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Govt for Legalising Parallel Import of Copyright Works; Publishers Oppose
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/govt-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-work
<b>Section 2(m) legalises the parallel imports of books and other copyrighted material into India and was part of the initial Copyright Amendment Bill introduced in the Parliament of India in 2010. </b>
<p>Section 2(m) reads as below:</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>"[P]rovided 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 into India shall not be deemed to be an infringing copy."</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately, the government did a sudden volte face owing to pressure from publisher lobbies and deleted it from the latest version of the Bill. The provision would have helped students gain access to the latest affordable versions of text books from around the world.</p>
<p>When the Bill was referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee for review, the said Committee strongly supported the introduction of section 2(m) and stated as below:</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<p>"that availability of low priced books under the present regime is invariably confined to old editions. Nobody can deny the fact that the interests of students will be best protected if they have access to latest editions of the books."</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<p>"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. The Committee would, however, like to put a note of caution to the government to ensure that the <strong>purpose for which the amendment is proposed i.e., to protect the interest of the students is not lost sight of</strong>."</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="pullquote"><span class="Apple-style-span">Despite the Standing Committees support, it is curious as to why the government dropped this provision, particularly when it would have tremendously helped a number of students gain access to latest low priced editions of text books from around the world. It ought not to have succumbed to the pressures of the publishing lobby.</span></div>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Empirical studies done on this count clearly demonstrate that publishers only introduce old versions of books in India. The latest versions have to be imported, and they are very expensive, often times costing more than what they cost in the US and EU. See the Economic Times article documenting this empirical study <a class="external-link" href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/policy/govt-for-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-works-publishers-oppose/articleshow/7723572.cms">here</a>.</p>
<p>Further, an easy right of import enables any third party to import books which could also then be made available in accessible formats to the visually impaired. </p>
<p class="callout">Download the Economic Times article by Shamnad Basheer <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/govt-legalising-parallel-import" class="internal-link" title="Govt for legalising parallel import of copyright works; publishers oppose">here</a>. [PDF, 470 Kb]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/govt-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-work'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/govt-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-work</a>
</p>
No publisherShamnad BasheerIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2011-08-30T10:19:35ZBlog EntryAugust 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/rewiring-call-for-review" target="_blank">Re: Wiring Bodies</a> by Asha Achuthan, <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archive-and-access" target="_blank">Archive and Access</a> by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/pleasure-and-pornography/pornography-and-law" target="_blank">Porn: Law, Video, Technology</a> by Namita Malhotra, <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rethinking-the-last-mile-problem/last-mile-problem" target="_blank">The Last Cultural Mile</a> by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/city-and-space" target="_blank">Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities</a> by Pratyush Shankar were officially launched at the Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop in Ahmedabad.</p>
<h3>Workshop organised in CEPT, Ahmedabad</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop" target="_blank">Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation</a> [19 to 22 August 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/stirrup-and-the-ground" target="_blank">Between the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism</a> (This paper by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen was published in Democracy & Society, a publication of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society, Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2011).</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>Interview</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/interview-mada">An Interview with David Baines</a> (Maureen Agena interviewed David Baines of Mada Centre for Assistive Technology in Khattar).</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Access to Knowledge</b></h2>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/govt-legalising-parallel-import-of-copyright-work" class="external-link">Govt for Legalising Parallel Import of Copyright Works; Publishers Oppose</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments" target="_blank">Call for Comments on Draft Report on Open Government Data in India (v2)</a> (Nisha Thompson has updated the Open Government Data Report prepared by CIS last year including additional case studies and the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-access-to-scholarly-literature" target="_blank">Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report: Call for Comments</a> (The report has been prepared by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu. It surveys the field of scholarly and scientific publication in India and provides a detailed history of the open access movement in India).</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>New Blog Post</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/bye-bye-email" target="_blank">Bye Bye email?</a> (Email might be the default method of communication for most of us, but could it be going the telegram way, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published in the Indian Express on August 21, 2011).</li>
</ul>
<h3>Public Lecture</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/mirror-in-the-enigma" target="_blank">The Mirror in the Enigma: How Germany lost World War II to a Mathematical Theorem</a> (Rohit Gupta gave a lecture at CIS on August 12, 2011).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/ip-addresses-and-identity-disclosures" target="_blank">IP Addresses and Expeditious Disclosure of Identity in India</a> (Prashant Iyengar reviews the statutory mechanism regulating the retention and disclosure of IP addresses by Internet companies in India and provides a compilation of anecdotes on how law enforcement authorities in India have used IP address information to trace individuals responsible for particular crimes).</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries<b> </b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy_wholebodyimagingcomparison" target="_blank">Whole Body Imaging and Privacy Concerns that Follow</a> (by Elonnai Hickok)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy_uidfinancialinclusion" target="_blank">Financial Inclusion and the UID</a> (by Elonnai Hickok) </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/cctv-in-universities" target="_blank">CCTV in Universities</a> (by Merlin Oommen)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/key-escrow" target="_blank">Re-thinking Key Escrow</a> (by Natasha Vaz) </li>
</ul>
<h3>Event Report</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-chennai-report.pdf/view?searchterm=Privacy%20Matters%20Chennai" target="_blank">Privacy Matters, Chennai</a> – the event was organised by IDRC, Society in Action Group, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Consumer and Civic Action Group, Privacy India and CIS on August 6, 2011. </li>
</ul>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/net-gain" target="_blank">Net Gain</a> [The Telegraph, 24 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/iisc-students-boycott-uid" target="_blank">IISc students boycott UID, don’t want Big Brother to keep watch</a> [Bangalore Mirror, 23 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/right-circle" target="_blank">In the Right Circle</a> [Indian Express, 24 July 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/siege-of-android/?searchterm=%EF%82%A7The%20Siege%20of%20Android" target="_blank">The Siege of Android: How Google Lost The OS War</a> [Business.in, 17 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/unsocial-network" target="_blank">The Unsocial Network</a> [Mail Today, 14 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/hazare-clicks" target="_blank">Hazare 'clicks' with city techies</a> [India, 18 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/govt-to-monitor-facebook-twitter" target="_blank">Govt wants to monitor Facebook, Twitter</a> [Times of India, 8 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/nothing-unique-about-identity" target="_blank">Nothing unique about this identity</a> [Deccan Chronicle, 5 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/tired-of-tele-marketing-calls" target="_blank">Tired of tele-marketing calls? Act on privacy right: Experts</a> [Times of India, 7 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/knowledge-isnt-written" target="_blank">When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count?</a> [New York Times, 7 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/indian-super-cops-patrol-www-highway" target="_blank">Indian super-cops now patrol the www highway</a> [Hindustan Times, 6 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/better-understanding-of-privacy" target="_blank">Better Understanding of the Idea of Privacy Sought</a> [Hindu, 7 August 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/converting-indian-slacktivists" target="_blank">Converting Indian Slacktivists Takes (Offline) Time</a> [Wall Street Journal, 2 August 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://identi.ca/main/remote?nickname=cis" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28535315687" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceCISRAWOpenness2012-08-13T05:13:23ZPageJuly 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs: <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/rewiring/rewiring-call-for-review" target="_blank">Re: Wiring Bodies</a> by Asha Achuthan, <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/archives/the-archive-and-the-indian-historian/?searchterm=archive%20and%20access" target="_blank">Archive and Access</a> by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/pleasure-porno/pornography-and-law" target="_blank">Pornography and the Law</a> by Namita Malhotra, <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/last-mile/last-mile-problem" target="_blank">The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem – An Inquiry into Technology and Governance</a> by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/Internetcities/city-and-space" target="_blank">Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities</a> by Pratyush Shankar were sent for peer review.</p>
<h3>Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop" target="_blank">Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation</a> [Deadline for submission – 26 July 2011; Participants to be selected by 30 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>The Digital Natives Newsletter</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Links in the Chain" is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community members. It includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops — <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/talking-back/?searchterm=talking%20back" target="_blank">Talking Back</a> (Taipei, 15 – 18 August 2010), <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/my-bubble-my-space-my-voice-workshop-perspective-and-future/?searchterm=my%20bubble" target="_blank">My Bubble, My Space, My Voice</a> (Johannesburg, 6 – 9 November 2010) and <a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/digital-natives-with-a-cause-workshop-in-santiago-open-call/?searchterm=santiago" target="_blank">From Face to the Interface</a> (Santiago, 8 – 10 February 2011) as well as the facilitators, interviews with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, <a href="http://www.digitalnatives.in" target="_blank">www.digitalnatives.in</a>.</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/2011/06/23/digital-dinosaurs" target="_blank">The Digital Dinosaurs</a> [Links in the Chain, Volume 7]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/Mid-year%20Edition%20-%20Final.pdf" target="_blank">Special Mid Year Edition</a> [Links in the Chain, Volume 8]</li>
</ol>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/accessibility-policy-international-perspective" target="_blank">Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective</a> (Revised Edition 2011) [A G3ict White Paper researched and edited by the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. Editor: Nirmita Narasimhan, Revised edition: May 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Access to Knowledge (previously IPR Reform)</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.</p>
<h3>Featured</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/intermediary-liability-wipo-speech" target="_blank">Don't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO</a> (speech by Pranesh Prakash at a side-event co-organized from 15 to 24 June 2011, by WIPO and the Internet Society on intermediary liability).</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.</p>
<h3>Documentary</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/people-are-knowledge" target="_blank">People are Knowledge – Experimenting with Oral Citations on Wikipedia</a> (co-produced by CIS in association with the Wikimedia Foundation, on Oral Citations in India and South Africa)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Featured</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/opening-government-best-practice-guide" target="_blank">Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector</a> (published by Transparency & Accountability Initiative, CIS contributed the section on Open Government Data).</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>New Blog Post</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/2011/07/12/rti-and-third-party-info" target="_blank">RTI and Third Party Information: What Constitutes the Private and Public?</a> [by Noopur Raval]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Events Organised</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/socio-financial-online-networks/?searchterm=Radhika%20Gajalla" target="_blank">Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla</a> [at CIS, Bangalore on 8 July 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/internet-surveillance-policy-lecture" target="_blank">Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden</a> [at TERI, Bangalore on 27 June 2011]</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Featured</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/19/privacy-media-law" target="_blank">Privacy & Media Law</a> (by Sonal Makhija). The research examines the existing media norms governed by Press Council of India, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and the Code of Ethics drafted by the News Broadcasting Standard Authority, the constitutional protection guaranteed to an individual’s right to privacy upheld by the courts, and the reasons the State employs to justify the invasion of privacy.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Comments<b> </b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/privacy-bill-2010/?searchterm=%EF%82%A7Right%20to%20Privacy%20Bill%202010%20%E2%80%94%20A%20Few%20Comments" target="_blank">Right to Privacy Bill 2010 — A Few Comments</a> (by Elonnai Hickok). CIS has given specific recommendations and specific comments on the Right to Privacy Bill, 2010, which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Rajeev Chandrashekhar.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Event Report</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/21/privacy-guwahati-report" target="_blank">Privacy Matters, Guwahati</a> – the event was organised by IDRC, Society in Action Group, IDEA Chirang, an NGO initiative working with grassroots initiatives in Assam, Privacy India and CIS on 23 June 2011. </li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/15/scam-baiting" target="_blank">My Experiment with Scam Baiting</a> (by Sahana Sarkar)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/18/when-data-is-privacy" target="_blank">When Data Means Privacy, What Traces Are You Leaving Behind?</a> (by Noopur Raval)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/23/video-surveillance-privacy" target="_blank">Video Surveillance and Its Impact on the Right to Privacy</a> (by Elonnai Hickok)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/23/consumer-privacy-e-commerce" target="_blank">Consumer Privacy in e-Commerce</a> (by Sahana Sarkar)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/07/24/dna-overview" target="_blank">An Overview of DNA Labs in India</a> (by Shilpa Narani)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/uid-nothing-to-hide-fear/weblogentry_view" target="_blank">UID: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear?</a> (by Shilpa Narani)</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/failure-to-harness-power-of-net" target="_blank">Indian SMEs still fail to harness the power of Net</a> [Sunday Guardian, 19 June 2011]</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/sorry-wrong-number" target="_blank">Sorry Wrong Number</a> [Telegraph, 3 July 2011]</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/aadhaar-truth" target="_blank">Aadhaar’s moment of truth</a> [Deccan Herald, 5 July 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/walls-have-ears" target="_blank">The Walls Have Ears</a> [Outlook, issue, 11 July 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/transparent-government-india" target="_blank">Transparent Government, via Webcams in India</a> [New York Times, 17 July 2011]; news also published in other languages in <a href="http://www.wprost.pl/ar/253803/Truman-show-w-indyjskim-rzadzie/" target="_blank">wprost</a> (Polish), <a href="http://www.ictnews.vn/Home/thoi-su/An-Do-lap-camera-de-chong-tham-nhung/2011/07/2MSVC7185287/View.htm" target="_blank">ictnews</a> (Vietnamese) and <a href="http://www.arretsurimages.net/vite.php?id=11710" target="_blank">@rret sur images</a>(French)</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/nyt-lauds-oommen-chandy" target="_blank">NYT lauds Oommen Chandy’s 24/7 office webcast</a> [Deccan Chronicle, 19 July 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/uid-worlds-largest-database" target="_blank">UID: The World’s Largest Biometric Database</a> [International School on Digital Transformation, 21 July 2011]. Sunil Abraham made a <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/uid-largest-database" target="_blank">presentation</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-my-lousy-boyfriend" target="_blank">Facebook, my boyfriend is lousy</a> [Bangalore Mirror, 24 July 2011]</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/portugal-well-for-transparency" target="_blank">Portal augurs well for transparency</a> [The Hindu, 25 July 2011] </li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://identi.ca/main/remote?nickname=cis" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28535315687" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceCISRAWOpenness2012-07-30T07:00:26ZPageDon't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/intermediary-liability-wipo-speech
<b>This is a speech made by Pranesh Prakash at an side-event co-organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Internet Society on intermediary liability, to coincide with the release of Prof. Lillian Edwards's WIPO-commissioned report on 'Role and Responsibility of the Internet Intermediaries in the Field of Copyright'.</b>
<p>Good afternoon. I've been asked to provide a user's perspective to the question of intermediary liability. "In what cases should an Internet intermediary—a messenger—be held liable for the doings of a third party?" is the broad question. I believe that in answering that question we can be guided by two simple principles: As long as intermediaries don't exercise direct editorial control, they should not be held liable; and as long as they don't instigate or encourage the illegal activity, they should not be held liable. In all other cases, attacking Internet intermediaries generally a sign of 'shooting the messenger'.
General intermediary liability and intermediary liability for copyright infringement share a common philosophical foundation, and so I will talk about general intermediary liability first.</p>
<p>While going about holding intermediaries liable, we must remember that what is at stake here is the fact that intermediaries are a necessary component of ensuring freedom of speech and self-expression on the World Wide Web. In this regard, we must keep in mind the joint declaration issued by <a href="http://www.cidh.oas.org/relatoria/showarticle.asp?artID=848&lID=1">four freedom of expression rapporteurs under the aegis of the Organization of American States on June 1, 2011</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Intermediary Liability</p>
<p>a. No one who simply provides technical Internet services such as providing access, or searching for, or transmission or caching of information, should be liable for content generated by others, which is disseminated using those services, as long as they do not specifically intervene in that content or refuse to obey a court order to remove that content, where they have the capacity to do so (‘mere conduit principle’).</p>
<p>b. Consideration should be given to insulating fully other intermediaries, including those mentioned in the preamble, from liability for content generated by others under the same conditions as in paragraph 2(a). At a minimum, intermediaries should not be required to monitor user-generated content and should not be subject to extra-judicial content takedown rules which fail to provide sufficient protection for freedom of expression (which is the case with many of the ‘notice and takedown’ rules currently being applied).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is useful to keep in mind what the kind of liability we affix on offline intermediaries: Would we hold a library responsible for unlawful material that a user has placed on its shelves without its encouragement?</p>
<p>Ensuring a balanced system of intermediary liability is also very important in preserving the forms of innovations we have seen online. Ensuring that intermediaries aren't always held liable for what third parties do is an essential component of encouraging new models of participation, such as Wikipedia. While Wikipedia has community-set standards with regard to copyright, obscenity, and other such issues, holding the Wikimedia Foundation (which has only around 30-40 people) itself responsible for what millions of users write on Wikipedia will hamper such new models of peer-production. This point, unfortunately, has not prevented the Wikimedia Foundation being sued a great number of times in India, a large percentage of which take the form of SLAPP ('strategic lawsuit against public participation') cases, since if the real intention had been to remove the offending content, editing Wikipedia is an easy enough way of achieving that.</p>
<p>While searching for these balanced solutions, we need to look beyond Europe, and look at how countries like Chile, Brazil, India and others are looking at these issues. Unfortunately, this being Geneva, most of the people I see represented in this room are from the developed world as are the examples we are discussing (France and Spain).</p>
<p>In India, for instance, the Internet Service Providers Association made it clear in 2006 (when there was an outcry over censorship of blogging platforms) that they do not want to be responsible for deciding whether something about which they have received a complaint is unlawful or not.</p>
<p>With respect to copyright and the Internet, while the Internet allows for copyright infringement to be conducted more easily, it also allows for copyright infringement to be spotted more easily. Earlier, if someone copied, it would be difficult to find out. Now that is not so. So, that balance is already ingrained, and while many in the industry focus on the fact of easier infringement and thus ask for increased legal protection, such increase in legal protection is not required since the same technological factors that enable increased infringement also enable increased ability to know about that infringement.</p>
<p>On the Internet, intermediaries sometimes engage in primary infringement due to the very nature of digital technology. In the digital sphere, everything is a copy. Thus, whenever you're working on a computer, copies of the copyrighted that show up on your screen are automatically copied to your computer's RAM. Whenever you download anything from the Internet, copies of it are created en route to your computer. (That is the main reason that exceptions in the copyright laws of most countries that allow you to re-sell a book you own don't apply to electronic books.) In such a case, intermediaries must be specially protected. </p>
<p>Additionally, online activities that we take for granted, for instance search technologies, violate the copyright law of most countries. For online search technology to be reasonably fast (instead of taking hours for each search), the searching has to be done on a copies (cache) of actual websites instead of the actual websites. For image searching, it would be unreasonable to expect search companies to take licences for all the images they allow you to search through. Yet, not doing so might violate the copyright laws of many countries. No one, or so one would think, would argue that search engines should be made illegal, but in some countries copyright law is being used to attack intermediaries.</p>
<p>As noted above, intermediaries are a necessary part of online free speech. Current methods of regulating copyright infringement by users via intermediaries online may well fall afoul of internationally accepted standards of human rights. Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression in <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf">his recent report to the UN Human Rights Council</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While blocking and filtering measures deny access to certain content on the Internet, States have also taken measures to cut off access to the Internet entirely. </p>
<p>The Special Rapporteur is deeply concerned by discussions regarding a centralized “on/off” control over Internet traffic. In addition, he is alarmed by proposals to disconnect users from Internet access if they violate intellectual property rights. This also includes legislation based on the concept of “graduated response”, which imposes a series of penalties on copyright infringers that could lead to suspension of Internet service, such as the so-called “three-strikes law” in France and the Digital Economy Act 2010 of the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Beyond the national level, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been proposed as a multilateral agreement to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. While the provisions to disconnect individuals from Internet access for violating the treaty have been removed from the final text of December 2010, the Special Rapporteur remains watchful about the treaty’s eventual implications for intermediary liability and the right to freedom of expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With respect to graduated response, there is very little that one can add to Prof. Edwards's presentation. I would like to add one further suggestion that Prof. Ed Felten originally put forward as a 'modest proposal': Corporations which make or facilitate three wrongful accusations should face the same penalty as the users who are accused thrice.
The recent US strategy of seizing websites even before trial has been sufficiently criticised, so I shall not spend my time on it.</p>
<p>I still have not seen any good evidence as to why for other kinds of primary or secondary liability incurred by online intermediaries the procedure for offline copyright infringement should not apply, since they are usually crafted taking into account principles of natural justice.</p>
<p>The only 'international' and slightly troublesome issue that a resolution is needed to is that of problems relating to different jurisdiction’s laws applying on a single global network. However, this question is much larger one that of copyright and a copyright-specific solution cannot be found. Thus WIPO is not the right forum for the redress of that problem.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/intermediary-liability-wipo-speech'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/intermediary-liability-wipo-speech</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIntermediary LiabilityIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2012-06-01T15:01:08ZBlog EntryJune 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Six monographs Rewiring Bodies, Archive and Access, Pornography and the Law, The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem - An Inquiry into Technology and Governance, Transparency and Politics and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities are published online and will be launched later this year.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/Internetcities/cept-centre-for-role-of-internet">CEPT to Set up Centre to Research Role of Internet in Social Development</a> [Published in the Indian Express on June 18, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop">Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation</a> [Deadline for submission – 15 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>The Digital Natives Newsletter</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/digital-dinosaurs/weblogentry_view">The Digital Dinosaurs</a> [Volume 5]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b> Pathways</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">HE Cell's initiative on social justice, in collaboration with CIS, has initiated the Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education. It is supported by the Ford Foundation. Under this project, nine under-graduate colleges in different parts of India will be identified to provide special skills in livelihood, knowledge and technology to underprivileged students in those colleges.</p>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/grants/pathways-project/pathways-proposal-info/weblogentry_view">Pathways for Learning in Higher Education</a> </li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/2011/06/21/communications-and-video-accessibility">Policy Spotlight: 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act</a> [Written by Deepti Bharthur; contains an e-mail interview with Jenifer Simpson, Senior Director for Government Affairs and head of the Telecommunications & Technology Policy Initiative at the American Association of People with Disabilities ]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/2011/06/13/ict-sri-lanka">ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka</a> [Written by Nirmita Narasimhan]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Intellectual Property</b></h2>
<p>CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.</p>
<h3>Statement</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/sccr-22ndsession-cis-statement">Statement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/lid-on-royalty-outflows">Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce your IP Costs</a> [Written by Sanjana Govil]</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.</p>
<h3>Submission</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/2011/06/08/draft-ndsap-comments">Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy</a> [submitted to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure]</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>New Articles</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/the-present-and-future-dangers-of-indias-draconian-new-internet-regulations/weblogentry_view">The Present — and Future — Dangers of India's Draconian New Internet Regulations</a> [By Anja Kovacs in the Caravan on June 1, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/big-brother-watching-you/weblogentry_view">Big Brother is Watching You</a> [By Sunil Abraham in Deccan Herald on June 1, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/2011/06/08/digital-is-political">The Digital is Political</a> [By Nishant Shah in Down to Earth, Issue of June 15, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/want-to-be-watched/weblogentry_view">Do You Want to be Watched?</a> [By Sunil Abraham in Pragati on June 8, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/2011/06/09/snooping-to-data-abuse">Snooping Can Lead to Data Abuse</a> [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 9, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/2011/06/22/privacy-and-security">Privacy and Security Can Co-exist</a> [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 21, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Column in Indian Express</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/2011/06/08/password-in-hindi">Say 'Password' in Hindi</a> [By Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, May 15, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Event</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/socio-financial-online-networks">Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla</a> [at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, July 8, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/06/14/copyright-enforcement">Copyright Enforcement and Privacy in India</a> [Written by Prashant Iyengar]</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Articles<b> </b></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/06/04/street-view-of-private-and-public">A Street View of Private and the Public</a> [By Prashant Iyengar in Tehelka on June 4, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/blind-man-view-of-elephunt%20/?searchterm=The%20new%20Right%20to%20Privacy%20Bill%202011%20%E2%80%94%20A%20Blind%20Man%27s%20View%20of%20the%20Elephunt">The new Right to Privacy Bill 2011 — A Blind Man's View of the Elephunt</a> [By Prashant Iyengar in Privacy India website on June 8, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/2011/06/03/bloggers-rights-and-privacy">Bloggers' Rights Subordinated to Rights of Expression: Cyber Law Expert</a></li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h3>Event organised in Guwahati</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-guwahati-conference.pdf/view">Privacy matters</a> [Donbosco Institute, Kharguli, Guwahati, June 23, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Events</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/internet-surveillance-policy-lecture">Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden</a> [TERI, Bangalore, June 27, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/privacy-matters-hyderabad">Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad</a> [Osmania University Center for International Program, Hyderabad, July 9, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Telecom</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:</p>
<h3>Articles by Shyam Ponappa</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/2011/06/08/ntp-2011-objective">NTP 2011 Objective: Broadband</a> [published in the Business Standard on June 2, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Miscellaneous</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/notices/technology-transparency-accountability">Technology, Transparency and Accountability: A Bar-Camp in Delhi</a> [June 5, 2011, Delhi]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/notices/communication-policy-advocacy-technology-and-online-freedom-of-expression-a-toolkit-for-media-development">Communication Policy Advocacy, Technology, and Online Freedom of Expression: A Toolkit for Media Development</a> [June 20 – July 1, 2011, Budapest, Hungary]</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/cyber-space-hackers-paradise">Your cyber space is a hackers paradise</a> [Mail Today, June 6, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/centaur-reveals-personal-info">Centaur website reveals guests' personal info</a> [Times of India, June 20, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/seamier-side-of-texting">Mumbai Takes Note of Sexting, the Seamier Side of Texting</a> [Times of India, June 19, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/state-just-did-to-you">Look what the state just did to you</a> [Mid Day, June 12, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/india-e-tolerance">Tough neighbourhood tests India's e-tolerance</a> [Times of India, June 12, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/looser-web-rules">India Weighing Looser Web Rules</a> [Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/public-data-on-web">Public data on the Web leaves much to be desired</a> [Hindu, May 28, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/aadhar-coming-to-bengaluru">What documents will you need, to get UID?</a> [CitizenMatters.in, May 28, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/mobile-education-villages">Mobile education comes to villages</a> [Mail Today, May 27, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/google-stalks-street">Google now stalks your street</a> [Hindu, May 27, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/women-love-facebook">Women in love with Facebook</a> [Deccan Herald, May 27, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/google-unveils-controversial-street-view">Google Unveils Controversial Street View Mapping in B’lore</a> [Economic Times, Mumbai, May 27, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/e-g-8-report-internet-rights">NGOs say eG8 report must stress internet rights</a> [TELECOMPAPER, May 26, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://identi.ca/main/remote?nickname=cis">identi.ca</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28535315687">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceCISRAWOpenness2012-07-30T07:14:57ZPageStatement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sccr-22-broadcast-cis-statement
<b>The twenty-second session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is being held in Geneva from June 15 to June 24, 2011. Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash are attending the conference. CIS delivered its statement, on the Broadcast Treaty, and made it available in print form as well.</b>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society would like to associate itself with the comprehensive statement made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). We are one of the signatories of the joint statement, which EFF referred to, of the many civil society non-governmental organizations, cable casters and technology companies opposing an intellectual property rights based Broadcasting Treaty.</p>
<p>We believe that the protection that may be afforded to broadcasters under existing international treaties, including <a class="external-link" href="http://www.worldtradelaw.net/uragreements/tripsagreement.pdf">Article 14 of the TRIPS Agreement</a>, are sufficient to safeguard the interests of broadcasters, and that the Broadcast Treaty, which has been under discussion for more than a decade without any progress is, as the WIPO Chair observed in the conclusion to the informal summary prepared after the 16th SCCR (SCCR/17/1/inf), an expenditure of "time, energy and resources to no avail". Without prejudice to that position, we would like to make a few points on the content of the treaty as well.</p>
<p>There has been talk of ensuring a technology-neutral approach. While a technology-neutral approach is useful since technology keeps changing, we believe that that necessarily means the differences between different technologies should be recognized. The capital costs and investments of traditional broadcasters, which are—as has been highlighted in the many statements here today—the basis on which broadcasters' rights are demanded, are not in the least comparable with the capital costs and investments of webcasting.</p>
<p>These differences have not come out adequately in the various regional seminars that WIPO helped organize, since those were mostly with traditional broadcasters and did not cover webcasters.</p>
<p>"Communication to the public", while that is a technologically neutral formulation, is an element of copyright, and is not the same of broadcast rights, which is a related right.</p>
<p>Any departure from a signal-based approach would require the assent of the WIPO General Assembly, which has in 2007 specifically requested for signal-based approach for the treaty.</p>
<p>Specifically, we believe that Paragraph 16 of the WIPO Development Agenda, which relates to preservation of a vibrant public domain, will be endangered by a right being given to webcasters which is separate from the underlying content of the transmission.</p>
<p>In this regard, we strongly support the delegations of South Africa and India, in their strong pronunciation of public interests while looking at such a treaty. We further support the delegation of Canada, for strongly emphasizing the need to allow countries the flexibility to opt-out of the provisions of the treaty for certain forms of broadcasting.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sccr-22-broadcast-cis-statement'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/sccr-22-broadcast-cis-statement</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightIntellectual Property RightsBroadcastingTechnological Protection Measures2011-08-04T04:41:12ZBlog EntryPutting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce India's IP Costs
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows
<b>While entrepreneurs, IP rights-holders and everyone else who has a stake continue to voice their opinions on the appropriate shape that the Indian IP regime ought to take, they tend to narrow their discussions to the language of substantive IP laws. However, there are regulations that cannot be found in the Patent Act, Copyright Act or Trademarks Act which nevertheless have an impact on how much one is paying for intellectual property. Paying attention to these external factors might just provide a simple solution to your IP woes.</b>
<p>One such factor is the regulation of foreign technology agreements. A foreign technology agreement is an agreement under which a transfer of technology occurs from a foreign source to an Indian entity. This transfer may include anything from the creation of an Indian wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign parent company to the transfer of manufacturing or design know-how. </p>
<p>Regulation of these agreements in India is carried out by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry as well as the Reserve Bank of India. In 1991, the Ministry’s Department of Industrial Development (DID) released Press Note No.10 which stated the following:</p>
<p>“39 C. Foreign Technology Agreements</p>
<p>i) <em>Automatic permission will be given for foreign technology agreements in high priority industries (Annex III)* upto a lumpsum payment of Rs. 1 crore, 5% royalty for domestic sales and 8% for exports, subject to total payments of 8% of sales over a 10 year period from date of agreement or 7 years from commencement of production. The prescribed royalty rates are net of taxes and will be calculated according to standard procedures</em>."</p>
<p>As a consequence, automatic approval could only be granted to high priority industries whose royalty payments fell within the prescribed limits. In every other case, the approval of the Secretariat of Industrial Approvals (SIA), DID and the RBI had to be sought. It must be noted that in theory this regulation did not place an absolute ban on royalty outflows above the 5% and 8% ceilings since the possibility of securing government approval for the same did exist. However, considering that a mere 8062 approvals were granted between 1991 and 2009[<a href="#1">1</a>], the ceiling was in effect almost absolute.</p>
<p>It appears that the stance of the government of the time was one of strict regulation. From the perspective of Indian entrepreneurs, shareholders and consumers, this was a good thing. To illustrate, imagine a foreign company which manufactures a networked camera cell phone. The company will be paying royalties for several of its features such as the camera, USB port, operating system, etc. This company then sets up a subsidiary in India to manufacture the same phones. Though the total royalties being paid by the parent company are likely to far exceed five per cent of its sales, it cannot charge the subsidiary royalties above this ceiling. Therefore, the costs for the Indian subsidiary reduce significantly. This reduction will be reflected in an increased dividend for shareholders and a reduced cost for consumers.</p>
<p>While the benefits of this royalty ceiling are manifold, it is evident that foreign rights-holders are adversely affected. Therefore, the Government has, unfortunately, gradually “liberalized” its approach towards royalty payments over the years. First the 7 or 10 year duration restrictions were done away with and next the lump sum ceiling was increased from Rs.1 crore to USD 2 million. Ultimately, the ceiling was removed altogether through the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion’s Press Note No.8 of 2009 in the name of liberalization. The adverse impacts on Indian manufacturers were almost immediate as foreign rights-holders began to revise their license agreements.[<a href="#2">2]</a>]</p>
<p>Why was this ceiling introduced in the first place? Some say it was due to the acute balance of payments deficit that existed in the country in 1991[<a href="#3">3</a>]; when India found itself overspending on imported oil. This urged the government at the time to ensure that foreign collaboration in the private sector was well regulated. Since then, the balance of payments situation in India has comparatively stabilized (though a deficit still does exist[<a href="#4">4]) and so there appears to be no immediate need to continue to regulate foreign technology collaboration. However, one can’t help but remember Mark Getty’s prediction that intellectual property will be the "oil of the twenty-first century".[</a><a href="#5">5]</a></p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1">[1] F. Bureaus, “Tech Transfer, Royalty Payment Norms Eased”, Financial Express (November 6, 2009) available at <</a><a href="http://www.financialexpress.com/news/tech-transfer-royalty-payment-norms-eased/537816/"><u>http://www.financialexpress.com/news/tech-transfer-royalty-payment-norms-eased/537816/</u></a></p>
<u>
<p class="discreet"><a name="2">[2]http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html">http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/cnbctv18comments/india-inc-to-bearbruntroyalty-payment-revision_472540.html</a>>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="3">[3]K. Sen, “News on Royalty Payment Brings Cheer in New Year”, Business Standard (January 4, 2010) available at <</a></p>
</u>
<p class="discreet"><span class="Apple-style-span"><u>http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/newsroyalty-payment-brings-cheer-in-new-year/381521/></u></span></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="4">[4]http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165">http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/SDDS_ViewDetails.aspx?SDDSID=165</a>>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="5">[5]http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php">http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/projects.php</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/lid-on-royalty-outflows</a>
</p>
No publisherSanjana GovilIntellectual Property RightsAccess to Knowledge2012-01-26T17:11:29ZBlog EntryMay 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.</b>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner</h3>
<p>Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/what-scares-a-digital-native-blogathon-1">What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/universal-service">Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/open-government-data-study">Open Government Data Study</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Comments</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/ict-in-school-education">Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Interview</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam">Q&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)</a> [Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, May 5, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Column in Indian Express</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/power-to-people">Power to the People</a> [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/killing-the-internet-oped">Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules</a> [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/rebuttal-dit-press-release-intermediaries">Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cdt-internet-neutrality">CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/limits-to-privacy">Limits to Privacy</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Conference Report</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy_privacybydesign">Privacy By Design — Conference Report</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Workshop</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/ijlt-cis-lecture-series">Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School</a> [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Conferences</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/uid-panel-discussion">Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality</a> [May 26, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=427&qid=46981" target="_blank">Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad</a></span> [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Telecom</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:</p>
<h3>Column</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/spectrum-reforms">Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news</a> [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Miscellaneous</b></h2>
<p>Public Lecture</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/lecture-by-hans">The Task of the Translator after Google</a> [CIS, April 30, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/avec-i-e-g-8">Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression"</a> [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/simple-as-a-tweet">As Simple as a Tweet</a> [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/network-of-chains">A Network of Chains</a> [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/rti-query-filed">Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt</a> [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/it-act-internet-use">IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China</a> [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/privacy-public-property">Your Privacy is Public Property</a></span> [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/point-by-point-rebuttal">Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules</a></span> [Medianama, May 13, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/new-rules-for-due-diligence">New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept</a></span> [Times of India, May 11, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/a-fight-against-draconian-IT-rules">Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules</a></span> [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/objectionable-content-can-be-removed">New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users</a></span> [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/online-speech">India Chills Online Speech</a></span> [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/consumers-international-world-congress-day-3-roundup">Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup</a></span> [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/censorship-in-new-web-rules">Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules</a></span> [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/free-expression">Free expression</a></span> [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/india-curbs-bloggers-internet">India curbs on Bloggers and Internet</a></span> [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/geek-city">Bright lights, geek city</a></span> [Hindu, April 28, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/india-cracks-down">India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech</a></span> [April 28, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/cyber-cafes-porn-free">India's cyber cafes going porn-free</a></span> [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/ipad-2-across-asia">Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia</a></span> [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/internet-rules-arbitary-interpretation">New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation</a></span> [Times of India, April 27, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/internet-free-speech">India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech</a></span> [New York Times, April 27, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/india-can-restrict-objectionable-web-content">India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules</a></span> [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/iraq-tour-of-india">Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj</a></span> [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/world-is-your-oyster">The world is your oyster, by invitation only</a></span> [Livemint, April 26, 2011] </li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/no-pornography-in-cyber-cafes">No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules</a></span> [Times of India, April 26, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/tapping-telephone-calls">India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls</a></span> [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011] </li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=456&qid=46981" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=457&qid=46981" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=458&qid=46981" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=459&qid=46981" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceOpenness2012-07-30T10:23:01ZPageConsumers International IP Watchlist 2011 — India Report
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-watch-list-2011
<b>Pranesh Prakash prepared the India Report for the Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011. The report was published on the A2K Network website. </b>
<p>The report says:</p>
<p>India's Copyright Act is a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable. However, the compulsory licensing provision have not been utilized so far, because of both a lack of knowledge and more importantly because of the stringent conditions attached to them. Currently, the Indian law is also a bit out of sync with general practices as the exceptions and limitations allowed for literary, artistic and musical works are often not available with sound recordings and cinematograph films. There are numerous other such inconsistencies.</p>
<p>While India has not acceded to the WIPO [23] Copyright Treaty or the WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty, yet a set of amendments have been proposed which would bring the Indian law in compliance with both the WCT and the WPPT. These amendments would expose India's consumers to the same problems experienced in other jurisdictions which have prohibited the use of circumvention devices to gain access to legally-acquired copyright material. These amendments also propose a substantial increase in the copyright term for photographs (from 50 years to life plus 60 years), and a conditional increase of ten years for cinematograph films to 70 years if a special agreement is entered into by the producer with the director. It is true that copyright infringement, particularly in the form of physical media, is widespread in India. However this must be taken in the context that India, although fast-growing, remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Although India's knowledge and cultural productivity over the centuries and to the present day has been rich and prodigious, its citizens are economically disadvantaged as consumers of that same knowledge and culture. Indeed, most students, even in the so-called elite institutions, need to employ photocopying and other such means to be able to afford the requisite study materials. Physically challenged persons have no option but to disobey the law that does not grant them equal access to copyrighted works.</p>
<p>Legitimate operating systems (with the notable exception of most free and open source OSes) add a very high overhead to the purchase of cheap computers, thus driving users to pirated software. Thus, these phenomena need to be addressed not at the level of enforcement, but at the level of supply of affordable works in a suitable format.</p>
<p>Over the last year, the Standing Committee tasked with review of the Copyright Amendment Bill has held hearings and presented its findings and recommendations to the HRD Ministry. However, not a single consumer rights organization was called by the Standing Committee, and no civil society engagement was sought except for the issue of access for persons with disabilities. This was despite a number of civil society organizations sending in written submissions to the Standing Committee. The government is going to re-table the Bill in this session of Parliament (February-April).</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-watch-list-2011.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Consumers International IP Watchlist 2011 — India Report">Click</a> to download the full report [PDF, 150 kb]</li>
<li>Read the report published by A2K Network <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/sites/default/files/IPWatchlist-2011-ENG.pdf">here</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-watch-list-2011'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ip-watch-list-2011</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to Knowledge2014-05-29T05:52:28ZBlog EntryApril 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India.</p>
<h3>Workshops organised in Bangalore</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=334&qid=39041" target="_blank">Shadow Search Project (SSP)</a> [CIS, April 18, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=335&qid=39041" target="_blank">Facebook Resistance</a></span> [CIS, April 2, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>Columns on Digital Natives</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following were published in the month of April:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=336&qid=39041" target="_blank">Who the Hack?</a></span> [Indian Express, April 24, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=337&qid=39041" target="_blank">One for the avatar</a></span> [Indian Express, April 3, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Digital Natives Newsletter</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Links in the Chain is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the Digital Natives with a Cause? The first issue of volume IV is here:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=338&qid=39041" target="_blank">links in the chain volume 4 Best Practices</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner</h3>
<p>Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=339&qid=39041" target="_blank">Cyber Fears: What scares Digital Natives and those around them</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>Workshop organised in Hyderabad</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=340&qid=39041" target="_blank">Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Submission</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=341&qid=39041" target="_blank">Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=342&qid=39041" target="_blank">Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development</a></span> [PLoS, March 29, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Featured</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=343&qid=39041" target="_blank">DIT's Response to RTI on Website Blocking</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=344&qid=39041" target="_blank">What are the legal provisions for blocking websites in India?</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=345&qid=39041" target="_blank">We are anonymous, we are legion</a></span> [published in the Hindu, April 18, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=346&qid=39041" target="_blank">You Have the Right to Remain Silent</a></span> [published in the Sunday Guardian, April 17, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Study Tour</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=347&qid=39041" target="_blank">Iraq Delegation to Visit India for Study of E-Governance in Indian Cities ― Meetings in Bangalore and Delhi</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=348&qid=39041" target="_blank">The DNA Profiling Bill 2007 and Privacy</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=349&qid=39041" target="_blank">Privacy and the Information Technology Act — Do we have the Safeguards for Electronic Privacy?</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h3>Interview</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=350&qid=39041" target="_blank">An Interview with Activist Shubha Chacko: Privacy and Sex workers</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Workshops organized in Ahmedabad and Bangalore</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=351&qid=39041" target="_blank">'Privacy Matters', Ahmedabad: Conference Report</a></span> [Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=352&qid=39041" target="_blank">Privacy, By Design</a></span> [CIS, April 16, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=353&qid=39041" target="_blank">Is Data Protection Enough?</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=354&qid=39041" target="_blank">Surveillance Technologies</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=355&qid=39041" target="_blank">Encryption Standards and Practices</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=356&qid=39041" target="_blank">News Broadcasting Standards Authority censures TV9 over privacy violations!</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Telecom</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:</p>
<h3>Column</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=357&qid=39041" target="_blank">Learning from Fukushima</a></span> [published in the Business Standard on April 7, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=358&qid=39041" target="_blank">The Gary Chapman International School on Digital Transformation</a></span>[International School on Digital Transformation, July 17-22, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=359&qid=39041" target="_blank">Iraqi delegation in Bangalore to study e-governance projects</a></span> [Economic Times, April 20, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=360&qid=39041" target="_blank">Dark waders</a></span> [Time Out Bengaluru, Vol. 3, Issue 20, April 15 - 28, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=361&qid=39041" target="_blank">Beyond Clicktivism</a></span> [Outlook, April 18, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=362&qid=39041" target="_blank">Gone in a flash</a></span> [Times of India, April 16, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=363&qid=39041" target="_blank">How Web 2.0 responded to Hazare</a></span> [Hindu, April 11, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=364&qid=39041" target="_blank">EU Commissioner Hedegaard to deliver keynote address at consumer world congress</a></span></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=365&qid=39041" target="_blank">Net cracker</a></span> [Time Out Bengaluru Vol. 3 Issue 19, April 1 - 14, 2011]</li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=366&qid=39041" target="_blank">On the Path to Global Open Access: A Few More Miles to Go</a></span> [PLoS, March 2011, Volume 8, Issue 3]</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=367&qid=39041" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=368&qid=39041" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=369&qid=39041" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=370&qid=39041" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchOpenness2012-07-30T10:45:01ZPageMarch 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march%20-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects are online for peer review.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">New Blog Entry by Zainab Bawa in Transparency and Politics</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/transparency/transparency-politics-it-in-india" target="_blank">A History of Transparency, Politics and Information Technologies in India</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Digital Natives with a Cause?</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.</p>
<h3>Column on Digital Natives</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following was published recently:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/watson-knows" target="_blank">Watson knows the Question</a> [Indian Express, March 6, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Maesey Angelina works as a programme officer at Hivos, Jakarta on gender, women and development while exploring research initiatives on Digital Natives in Indonesia. She spent one month in CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise project under the Digital Natives with a Cause framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/reflecting-from-the-beyond" target="_blank">Reflecting from the Beyond</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/activism-unraveling-the-term" target="_blank">Activism: Unraveling the Term</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/the-many-faces-within" target="_blank">The Many Faces Within</a> </li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entries by Samuel Tettner</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entries:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/i-believe-that-______-should-be-a-right-in-the-digital-age" target="_blank">I Believe that .......... should be a Right in the Digital Age</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/science-technology-and-society-conference-in-indore-march-12-13" target="_blank">Science, Technology and Society International Conference – Some Afterthoughts</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/accessible-mobile-handsets" target="_blank">Accessible Mobile Handsets in India: An Overview</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities" target="_blank">Note on the Authorities under the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (9th February 2011)</a> </li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Intellectual Property</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/plagiarism-in-indian-academia" target="_blank">Pirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers</a> [ Written by Prashant Iyengar and originally published in the Economic & Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, Vol XLVI No 9]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Submission</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011" target="_blank">Comments to the Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty</a> (March 2011)</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<h3>Workshops organised</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/design-public" target="_blank">Design!publiC</a> [Taj Vivanta, New Delhi, March 18, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/open-access" target="_blank">Open Access to Scientific Information Indian International Centre</a> [New Delhi, March 16, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has taken the following shape:</p>
<h3>Submissions</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/electronic-delivery-of-services-comments" target="_blank">The Draft Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011 – Comments by CIS</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/policy-for-governments-presence-in-social-media-recommendations" target="_blank">Policy for Government's Presence in Social Media - Recommendations</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/rtis-on-website-blocking" target="_blank">RTI Applications on Blocking of Websites</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. <i>It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon</i>. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Submission</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/privacy_govdatabase" target="_blank">Privacy and Governmental Database</a> </li>
</ul>
<p>Workshops organized</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/privacy-matters-ahmedabad" target="_blank">Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Ahmedabad</a> [Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/ian" target="_blank">Public Talk by Dr. Ian Brown on Privacy, Trust and Biometrics</a> [Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore, March 21, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/electronication" target="_blank">Electronication: Ragas and the Future</a> [Jaaga, Bangalore, March 6, 2011]</li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/fostering-freedom-of-expression" target="_blank">Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi</a> [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/global-freedom-expression" target="_blank">Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression</a> [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Telecom</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:</p>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/untapped-potential" target="_blank">India's untapped potential: Are a billion people losing out because of spectrum?</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Column</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/big-bang-budgets" target="_blank">Big-Bang Budgets?</a> [published in the Business Standard on March 3, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Forthcoming Events</b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is organising some conferences/workshops in the month of March/April:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/w3c-conference-hyderabad" target="_blank">Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: A New Imperative for State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities</a>[Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/shadow-search-in-cis" target="_blank">Shadow Search Project (SSP) in CIS</a> [CIS, Bangalore]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/facebook-resistance" target="_blank">Facebook Resistance Workshop</a> [CIS, Bangalore]</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/networking-better-governance" target="_blank">Networking its way to better governance</a> (Hindu, March 28, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/failed-uk-nir-project" target="_blank">‘Learn from failed UK NIR project’</a> (Deccan Chronicle, March 22, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/design-public-livemint-coverage" target="_blank">Design!publiC - News from Livemint</a> (Livemint, March 18, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/muzzling-internet" target="_blank">Muzzling the Internet</a> (Outlook, March 17, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/battle-internet" target="_blank">Battle for the Internet</a> (Down to Earth, Issue: March 15, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/cause-and-effect" target="_blank">Cause and effect Facebook-style</a> (Hindustan Times, March 13, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/catch-all" target="_blank">Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire</a> (Sunday Guardian, March 13, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/suspended-in-web" target="_blank">Lives suspended in the Web</a> (Indian Express, March 11, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/it-guidelines-gag-internet-freedom" target="_blank">Draft IT guidelines may gag internet freedom</a> (Times of India, March 11, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/govt-proposal" target="_blank">Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers sparks outcry</a> (Times of India, March 10, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/online-censorship" target="_blank">New Indian Rules May Make Online Censorship Easier</a> (Yahoo News, March 7, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/anti-social-network" target="_blank">Anti-Social Network</a> (Mail Today, February 27, 2011)</li>
</ul>
<h2>Follow us elsewhere</h2>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Follow CIS on <a href="http://identi.ca/main/remote?nickname=cis" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28535315687" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Visit us at <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march%20-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march%20-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchOpenness2012-07-30T10:59:46ZPageComments to the Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty (March 2011)
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011
<b>As a follow up to a stakeholder meeting called by the MHRD on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, CIS provided written comments on the April 2007 Non-Paper of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty, emphasising the need for a signal-based approach to be taken on the Broadcast Treaty, and making it clear that India should continue to oppose the creation of new rights for webcasters.</b>
<p>On February 22, 2011, the Ministry of Human Resource Development held a meeting to decide on the Indian position on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. The Ministry asked the participants at the meeting to send in written submissions on four matters. We sent in submissions on those four issues, as well as a few others.</p>
<h2>Comments on the non-paper for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty by the Centre for Internet and Society</h2>
<p>On February 23, 2011, the Ministry of HRD had asked for comments on four matters:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Article 3 of the Non-paper which was circulated earlier</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Term of protection for signal</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Nature of limitations and exceptions</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Protection of signal and retransmission</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>We have made submissions on those and a few other matters as well. Unless noted otherwise, all comments made in this note pertain to the final non-paper (April 2007) and not the draft non-paper (March 2007).</p>
<h2>Article 3</h2>
<p>Article 3 of the draft non-paper that was circulated (March 2007) for comments from country delegates stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>3. Scope of Application</p>
<p>The provisions of this Treaty shall not provide any protection in respect of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(i) mere retransmissions;</p>
<p>(ii) any transmissions where the time of the transmission and the place of its reception may be individually chosen by members of the public (on-demand transmissions); or</p>
<p>(iii) any transmissions over computer networks (transmissions using the Internet</p>
<p>Protocol, “webcasting”, or “netcasting”).</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>A number of people present at the recent MHRD-organized meeting noted that “mere retransmissions” is a confusing term. In the revised non-paper (April 2007), it has been clarified that protection is not granted to third parties for merely retransmitting another’s signal (Art. 3(4)(i)).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>3. Specific Scope and Object of Protection</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(4) The provisions of this Treaty shall not provide any protection</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(i) to retransmitting third parties in respect of their mere retransmissions by any means of broadcasts by broadcasting organizations;</p>
<p>(ii) to any person for transmissions where the time of the transmission and the place of its reception may be individually chosen by members of the public (on-demand transmissions); or</p>
<p>(iii) to any person for transmissions over computer networks</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition, Art. 3(4)(iii) is currently ambiguous since it is not clear whether “retransmissions” are subsumed under the word transmission. By allowing for separate rights for retransmission over computer networks, the Treaty allows for the creation of two classes: traditional broadcasters who will have rights over retransmissions over computer networks, and all other persons who will have no rights over transmissions. Thus, if “retransmission” is not subsumed under the word “transmission”, it would be advisable to alter that clause to read “<i>to any person for transmissions or retransmissions over computer networks</i>”.</p>
<p>Lastly, Art. 3(4) should additional prevent protection for persons broadcasting materials for which they have not acquired copyright, or for broadcasting materials in the public domain.</p>
<h2>Term of Protection of Signals</h2>
<p>No term of protection should be provided. As was noted by the US government in its response to the draft non-paper, it is questionable “whether a 20-year term of protection is consistent with a signal-based approach”. The Brazilian delegation also states: “Article 13 should be deleted. A twenty-year term of protection is unnecessary. The agreed “signal-based” approach to the Treaty implies that the objected of protection is the signal, and therefore duration of protection must be linked with the ephemeral life of the signal itself.” Thus, a term is only needed if we stray away from a signal-based approach. As we do not wish to do so, there should be no term of protection.</p>
<h2>Limitations and Exceptions</h2>
<p>The limitations and exceptions (L&E) currently provided for allow for mirroring of copyright L&E limited by a Berne-like three-step test.</p>
<p>However, reasons for providing protection over broadcasting are not the same as those for copyright. For instance, a country may wish to make exceptions to signal protection for cases such as broadcast of a national sport, as India has done with the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharati) Act.</p>
<p>This might well afoul of the three-step test proposed in Article 10(2). Furthermore, a country may wish to limit the application of broadcasters rights for national broadcasters (whose programming is paid for by taxpayers, and thus should be available to them), but may not be able to do so under the provisions of Article 10(2). Thus, Article 10(2) should be deleted, and Article 10(1) should be expanded to include issues of national interest and for free-to-air broadcast signals.</p>
<h2>Protection of Signal and Retransmission</h2>
<p>It should be a sine qua non condition of India’s that that this be a purely signal-based treaty with no fixation or post-fixation rights. Thus, it should restrict itself to protection of signals, and simultaneous retransmission.</p>
<p>As a result, no separate right to prevent unauthorized “decryption” should be granted, since signal-theft is already a crime. For instance, this provision would also cover decrypting an unauthorized retransmission without authorization from the retransmitter. This provides the unauthorized retransmitter rights, even though s/he has no right to retransmit. This leads to an absurd situation.</p>
<p>As stated by the Brazilian government:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[Article 10 of the draft non-paper and Article 9 of the non-paper] is inconsistent with a “signal-based approach”. It creates unwarranted obstacles to technological development, to access to legitimate uses, flexibilities and exceptions and to access to the public domain. It does not focus on securing effective protection against an illicit act, but rather creates new exclusive rights so that they cover areas unrelated with the objective of the treaty, such as control by holder of industrial production of goods, the development and use of encryption technologies, and private uses. The prohibition of mere decryption of encrypted signals, without there having been unauthorized broadcasting activity, is abusive.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Other comments</h2>
<h3>Article 7</h3>
<p>Article 7 of the non-paper provides broadcasters rights post-fixation (“Broadcasting organizations shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing … the deferred transmission by any means to the public of their fixed broadcasts. ”). This is contrary to a signal-based approach. A signal-based approach would necessarily mean that it is only signal theft (which happens only via unauthorized simultaneous retransmission) that should be protected. Deferred transmission should implicate the rights of the owner of copyright, but not of the broadcasting organization.</p>
<h3>Article 4</h3>
<p>As suggested by the Brazilian government, Article 4(1) which proposes a non-prejudice clause should be amended to add the words “and access to the public domain” at its end. This is consistent with the WIPO Development Agenda.</p>
<h3>Article 5</h3>
<p>India should re-iterate its suggestion to add the following to the definition of “broadcast” under Art. 5(a): “‘broadcast’ shall not be understood as including transmission of such a set of signals over computer networks. ”</p>
<p>Further, the phrase “general public ” should be retained in Art.5 (as was present in the draft non-paper), and should not be made into “public”. The danger is that a limited public (say family members) could possibly be covered by the term “public”, while they will be excluded from “general public”, which in any case is the target audience of all broadcast.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wipo-broadcast-treaty-comments-march-2011</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeIntellectual Property RightsBroadcastingSubmissionsTechnological Protection Measures2012-12-14T10:29:20ZBlog EntryPirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia
<b>This article attempts to rescue not by denying the charges of plagiarism, but by charting an alternative trajectory of plagiarism so that each successive instance does not amplify our sense of embarrassment and crisis in the academy. The article by Prashant Iyengar was published in the Economic & Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, Vol XLVI No 9.</b>
<p>"Copying one book is plagiarism; copying several is research." Unknown <a href="#1">1</a></p>
<p>Someone must have slandered Indian academia, for, without having done anything new or different, allegations of plagiarism have suddenly been tumbling out of India’s ‘top’ universities in these past few years.</p>
<p>In October 2002, a group of physicists from Stanford University, including three Nobel laureates, addressed a letter to the (then) President Abdul Kalam complaining of plagiarism by the Vice Chancellor of Kumaon University.<a href="#2">2</a> In January 2006, a professor from IIM Bangalore was dismissed for plagiarism.<a href="#3">3</a> In February 2008, a professor from the Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupathi was accused of having plagiarized up to 70 papers between 2004 and 2007.<a href="#4">4</a> In October 2010, IIT Kharagpur was forced to set up a committee to investigate allegations of plagiarism by one of its professors and three doctoral candidates.<a href="#5">5</a></p>
<p>And so on. It seems Benjamin Franklin’s adage about originality being “the art of concealing your sources” thrives today in Indian academia. Something is rotten in the State of academic research. Evidently, we even know exactly what it is: Some years ago, the Association of Indian Universities invited students to a research contest. The pamphlet advertising the contest contained a remarkably prolix account of the causes of the general decline in academic research:</p>
<p>Of late, <b>research has become a subservient component in the university</b> functioning. It is <b>not considered a lucrative career option</b>. Apart from this, <b>resource constraints, lack of commitment, lack of proper encouragement</b>, etc., are the impediments that are affecting the quality of research in our institutions of higher education. Another important factor for the deterioration of the quality of research is the <b>absence of adequate training and other capacity building</b> endeavour in our system, which has <b>restricted students’ creativity only to rote memory</b>. <a href="#6">6</a> (emphasis mine)</p>
<p>Similarly, we are periodically reminded, as in this instance, by the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation that “India lacks quality academic organisations and research and development institutions that breed inventions in technology. This is the major reason behind India's failure in breaking new ground in inventions and innovations.”<a href="#7">7</a> Other news reports bemoan the fact that “Indian patent filings lag behind global average" with the total “number of filings by residents being just three per million people in its population, compared with the world average of 250”<a href="#8">8</a></p>
<p>Accounts such as these, which abound in the press and journals, typically trace a “decline” hypothesis according to which the quality of academic research in India, once rigorous and upright, has fallen precipitously in recent times. Poor quality of academic research is then portrayed as a function of the impoverishment of the academy itself. Concealed within this auto-critique is an envy of putatively ideal systems in other countries which exhibit values that are an inversion of those identified as ours: i.e. they privilege research, are well-resourced, file the statistically approved average number of patents, allow students’ creativity free rein, and do not restrict their creativity only to rote memory. Lurking underneath these criticisms is also the anxiety that the arrival of the internet has, far from invigorating indigenous research in India, facilitated plagiarism on a wider scale than previously imaginable. What do we make of all this self-slander?</p>
<p>In this essay I will attempt to rescue Indian academic research, not by denying the charges of plagiarism, but by charting an alternative trajectory of plagiarism so that each successive instance does not amplify our sense of embarrassment and crisis in the academy.</p>
<p>I begin by drawing on my own prior study on student research in law universities in India<a href="#9">9</a> to provide a rough account of how law students approach research. However inappropriate, I use some of my observations in the course of that study as a microcosmic model for how research is conducted by students across the country today.</p>
<p>Next, I will attempt to show how the charge of plagiarism only acquires its pungency after the installation of a particularly western ‘Romantic’ conception of creativity that is hinged on the ‘genius’ figure. My point here is not one of cultural difference – we may or may not have conflicting traditions of (literary) creativity in India - but of heterogeneity of possible standpoints from which creativity can be judged, which have been deprecated or forgotten since this modern conception took root. While this idea is itself not ‘original’, having been made by numerous authors on whose work I draw upon here<a href="#10">10</a> , I am interested here in how it can inform our reaction to quotidian reports of plagiarism in the contemporary. Specifically, I think our understanding of 'originality-as-genius’ is a relatively recent historical product, and is definitely not the 'natural' or universal parameter by which literature and arts have been judged. I would assert that contemporary practices on the Internet restore us to (or renew the salience of) some of these pre-modern practices of authorship where originality in its Cartesian sense may not necessarily be determinative of value.</p>
<p>I would however hasten to add that this does not lead us inexorably to the conclusion that our traditional understanding of plagiarism has to abandoned. In the case of academic writing, 'Romantic' standards of originality have been rigorously upheld and policed by the spectral might of the University. Here, the ritual demonstration of cartesian orginality is not only a condition of success, but a minimum qualification for survival and advancement in this domain. With the stakes being so high, the temptation to pass off others' works as one's own is great, in contrast to the risks of being caught. This does not mean that everyone resorts to it, only that there are structural factors in the academy that make practices of plagiarism more 'rational' than, perhaps, in other domains<a href="#11">11</a> .</p>
<p>To begin, then with my conclusions, I think that dulling the keenness of ‘cartesian originality’ in the University could be an important component in the serious task of educational reform. Equally, I aim, in this article to rehabilitate the term plagiarism so as to diminish the sense of embarrassment that seems to come naturally to us when we speak of Indian research.</p>
<h3>Student ‘research’ in Law Schools in India</h3>
<p>The content and observations in this section draw from a study that I had conducted in 2006 on student research in national law universities in India. During the study I had interviewed 40 students and eleven faculty members across three National Law Universities. <a href="#12">12</a> I will focus here on the themes from those surveys that directly address the issue of research and plagiarism.</p>
<p>By way of background, in a typical national law university following a semester model, a student must submit up to 5 research papers (of lengths varying from 20 to 50 pages) a semester – or ten papers a year. In the duration of her five year legal education, a student from a national law university in India would have submitted anywhere between 48 (NALSAR) to 70 (NLIU Jodhpur) research papers of varying lengths. Given an average class-size of 80, and 5 batches in every university, a guesstimate indicates an average output of about 4000 papers of varying quality from every national law university annually. The table below contains a rough back-of-envelope enumeration of the research output of five national law universities in India, drawn from respective university prospectuses and websites.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td><b>NALSAR</b></td>
<td><b>NLSIU</b></td>
<td><b>NLIU</b></td>
<td><b>NLU</b></td>
<td><b>GNLU</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Intake</td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>80</b></td>
<td><b>160</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Max Strength</td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>400</b></td>
<td><b>800</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Academic Unit</td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
<td><b>Trisemester</b></td>
<td><b>Trisemester</b></td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
<td><b>Semester</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Law Courses</td>
<td><b>40</b></td>
<td><b>51</b></td>
<td><b>48</b></td>
<td><b>54</b></td>
<td><b>51</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Non-Law Courses</td>
<td><b>10</b></td>
<td><b>10</b></td>
<td><b>26</b></td>
<td><b>8</b></td>
<td><b>9</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Number of research papers<br />per student through the <br />duration of the 5 year course</td>
<td><b>18</b></td>
<td><b>50-60</b></td>
<td><b>65-74</b></td>
<td><b>55-62</b></td>
<td><b>55-60</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Max number of research <br />papers per semester / trisemester</td>
<td><b>1900</b></td>
<td><b>1400</b></td>
<td><b>2000</b></td>
<td><b>2200</b></td>
<td><b>4000</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Number of student<br />research papers per year<br />(approx)</td>
<td><b>3800</b></td>
<td><b>4200</b></td>
<td><b>6000</b></td>
<td><b>4400</b></td>
<td><b>8000</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>By any estimate, this volume of research is staggering and should ordinarily be a cause for pride. However law universities are also beset with the same anxieties of poor research ‘quality’ and plagiarism that characterize the broader academy. While my previous study contains a fuller discussion on the causes of poor legal research at these universities, I would like, here, to only reproduce some of my survey conclusions from that study that would feed the discussion for the later sections of this paper.</p>
<ul>
<li>From my surveys it appeared that both students and faculty shared a sense that the research burden on students in these universities was excessive and too onerous to facilitate high quality research.</li>
<li>Students respond to the high research load by budgeting their efforts – working more intensely on some research assignments while neglecting others. This accorded with the responses from faculty members who reported an extremely low number of high quality research papers turned in. Responses from faculty indicate that a high percentage of papers received fall under a median category between ‘high quality’ and ‘abjectly low quality’ – i.e. there are a large number of papers which, while offering a cogent account of the topic do not add any insight of their own.</li>
<li>Both students and faculty reported generally, the existence of a high degree of plagiarism (defined as the inclusion of extrinsic material without attributing sources) sourced both from amongst their peers as well as from extrinsic sources. Although most students (78%) claimed never to have directly copied from other students’ papers, many (67%) admitted to having shared their papers with other students either for ‘reference’, or more commonly, for adaptation/reuse in their assignments. The responses to whether they had any reservations against the practice were diverse with more students in favour of the practice of plagiarism (47%) than against (30%). Without admitting to participating it in themselves, 60% of respondents characterised the prevalence of ‘copy/paste’ plagiarism in research on their campus as ‘Rampant’ or ‘High’. Many reasons were forthcoming for the prevalence of this practice among which the more frequently stated included: ‘High work pressure’, ‘lack of time’ ‘lack of incentive to do high quality research’, ‘lack of emphasis by evaluators on high quality academic work’, ‘pointlessness of repeating identical research from scratch’. Other less common reasons offered were ‘emphasis on sheer volume to the neglect of quality of analysis’ and ‘disingenuousness of topics’ and ‘Laziness’.</li>
<li>Over half the students surveyed had never published their research in journals. This despite the fact that 75% of respondents reported that at least 1 of their research papers was either publishable immediately or with modifications. More than half the respondents reported upwards of three papers that they themselves regarded as ‘publishable’.</li>
<li>One of the common reasons that the faculty identified for the incidence of plagiarism was that students had begun to stereotype teachers who were unlikely to check or be able to check for plagiarism and would submit entirely plagiarised papers to them. Other reasons included the difficulty of checking the huge number of papers they received individually for plagiarism and also the fact that students had an unreasonably high workload coupled with the lack of enough incentive to do thorough research. <br /><br />“Intuition” and “checking the number of sources” was still the common mode of detecting plagiarism although some faculty made creative use of the internet – particularly Google.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Faculty was asked if a paper that appeared plagiarized to a high degree, but also indicated that the student had put in an intelligent compilation of materials, would be acceptable by them. The response to this was largely affirmative with some faculty members saying that most papers would correspond to that category and this standard was imperative for a majority of students to pass! Most faculty required that the source material at least be acknowledged.</li>
<li>With regard to their research sources, there was a clear bias in favour of online sources almost to the exclusion of other sources. One respondent even rated online sources as being “more important than libraries”, and even claimed that she always began her legal research on the internet.</li>
</ul>
<p>It is evident then from the foregoing account that the law universities are poor representatives of ‘original’ scholarship. The career of students through the law school seems to be marked by a blithe collaboration with faculty in which a Nelson’s eye is turned to their less-obvious plagiarisms. Although it is possible to adopt a high moralistic tone and condemn these practices, in the remainder of this paper I would like to marshal resources that would lend some dignity to them. In the section that follows, I will argue firstly, that there are rival conceptions of originality which privilege the recombination of existing information, rather than being fixated on ivory-towered ex nihilo originality.<br />Under this conception, even the pastiche works by lazy law students emerge as eminently ‘original’. Secondly, I argue that slavish imitation is never always only that, and have long been recognized as an integral aspect of the creative process itself.</p>
<h3>‘Originality’ is only a special effect of reception</h3>
<p>In his fascinating book Original Copy, Robert Macfarlane draws on George Steiner’s vocabulary to contrast two different narratives of literary creation – The first, creatio, espouses “a hallowed vision of creation as generation” which “connotes some brief, noumenal moment of afflatus or inspiration’ during which the author composes her work.</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>..the creative urge is dramatized as pulsing deep within the fastness of the individual self, and the solitary writer is seen to conjure ideas into the influence proofed chamber of his or her imagination. <a href="#13">13</a></div>
</blockquote>
<p>By contrast, the second conception of literary creativity, inventio, which is commonly found both in literary postmodernism and Augustan aesthetics, conceives of “creation as rearrangement” and “refuse[s] to believe in the possibility of creation out of nothing, or in the uninfluenced literary work”.<a href="#14">14</a> Instead this view “privileges the act of making out of extant material”. According to these “recombinative theories”, the creating mind is conceived</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>“as a lumber-room in which are stored innumerable verbal odds and ends. The supposedly ‘original’ writer in fact works with ‘inherited lexical, grammatical, and semantic counters, combining and recombining them into expressive executive sequences’. <a href="#15">15</a></div>
</blockquote>
<p>As an instance of this latter view, Macfarlane cites the example of Derrida who coined the term itérabilité to describe “the semantic drift which inevitably occurs between consecutive uses of the same text”. Derived from a combination of the Latin verb iterare (meaning ‘to repeat’) and the Sanskrit word itara (meaning ‘other’), the word “valuably emphasizes ‘the logic which links repetition to alterity’. For Derrida, the repetition of a text inescapably involves its alteration: you can never step twice in the same poem, paragraph, or word.”</p>
<p>I find this latter conception, especially Derrida’s concept of itérabilité to be a valuable tool with which to think through the practices of the law students I interviewed. While being derived from a plurality of (frequently unacknowledged sources), their papers were never mere ‘slavish’ repetitions, but always contained an element of alterity.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, the networked information age that we inhabit both facilitates and preempts the flourishing of ‘recombinative creativity’. On the one hand, the abundance of informational resources that the internet puts at a researcher’s disposal, as well as the ease of word-processing makes it easy to rapidly refashion materials into a pastiche of one’s own. On the other hand, the illusion of novelty that such work may produce is capable of being dispelled equally swiftly, and more efficiently than ever before through the use of special applications designed to detect plagiarism. If, as MacFarlane suggests, originality is not “an indwelling quality of writerly production, but instead a function of readerly perception, or more precisely readerly ignorance (the failure to discern a writer’s sources)”, then the emergence of the internet has nearly made this form of originality impossible, by making this reader ignorance extremely evanescent (lasting only until the reader’s next Google search). The ability of students to pass off plagiarised material as their own will hinge increasingly on their ability to alter it unrecognizably, at which point the output is no longer a mere slavish imitation, but something new altogether – ‘quality research’.</p>
<div>
<p>In an essay on pre-print culture<a href="#16">16</a> , Lawrence Liang demonstrates that the notion that prior to print technology, the task of writing was reduced to that of slavish copying by scribes is false. As Liang notes, the real story is slightly more complicated.</p>
</div>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>
<div>Acting as annotators, compilers, and correctors, medieval bookowners and scribes actively shaped the texts they read. For instance, they might choose to leave out some of the Canterbury Tales, or contribute one of their own. They might correct Chaucer’s versification every now and then. They might produce whole new drafts of Chaucer by combining one or more of his published versions with others.<a href="#17">17</a></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>With the arrival of print technology, however, a fundamental transformation occurs in the way the activities of writing and reading. Liang quotes an extended passage from Rebecca Lynn’s study of reading and writing practices in medieval England<a href="#18">18</a> that captures this change:</p>
</div>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<div>
<div>
<div>the benefits readers derived from the press, in terms of better access to authorized texts, were countered by a profound loss of opportunity for inventive forms of reception. They were free to take with the texts they recopied. Manuscript culture encouraged readers to edit or adapt freely any text they wrote out, or to re-shape the texts they read with annotations that would take the same form as the scribe's initial work on the manuscript. <i>The assumption that texts are mutable and available for adaptation by anyone is the basis, not only for this quotidian functioning of the average reader, but also for the composition of the great canonical works of the period</i>.<a href="#19">19</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<p>Is it possible, in the light of this insight about the creative element of copying in pre-print days, to revise our pathological accounts of contemporary plagiarism? <a href="#20">20</a> Can we view plagiarism not as an offence against the ‘author’ity of knowledge, but in a sense as a reversion to a more primordial tradition in which the availability of a text presumes and is premised upon its availability for adaptation. As described previously, responses from interviews with faculty indicates a grudging tolerance of plagiarism in student research.</p>
<p>This tolerance, stemming from an acknowledgement that even acts of compilation are not wholly without a creative element, seems to restore us to such an understanding of ‘creative’ reading akin to what has been described above.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>Few years ago, a famous author of textbooks on Intellectual Property law in India was discovered to have plagiarised close to two hundred pages of his new book on the Right to Information. The pages had been lifted verbatim from the manuscript sent by a famous law professor to the same publisher. When the matter came to light, the first author pleaded ignorance. After an ugly out-of-court tussle between the professor and the publisher (who happen to be one of India’s more powerful legal-publishing houses), a compromise was reached wherein the professor’s book would be published with a note inserted stating that 200 of his pages had been included in the other ‘author’s’ book.</p>
<p>I conclude this essay with this piece of copyright ‘gossip’ in order to highlight a couple of ironies that it animates. The first is, of course, the delicious irony that a famous author, of IP books no less, would stoop to such lows. (Could academic writing in any discipline be above suspicion now that academic writing in IP, that guardian discipline of genius ‘originality’, has proven susceptible to plagiarism?) The second irony is that this person’s reputation as the ‘author’ of a book, and of a genre of books survives despite the fact that he may not have penned even a single word of his book – which prompts us to ponder what function the author truly serves here. Lastly, I find the fact curious that both books continue to be displayed – and sold - in various legal bookstores, frequently side-by- side. The ‘fact’ of the plagiarism seems not to have significantly impacted sales of either author’s tome.</p>
<p>Tempting as it may be, one must resist treating this example as either exceptional or paradigmatic. Publishers in India in many cases do lead authors by their nose, and this is particularly so in the case of text-book publishing. However, this does not mean that original – in the Cartesian sense - academic writing does not continue to be produced in India. I feel this instance points us to the limits of the argument I have made in the preceding section. As well as it may be to celebrate ‘recombinative’ accounts of creativity in students, wholesale plagiarism with impunity by big name authors backed by large publishing houses cannot be easy to endure. In our acceptance of a combinatorial ‘inventio’ theory of creativity, it would be unwise too hastily to jettison the more austere creatio theory. As Macfarlane points out, popular attitudes to originality and plagiarism have moved between the two narratives of originality in a dialectical fashion so that they can best be thought of as “enmeshed .., or existing in a kind of helical wrap: each requiring the other for its support, counter-definition, and continued existence. Neither ever obliterates the other.”<a href="#21">21</a></p>
<p>However they may have been produced, we regard our ‘works’ not merely as our property but also relationally through ethics of propriety. In other words, what we write is our “own” not in the way that our shoe is our own, but in the sense that our friends are our own. Plagiarism in this context most closely approaches its original Latin roots – plaga: to convert a freeman into a slave22. – as the unjust enslavement or capture of our work by someone else.<br />What role has the internet played in this crisis of plagiarism? Despite the inherent promiscuity of the medium, I think that the arrival of the internet has not actually changed our practices in relation to plagiarism. So the fact that I may blithely pirate movies and music on the internet does not mean, automatically, that I adopt 'piracy' as my research methodology for academic writing. Our choices remain as they were – to acknowledge or not, with the latter being increasingly more risky in an age when exposure is only a google search away.</p>
<p>Finally, how does all of this relate to the question I posed at the start viz: what do we make of this self-slander? I think it will not do to simply declare ourselves innocent of the charge of plagiarism. (As Josef K’s prison chaplain says, that is what the guilty usually do.) But equally we must be careful, to continue with a Kafkaesque metaphor, not to see the gallows being constructed in the distance and hang ourselves on the presumption they are being erected solely for us. Kafka alone, of course, does not supply good grist for policy decisions. A possible way forward would be to import the cinematic notion of plagiarism into academic writing: Not all that is unacknowledged is unoriginal (as my <br />example from student research at law universities shows), but this does not extend to a license to appropriate all as one's own (the example of the famous IP author who plagiarised 200 pages from a professor). The former is a function of the dominant, awkward alien aesthetic imposed by the University, which requires academic writing to be dully impersonal and abstract. Finding it too taxing, most students resort to a clumsy pastiche rather than, for instance, shifting to a more narrative style which they may be more comfortable with. The internet allows their pastiche to be more colorful than before.</p>
<p>The latter is plainly an ethical failing by someone who believes they can get away with impunity. The internet does not impact them in any way except that their 'crime' once discovered circulates endlessly on the internet (As this IP author discovered to his dismay).</p>
<p>In deciding what is to be done, however, I would advise our policy makers to make haste, only slowly.</p>
</div>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<div>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1">Lindey, A., 1952. <i>Plagiarism and originality</i>, Harper., New York, P.2</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="2">Chu, S. et al., 2002. Letter from the group of Professors of Physics of Stanford University to the President of India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/publications/PDFfiles/india.pdf">http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/publications/PDFfiles/india.pdf</a> [Accessed December 22, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="3">Seethalakshmi, S., 2006. IIM-B prof held violating copyright. The Times of India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2006-01-05/bangalore/27803993_1_iim-b-p-g-apte-copyright-violation">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/IIM-B-prof-held-violatingcopyright/ articleshow/1359149.cms?curpg=2</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="4">Tewari, M., 2008. Indian professor guilty of plagiarism. DNA India. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_indian-professor-guilty-of-plagiarism_1152417">http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_indian-professor-guilty-of-plagiarism_1152417</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="5">Singh, K., 2010. IIT-K sets up panel to probe plagiarism charges. Indian Express. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/iitk-sets-up-panel-to-probe-plagiarism-charges/695196/">http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/iitk-sets-up-panel-to-probe-plagiarism-charges/695196/</a> [Accessed December 21, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="6">"Anveshan: Student Research Convention." Association of Indian Universities. Apr 2008. Research Division. 30 Apr 2008 <http://www.aiuweb.org/Research/research.asp>.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="7">Josy Joseph , ‘India lacks R&D base, laments DRDO chief ‘, (2000), [Internet], Available from: <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/11josy1.htm">http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/11josy1.htm</a>> [Accessed 21 April 2008]</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="8">‘Indian patent filings lag behind global average’, [Internet], Available from: <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4075557/Indian-patent-filings-lag-behind-global-average">http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204702703</a>> [Accessed 21 April 2008]</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="9">Iyengar, P., 2008. Open Information Policy for Student Research in Law Universities. SSRN eLibrary. <br />Available at:</a><a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1555689"> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1555689</a> [Accessed December 24, 2010].</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="10">See for instance, Rose, M., 1993. <i>Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright</i>, Cambridge, Mass: <br />Harvard University Press. Woodmansee, M., 1984. The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal<br />Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author'. <i>Eighteenth-Century Studies</i>, 17(4), 425-448.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="11">For instance, the charge of plagiarism in the domain of cinema seems to have a significantly diluted charge. Bollywood has been accused frequently of aping Hollywood, although this does not stand in the way of it immense popularity and renown. Ramesh Sippy's Sholay is regarded as having been influenced by John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven, itself being similarly 'influenced' by Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. On the modern definition of originality which requires us all to be 'perfectly uninfluenced', this qualifies as plagiarism. This definition however did not stand in the way of Sholay becoming an iconic film for Indian cinema.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="12">Respectively The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS).Although this sample is not sufficiently representative to make statistically kosher extrapolations – indeed, I make no such claim - I think the responses I received affirmed certain interesting observable trends about student research, that would seem commonsensical to anyone who teaches in India. To that extent, I think this data yields some interesting starting points for the theme of the current paper.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="13">Macfarlane, R., 2007. Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.2</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="14">Ibid, p.4</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="15">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="16">Liang, L., 2009. A Brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century. In N. Rajan, ed. <i>The Digitized Imagination</i>. Routledge India, pp. 15-36.</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="17">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="18">Schoff, R.L., 2004. Freedom from the Press: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval England. Harvard University. Available at: </a><a class="external-link" href="http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3516592">http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3516592</a>. cited in Liang, L., 2009. A Brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century. In N. Rajan, ed. The Digitized Imagination. Routledge India, pp. 15-36.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="19">Ibid</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="20">For instance the ‘epidemic of plagiarism’ language typified in this BBC article Precey, Matt. “Study shows 'plagiarism epidemic'.” BBC 17 Jan 2008. 13 May 2008 <</a><a class="external-link" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/7194850.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7194850.stm</a>>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="21">Supra n. 12, at p. 17</a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="22">See Voltaire, 1824. <i>A philosophical dictionary: from the French</i>, J. and H. L. Hunt. (Accessed from Google Books)</a></p>
</div>
<h2><span class="Apple-style-span">Also see these:</span></h2>
<div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/15759.pdf">Economic and Political WEEKLY</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://originalfakes.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/epw-article-on-plagiarism/">Originalfakes</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1775582">Social Science Research Network</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/plagiarism-in-indian-academia</a>
</p>
No publisherprashantIntellectual Property RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2014-05-29T05:55:27ZBlog EntryFebruary 2011 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin
<b>Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:</b>
<h2><b>Researchers@Work</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Monographs finalised from these projects have been published online for public review:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/Internetcities/city-and-space">Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Digital Natives</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS has interest in developing Digital Identities as a core research area and looks at practices, policies and scholarships in the field to explore relationships between Internet, technology and identity. The Digital Natives project is funded by Hivos, Netherlands. CIS involvement has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>Columns on Digital Natives</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following articles were published in the Indian Express recently:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/pull-plug">Pull the Plug</a> [published in the Indian Express on February 20, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/flash-of-change">A FLASH of Change</a> [published in the Indian Express on February 6, 2011]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/wiki-world">Wiki changes the world</a> [published in the Indian Express on January 23, 2011]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Workshop</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project took place in Santiago, Chile, from 8 to 10 February 2011. Samuel Tettner wrote a report about the workshop:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/santiago-workshop-an-after-thought">Digital Natives with a Cause? —Workshop in Santiago — an Afterthought</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Maesy Angelina is doing Masters on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause? framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/the-class-question">The Class Question</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/diving-into-the-digital">Diving Into the Digital</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Samuel Tettner is a Coordinator in the Digital Natives project. He has written one blog entry:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/research/dn/computers-in-society">Computer Science & Society – The Roles Defined</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Accessibility</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.</p>
<h3>New Blog Entry</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/working-draft">The Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010: Does it exceed its Mandate in Including Provisions Relating to Other Disability Legislations</a>?</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Intellectual Property</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:</p>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/exhaustion/weblogentry_view">Exhaustion: Imports, Exports and the Doctrine of First Sale in Indian Copyright Law</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/parallel-importation-rebuttal">Thomas Abraham's Rebuttal on Parallel Importation</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/indian-law-and-parallel-exports">Indian Law and "Parallel Exports"</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/parallel-importation-of-books">Why Parallel Importation of Books Should Be Allowed</a>
<ul>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Openness</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software, its latest involvement have yielded these results:</p>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/digital-commons">Engaging on the Digital Commons</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/comments-ifeg-phase-1">CIS Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance</a> (Phase I)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/withdrawal-of-journal-access">Withdrawal of Journal Access is a Wake-up Call for Researchers in the Developing World</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b> Internet Governance</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although there may not be one centralised authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has taken the following shape:</p>
<h3>Announcement</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/google-policy-fellowship">Google Policy Fellowship Program: Asia Chapter</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/intermediary-due-diligence">Comments on Intermediary Due Diligence Rules, 2011</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/cyber-cafe-rules">Comments on Cyber Café Rules, 2011</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/security-practices-rules">Comments on Draft Reasonable Security Practices Rules, 2011</a></li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Privacy</b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24<sup>th</sup> March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.</p>
<h3>Blog Entries by Elonnai Hickok</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Elonnai Hickok is a Programme Associate in the Privacy in Asia project. She has published a series of Open Letters to the Finance Committee regarding the UID:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/biometrics">Biometrics</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/finance-and-security">Finance and Security</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/uid-and-transactions">UID and Transactions</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/operational-design">Operational Design</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/uid-budget">UID Budget</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Other New Blog Entries</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/privacy-conferencebanglaore">Conference Report: 'Privacy Matters' Bangalore</a> </li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/privacy-india/privacy-uiddevaprasad">Analysing the Right to Privacy and Dignity with Respect to the UID</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><b>Telecom</b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:</p>
<h3>Column</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/jhatka-or-halal">Spectrum auctions - 'Jhatka' or 'Halal'?</a> [published in the Business Standard on February 3, 2011]<b><br /> </b></li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Forthcoming Events</b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is holding some conferences/workshops in the month of March in Delhi and Bangalore:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/fostering-freedom-of-expression">Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi</a> (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/global-freedom-expression">Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression</a> (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/electronication">Electronication: Ragas and the Future</a> (March 6, 2011 Jaaga, Bangalore)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/events/design-public">Design!publiC</a> (March 18, 2011, Taj Vivanta, New Delhi)</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Staff Update</b></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Deepti Bharthur</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Deepti Bhartur is a Research Intern at CIS. She did her BA (Hons) in Journalism from Lady Sriram College, University of Delhi and completed her Masters in Communication from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. Deepti joined the Accessibility team of CIS and is working on accessibility in telecom policy in India.</p>
<h2><b>News & Media Coverage</b></h2>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/growing-cyberspace-controls">Growing cyberspace controls, Internet filtering</a> (Hindu, February 20, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/copyright-amendment">2(m) or not 2(m)</a> (Business Standard, February 19, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/twitterati-change-world">Can the twitterati change the world?</a> (The Times of India, February 12, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/mouse-a-tool-of-revolution">Can the mouse be a tool of revolution in India?</a> (DNA, February 12, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/social-network-suicide">Social Network Suicide</a> (Bangalore Mirror, February 6, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/new-kids">New Kids on the Blog</a> (Indian Express, February 6, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/procuring-books">Procuring books in Indian libraries</a> (Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, February 4, 2011) </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/what-are-you-accused">What Are You Accused of? Find Out Online</a> (Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/one-wikipedian">One among the clan of Wikipedians</a> (Hindu, January 27, 2011)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/digital-wrongs">Digital Wrongs</a> (Forbes India, January 24, 2011)</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Follow us elsewhere</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://twitter.com/cis_india">Twitter</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Follow CIS on <a href="http://identi.ca/main/remote?nickname=cis">identi.ca</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Join the CIS group on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28535315687">Facebook</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Visit us at <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Looking forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.<i><br /> CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchOpenness2012-07-30T11:16:29ZPageThomas Abraham's Rebuttal on Parallel Importation
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/parallel-importation-rebuttal
<b>We engaged in an e-mail conversation with Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, on the issue of parallel importation of books into India. We thought it would be in the public interest to publish a substantive part of that conversation. In this post he points at great length how our arguments are faulty. While we still believe that he doesn't succeed, we hope this will clarify matters a bit.</b>
<h2>Nature of disagreement</h2>
<p>There is essentially fundamental disagreement on principle and definition-and I guess there will always be if you knock actual knowledge and see things as abstract philosophical (and legal) points. Why I think detailed knowledge is necessary is precisely illustrated at the logic (or lack thereof actually) employed by the Ministry. And then there is to me the fundamental problem of disregarding the author's wishes (for no greater good).</p>
<h2>Second hand books and libraries</h2>
<p>The comparison is not the same. Both (second-hand and libraries) have had a first sale where the copyright holder has got his/her basic right-the designated royalty. (I have explained earlier how export royalties and remainder royalties are much lower and results in losses to the author.) So here we come back to the basic philosophy-who has greater right on deciding on creative works? The creator or the government? A just answer would be the creator provided commercial dissemination fulfilled society's needs-which in India's case would be availability and right pricing keeping in mind socio-economic needs. Both are happening through local publishing and pricing of imports. But parallel imports would take away that right an author has of deriving a rightful income as per existing norms in all mature markets (including India so far). We are heading towards being a mature market and this has come about only because we are in the self-perpetuating framework of publishing, writing, and cultural development.</p>
<p>So the argument is that second hand books and libraries foster reading without depriving the author of rightful royalty or ruining the market.</p>
<p>Parallel importation does both. There is every reason to know that this will happen-that's exactly the substantiation we are offering. And the advocates of parallel importation have none to offer-pricing (where is it high, and by how much should it come down?), what is not freely available and at special prices? So for what reason do we want the existing law-also made by lawmakers-to change the stated remit of exhaustion from national to international.</p>
<p>No book publisher objects to libraries or even second hand books. But they are objecting to parallel importation. So leave it to them to decide. It is a tad patronizing to tell us what will help us, without having a shred of actual knowledge.</p>
<h2>Helping libraries and disabled</h2>
<p>This is completely false. No library needs to import from Amazon. And if it is a public library then they are wasting taxpayer money. Almost any book in the world they will still get at a special price through Indian publishers or distributors. There are societies for the disabled to whom publishers give rights at almost no cost. The UK has a law that a copy must be made available at near cost for disabled. By all means have such a law here. Why try and use parallel importation as an excuse for this?</p>
<h2>Flexibility in the law</h2>
<p>To your point: "Even if prices don't fall, it is good to have the flexibility for libraries to import four copies of a book that students need and isn't being made available in India. That flexibility is crucial, for availability, and just on principle, and not just for the sake of prices". By all means pass the law that gives the libraries the right to import 5 copies of any book they want. Publishers won't gripe at that. Libraries would still get it cheaper here than Amazon but that's the libraries' call.</p>
<h2>Law should promote fairness and equity, not perpetuate a particular business model</h2>
<p>No disagreement here. But the contention is that it will result in exactly the opposite. Sure, so let the lawmakers demonstrate they have done due diligence and outline evidence for their assumptions and how it will promote fairness and equity. What is unfair right now and what is not equitable? And how this law will address that. Why do other markets have it, and why should we not? On no count is there any detailing-just three false assumptions-availability, pricing and current editions.</p>
<p>Equally one can't have the law being made the proverbial ass because the lawmakers won't do their homework.</p>
<h2>Export and remainder royalties are lower</h2>
<p>I explained export vs domestic royalties in my first rebuttal. Not just remainders. Remainders are near zero royalties. Export surplus even pre-remainders are low royalty-against the author's wishes. And parallel importation will result in further loss of royalties from loss of sales of the hitherto legitimate edition.</p>
<h2>Why anti-dumping laws will not be practical</h2>
<p>Firstly there will be 40,000-plus titles to track, and the damage would have been done by the time you invoke the law. And assuming we want to invoke anti-dumping law, what parameters will be fixed? what discount are you going to fix? What quantity? I'll explain why this will never work. There are no real averages to draw lines and say this much and no more for either discount or price or quantity. To understand why we need to understand cost to price structures. Indian publishing (both publishing and imports) is low margin. Our books are priced to market; that means from cost our mark up is 2.5 times for imports and about 3-4 on average for local publishing-to enable the prices you see. Abroad it is 8-10 times from cost. To enable low pricing in India, we already have overseas terms that exceed 70% discounts, going into 'net pricing' for the ones that we pick to push big. Once the market is opened up, you will have two things-(a) targeted remainders as against the minor trickle now and (b) surplus clearance or even targeted sale to undercut the existing lawful edition. And I repeat the point that these remainders and 'targeted exports' can still end up undercutting the local edition. Not significantly enough to cause a change in pricing pattern (no benefit to consumer), but enough to undermine existing industry structures.</p>
<p>And yes, parallel importation (the current trickle) does see enforcement the logical way (by which I mean that the intensity of the problem merits the level of redressal). So far (believe me, each of us keeps tabs) we have 'unaware imports' and 'deliberate imports'. It is an irritant but is gradually reducing as the market matures. And the unaware ones are easily remedied by a simple letter asking for infringing stock to be withdrawn. In fact 8 out of 10 cases this simple letter works. For the deliberate ones, as I said earlier, it's just one or two where the impact is not worth the cost. Our margins do not allow us to hire expensive lawyers. But the moment it touches key brands or high revenue, legal action is taken.</p>
<h2>Market expansion</h2>
<p>Again the inherent assumption that this is some 'fat cat' lobbying protest. For once the lawmakers need to apply themselves-why is everybody from Penguin & Hachette (biggest) to Zubaan and Yatra (amongst smallest) all opposing it? Similarly from Crossword (large chain) to 'The Bookshop' in Jor Bagh (small independent), nobody wants this. Why? Surely that must speak for something? The only ones it will benefit are the remainder stalls you see (of which there must be about 25-30 all over the country). But over time every bookshop will be forced to keep this kind of stocking eroding current shelf space (they will have no choice). This is not market expansion.</p>
<h2>Pricing drop</h2>
<p>The other thing being ignored is that it's not just short term spoiler pricing. When one thinks in purely theoretical terms and says "open up, prices will drop", one is also not factoring in that the composition of what is stocked will changed. It's no longer <em>status quo</em> at reduced prices. That's the key to a mature market, that what the market needs is available-from bestsellers to literary works to philosophical works-balancing commercial and cultural needs and at prices the market can afford. So sure we can sit back and say we don't care if the history and philosophy shelves are eroded, if local publishing shrinks, let market forces prevail and let there be just foreign mass market novels and old editions (which will flow in by the thousand). But I'd like to hear the government say that.</p>
<h2>Not just about copyrighted books but about all copyrighted materials</h2>
<p>Yes, and we're not commenting about the others (other materials, i.e.) because we do not know enough. But we cannot have one size fits all if there are legitimate grounds to think about otherwise. Why is there a redressal of authors' needs in the music and film industry and a total disregard of books? Why were there panels created to discuss and thresh the whole thing through for films, and no detailed consultation at all for the books industry?</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/parallel-importation-rebuttal'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/parallel-importation-rebuttal</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshConsumer RightsCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2011-08-04T04:47:12ZBlog Entry