Vol 7, Issue 45, Dated November 13, 2010

EARLIER LAST week, a group of renowned academics in the United States wrote a letter to President Obama criticising his administration for the secrecy with which a new trade agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), was being negotiated. They argued that the agreement that has immense public interest implications, including freedom of speech and expression, privacy, access to medicines and access to technology, has been conducted only with the interests of large corporations in mind. The first official release of the draft text of this treaty took place only in April 2010, and since then there has not been a single public meeting to invite comments on the text. So what is the deal on ACTA, also known in some circles as the ‘iPod killer’ agreement, and why should we in India be concerned about it? To get a sense of the importance of ACTA, it would be useful to understand briefly the history of negotiations on multilateral agreements on intellectual property.

The establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the successful conclusion of the negotiations of the TRIPS agreement set a minimum standard for intellectual property laws across the world. In the absence of an international standard, countries have far more flexibility in creating national laws that may be more suited to the development or technological needs of their society, and this is especially for developing countries hoping to create indigenous technological capabilities.

The best example of this perhaps is the rise of the generic pharmaceutical industry in India. Till the Patent Amendment in 2005, India did not recognise the grant of a product patent for drugs, and only allowed a process patent. This enabled pharmaceutical companies in India to import expensive drugs, reverse engineer them and create cheaper alternatives. And it is through this that India became a country that not only produced affordable medicines, but also exported them to many other countries, particularly in Africa.

After India became a member of the WTO and a signatory to the TRIPS agreement, it was obliged to change its patent laws to recognise product patents on drugs. It is clear then that the establishment of a multilateral venue for the creation of common norms can often act against the interests of developing countries that have much less of a bargaining power. This was particularly true in the early days of the WTO.

However, as countries like India, China and Brazil grew in strength and others also started getting a better sense of how developing countries could play the multilateral game, the very mode that was supposed to guarantee the protection of the interests of the global north became the basis through which other countries started articulating their own concerns. In 2004 for instance, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) adopted a proposal for the establishment of a Development Agenda. This declaration proposed by Brazil and Argentina and supported by many countries of the southern hemisphere sought to bring development concerns into the agenda of the WIPO, thereby limiting the absolute rights of owners of intellectual property and argued for a more equitable global IP regime.

Two weeks after WIPO’s September 2007 adoption of the Development Agenda, the US, European and Japanese officials announced that they would seek to negotiate a new agreement in order to “set a new, higher benchmark for enforcement that countries can join on a voluntary basis”. Thus began the negotiations around the Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement.

ACTA is a new and separate international agreement dedicated to the enforcement of intellectual property. While some alleged that it was an effort to address existing limitations in the TRIPS agreement, it actually creates a wide range of policing powers. The two biggest concerns about ACTA include the creation of a new global IP enforcement regime by granting powers to customs officials to act as watchdogs for IP infringement. This essentially means that customs officials have the right to inspect any electronic device, including computers, hard drives and music devices, for copyright infringing materials. A scary proposition for anyone who travels. While apparently there are discussions over whether personal use items will be exempt, the fact that the agreement is being negotiated in such secrecy means that we don’t really know what the implications actually are. The second area of concern is the fact that ACTA dramatically intervenes in the creation of Internet policy — notably in regard to the liability of ISPS, search engines and other third parties to charges of ‘contributory’ infringement.

A pirated DVD is very different from a spurious drug, which is very different from a fake Gucci bag, and yet ACTA treats them all alike

THE PRIMARY supporters of ACTA include the US, the European Union, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore and the UAE. Notably absent are many of the industrialised middleincome countries that have been the principal targets of the US and European enforcement concern in the past decade: Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and China.

ACTA introduces a confusing language that deliberately attempts to bring things together that are not related. A pirated DVD is very different from a spurious drug, which is very different from a fake Gucci bag, and yet ACTA brings them all under the ambit of counterfeit goods. The negotiations of ACTA highlight the fact that the US and some countries in Europe have realised that multilateral venues like the WTO and WIPO are no longer the happy hunting grounds of hegemonic aspirations, and that it makes more sense now to have an agreement that is initiated by powerful countries who then use a bilateral mode of coercion to have countries sign on and then make it a multilateral agreement.

The classic mode of coercion, followed for instance by the US, has been the annual United States Trade Representative (USTR) reports that rank countries on the basis of their IP enforcement. Based on their assessment, they place countries on different watch lists, and these are backed by trade sanctions against a country. India and China have consistently made it to the priority watch list for the past 10 years, and using a carrotand- stick approach, the USTR makes recommendations for changes in national laws. It seems the failure to create norms at multilateral forums necessitated the creation of forums like ACTA, which when combined with the USTR, are used to exert pressure that can convert countries resistant to a dominant IP system into accepting higher norms on a voluntary basis.

Read the original here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/some-baggage

We are Wikipedia

subha — 2014-09-06T03:19:29Z

Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

@WeAreWikipedia auf Global Voices

Subhashish Panigrahi hat einen Beitrag über das Twitter-Projekt „We Are Wikipedia“ auf der Bloggerplattform GlobalVoices veröffentlicht. Subhashish erklärt unter anderem wo die Idee für das Projekt herkommt und greift einiger der unterschiedlichste Beiträge auf, die über den Twitter-Account in den letzten Wochen liefen. Inzwischen gibt es auch schon eine deutschsprachige Version des Beitrags

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/we-are-wikipedia