Centre for Internet and Society

Copyright bill restricts Net access

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:21:40Z

Law to curb piracy may fetter creativity

The government introduced the copyright amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha on April 19. The bill gives independent rights to authors, film directors and musicians and makes it difficult for Internet users to access works protected by copyright.

G R Raghavender, registrar of copyrights, said the amendments are necessary as the Copyright Act of 1957 gives minimum protection to writers and artists against commercial exploitation of their works through the Internet.

Under lock without key

But the bill lacks clarity on some aspects. For instance, it introduces technological protection measures (tpms)—locks that restrict access to copyrighted material and help the copyright holder decide how his or her work should be used.

The bill allows users to bypass the lock if it is for a purpose not prohibited by the law, such as research. But for that the user should have the means to unlock the tpm. The bill assumes the users would know how to bypass the lock but that need not be the case, said Pranesh Prakash, of the non-profit Centre for Internet and Society.

The Spanish law, for instance, requires copyright holders to help legitimate users access their work.

Shamnad Basheer, who teaches intellectual property law at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, said tpm is an added restriction and not required. “India is not obligated to import tpms into its copyright law as it is not a member of the World International Property Organization internet treaties (the amended bill conforms to these treaties). Raghavender said tpms are a must for curbing piracy.

The bill evoked mixed reactions in the film and music industry. Abhishek Chaubey, director of the recently released film Ishqiya, said the bill would put creative people in a stronger position. But Hiren Gada who runs the production house, Shemaroo Entertain-ment, is against directors getting copyrights. “It is against the fundamental principle of the film business; directors don’t share losses with producers if a film flops,” he pointed out. Dhruv Jagasia, manager of the music band Indian Ocean, said he was not sure if the bill would be implemented effectively as in the US where “cheques arrive by mail if one’s track is played on the radio”.

Print impaired get short shrift

Non-profits working for the physically challenged said the bill does not address certain handicaps. Rahul Cherian of www.inclusiveplanet.com, an online platform for print impaired, said the bill permits conversion of printed material only to special formats like Braille and sign language, not mainstream formats like audio tapes and text with large font size. “There are about 70 million print disabled persons in India. Those affected by cerebral palsy, dyslexia and visually impaired persons who do not know Braille, would need to access material in mainstream formats. The bill does not benefit them,” said Cherian. He added the bill allows only organizations working for disabled to seek licence to publish works in mainstream formats. Educational institutions, self-help groups and physically challenged individuals can’t obtain the licence.

While copyright amendment bill seeks to protect intellectual property, there are people who think it fetters creativity. “Copyright is a fairly recent phenomenon and should not be considered natural. Were that the case, the entire cultural history of humanity would not have occurred,” said Shuddhabrata Sen of the Centre for Study of Developing Societies. Swaraj Paul Barooah, researcher at the Nalsar university of law in Hyderabad, said, “In a developing country like India the emphasis should be on adapting and improvising on the works in the public domain.”

Given the circumstances, should the copyright on Mahatma Gandhi’s works be renewed. The copyright for his writings expired in 2009. Former governor of West Bengal and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi said there was nothing to lament. “The expiration of the copyright term should be the beginning of responsible access and use. It would be important in the computer age to use his manuscripts with great responsibility because no one can sue the user under the copyright law,” he said.

The bill has been referred to the standing committee of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development for vetting.

Read the original in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/copyright-bill-restricts-net-access

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act

praskrishna — 2013-08-06T13:37:27Z

India's Copyright Act was established in 1957, and is in the process of being placed before the Parliament in 2010. The provisions in the proposed Bill will work to make the Act WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) compliant. When looking at privacy in the context of copyright four key questions arise, says Elonnai Hickock as she analyses privacy in the context of the Indian Copyright Act.

How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?

Technologies such as digital rights management technologies were developed to be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to control the mode of use of certain digital devices and contents. DRM technologies pose as a privacy threat, because in their ability to monitor what is happening to a copyrighted work, they are also able to collect personal information and send it back to a host without knowledge of the user. The host is then able to use that data for marketing or commercial purposes. In the Copyright Act, 1957 there are no current provisions against DRM circumvention. In the proposed Copyright Bill 2010 there are two proposed provisions: to prevent anti circumvention of DRM technologies and one provision that clarifies what is a DRM technology.

Proposed Legislation

Section 2 (xa): Defines Rights Management Information – it is important to note that within the definition of RMI the provision specifically excludes any device or procedure intended to identify the user from the definition.

Section 65A (1) : Protection of Technological Measures - Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine includes that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure, shall maintain a complete record of such other persons including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him.

Section 65B: Protection of Rights Management Information – Any person who removes, or distributes, copies, or broadcasts any rights management information without authority shall be by punishable with imprisonment.

Recommendation: We find, not just exclusively to the Copyright Act, but that in all Indian legislation the privacy of an individual is brought into question, because there are no safeguards against the commercialization of information, and no formal process of redress if an individual discovers that his information is being used without his consent/prior knowledge. We would recommend that (perhaps appropriately in legislation on data protection) a provision be included to clearly articulate that the collection and commercialization of information and personal data is prohibited by DRM technologies and host companies, and a method of redress be put in place.

Under the copyright, does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?

Because DRM technologies have the ability to collect user information, which could potentially be done through the use of spyware, it is important that an individual has the ability to know if and when their information is being collected. To do this an individual can discover the technological principles of a device, object, or system through a process known as reverse engineering. Currently reverse engineering is permitted under provision 52 (ac). It is further supported by provision 65A (2) (f).

Current Legislation

Provision 52 (ac): Certain acts not to be in infringement of copyright include: the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programs in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any elements of the program while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer program was supplied. The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely:
65A (2) (f): Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from, doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user.

Recommendation: We have no recommendation, but see this as a positive provision.

How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy?

In India under the current Copyright Act, 1957 there are no provisions for the benefit of disabled persons, thus currently permission from copyright holders needs to be exclusively sought every time the visually challenged person requires access. Under the Constitution of India and the Bernes Convention, India has committed to enshrining the rights of the disabled.

Proposed Legislation

Section 31B: will grant compulsory license in respect of publication of any copyrighted works not covered by the exception under section 52 (1) (zb). For this a registered intermediary organization that is recognized under The Persons with Disability Act shall apply to the Copyright Board for approval. The board will evaluate the applicant and application, and grant permission if it sees fit. The intermediary will then be responsible for monitoring the usage of the copyrighted work to ensure that copyright law is not violated.

Recommendation: Though currently the Indian legislation does not threaten the privacy of the disabled, we find it concerning that under the WIPO copyright treaty – the anonymity of the disabled would be compromised.

What is On the Horizon?

As copyright and IP is a constantly evolving issue, countries are consistently amending and changing their laws. With the flow of peoples across borders increasing, Indians will be affected by different international policies that could pose to infringe upon their privacy, for example cross-border checks or three strike regimes, which will punish a person if caught infringing copyright three times. For example: France has proposed cutting off Internet to those caught infringing on copyright three times.

Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:

ACTA is a proposed legislation. Its objective is to combat counterfeiting and piracy. Partners in the negotiations include: The United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Switzerland. The treaty will oblige each contracting party to adopt, in accordance with its legal system, the measures necessary to ensure the application of the treaty. Though ACTA has not been enacted, many worry that ACTA would facilitate privacy violations by trademark and copyright holders against private citizens suspected of infringement activities without any sort of legal due process. The Act could allow for random searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or ripped music and movies.

Recommendation: We find that copyright infringement does not appear to justify cross border searches or other forms of regulating. ACTA and other international treaties raise the question that if India became compliant with certain international standards, would the standards would be too stringent without safeguards, and pose as a risk to a person’s privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-copyright-act

Summary of UID Public Meeting, August 25 2010

praskrishna — 2011-08-02T07:28:46Z

A summary of the "No UID" public meeting that took place on Aug. 25th at the Constitution Club, New Dehli.

The Meeting and Project

On August 25, 2010 in Delhi, a public meeting was organized by civil society groups from Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi to discuss and answer questions surrounding the UID, and to present the concerns of the public to members of parliament. The meeting was successful, with many important concerns raised by both the speakers and the audience. An action plan was developed, and MPs were able to come, listen, and share their opinions.

The Project

The UID is a project that is supported by the government of India, and is led by Nandan Nilekani, the former CEO of Infosys. The project is being presented as a cure to the PDS system, as a mechanism to bring benefits to the poor, and as a project that will make India an inclusive society by providing every citizen with a verifiable identity. The draft National Identification Authority of India Bill will be placed before the Lok Sabha in the current session. If the Bill is approved by parliament, the official implementation of the Bill will take place in Winter 2010 -2011.

Technological Flaws

Speaking first, Jude D'Souza, a free software professional, presented the entire technical aspect of the UID scheme. He became involved with the UID project through his work on biometrics, and he expressed shock that the UID scheme would rely on a deeply flawed system such as biometrics. Flaws in such a system include -- but are not limited to -- duplication, verification problems, and the lack of infrastructure needed to collect biometrics properly. Explaining in detail how fingerprint and iris scanners work, he showed how both are actually very simple technologies. An iris scanner is essentially a camera coupled with auto-focusing. The camera focuses on one’s eye, takes a snapshot, and then divides the eye into concentric segments, conducts a type of numbering scheme for each segment, and then generates a number that represents the pattern. A fingerprint scanner works in a similar manner. First a picture is taken of your finger-print, the system then generates an inverted image of the finger, with darker areas representing more reflected light and lighter areas representing less reflected light. The image is then compared against the stored fingerprint. Both technologies are easily spoofed. Iris scanners cannot detect contact lenses, and a scientist in Japan found that fingerprint scanners can be “tricked” easily with materials costing under 10 dollars. D'Souza explained how all identification systems go through an enrollment and authentication process which includes: the capturing of the image, the processing of the image, extraction of features, the creation of a template, encryption, duplication and storage of the information. If a step in either the enrollment or authentication process goes wrong, the whole process is brought back to square one – manual recording of information. For instance, if a fingerprint is swiped, and the machine cannot read it because it has changed with age, or the machine is malfunctioning, or the fingerprint is logged with water (something that is not uncommon in India) – the person would either have to re-enroll, and then re-verify who they are manually. If this scenario applies to, say, someone coming into a hospital, the consequences of his/her fingerprints not being read are grave.

Another concern is the compromising of the system. Bogus templates can easily be created and switched with the real template, key duplication is possible, or the system could be hacked and a virus introduced. In general, it is dangerous when any database containing personal information is compromised; a database that contains biometrics is twice as dangerous. D'Souza closed his presentation by making the point that biometrics cannot be withdrawn – if your password (biometrics) is compromised, you are still stuck with it for life. Once you leave your footprint through biometrics, it is irrevocable.

Civil Rights

The second speaker of the day was Usha Ramanathan, an internationally recognized expert on law and poverty, who spoke on human rights and the UID. From the beginning of her presentation she challenged the audience to think deeply about the question “Why would the government want to put this project in place?” She brought to the table many points about how the project violates human rights, including the fact that no type of feasibility study has been done on the technology or the financial cost of the project; a white paper was never issued at the genesis of the project; and Nandan Nilekani and other members of the authority refused directly to answer the concerns brought forth to them when they were approached. To her, the corporatization of the project is also very clear. From the marketing of the scheme, to the implementation of the scheme, to the fact that the convergence of databases will allow business and corporate powers to network using individual’s data that they obtain from the database – the issuance of a Unique Identification Number provides opportunities for huge profits to be made by corporations and the government. What makes the consequences of a UID number even more powerful is the fact that even though the Authority says that the number is voluntary, businesses, shop owners, banks and hospitals have the ability to deny access if one does not have number. In this way, the number is at least de-facto compulsory. This number also threatens violations to an individual’s privacy.

Benefits to the Poor

When analyzing the benefits to the poor that the number promises, the picture begins to look less and less beneficial. The Authority has been stressing the benefit of the portability of a Unique Identification Number. The positive aspects of having a portable ID stem from the idea that a person living in one village could be traveling and would still be able to collect his or her rations from the Free Trade Shop in the location he or she is visiting. No longer would people have to return home to collect their rations. Though this seems to be a useful benefit indeed, problems begin to arise if the Free Trade Shop in that village does not have enough grain in stock to provide for the unexpected visitor or if the biometric data malfunction. Other complications that the poor might have with a unique ID number is that to enroll you must know your address and name, and be able to spell them correctly. When looking at if the UID will plug the leakages of the PDS system, it will perhaps make the delivery of grain more efficient – theoretically it could stop the use of fake ration cards etc, but it does not stop the waste of grain, and at the end of the day – it still only a number, it does not regulate the person authenticating the individual and distributing the grain. Other difficulties the rural populations face are power outages: what if the power goes out – no one can be authenticated, what if the notice that benefits are available are electronically transmitted and do not arrive? What if data are lost during power outages?

Response of the Audience

After lunch the floor was opened up to discussion about steps that need to be taken in the future. It was determined that academics need to be consulted, the NO UID campaign needs to be presented in a language that everyone can understand and relate to, more political leaders need to be contacted, volunteers from Universities need to be recruited, petitions need to be written, and emails and contact information shared for open communication amongst each other. Another response from the audience was that privacy is an issue for the elite – the poor are concerned with surviving day to day. What is interesting, though, is how untrue that is. The issuance of a UID number brings privacy of the poor into the limelight. Privacy is a question of a person’s ability to control individual information, to know how it is being used, and by whom. A Unique Identification Number given to the poor suddenly places all of his or her personal data on the grid. It places it into networks, business databases, and governmental data banks. The current lack of data protection and lack of control an individual has over these data under the scheme creates a privacy crisis for anyone who has a number. And, given the ability to deny services to someone who does not have a number, it creates a crisis for those who opt out as well.

The Opinion of the MPs

Many of the MPs were unable to come, but the two who did were in opposition to the UID. MP Syed Azeez Pasha (CPI) commented on the need for a campaign to have started earlier, while Senior Member of Parliament from the Revolutionary Socialist Party of India (RSP) Abani Roy called for the launching of a massive campaign to resist this expensive and dangerous project through which several companies will gain massive contracts from the public exchequer.

Conclusion

As the UID project continues to unroll, it seems that that Nandan Nilekani has imagined a new India – one that looks to technology as its solution to its political and social problems. If this is the case, a UID number that will work to shift the entire population onto a digital database could just be the beginning of many other changes to come. Indian citizens should carefully consider if this is the India that they have imagined.

Resources from the Meeting

D'Souza powerpoint presentation

UID Booklet

UID Appeal to MPs

UID in Hindi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/UID-public-meeting

No UID Campaign in New Delhi - A Report

praskrishna — 2012-06-20T03:51:45Z

The Unique Identification (UID) Bill is not pro-citizen. The scheme is deeply undemocratic, expensive and fraught with unforseen consequences. A public meeting on UID was held at the Constitution Club, Rafi Marg in New Delhi on 25 August, 2010. The said Bill came under scrutiny at the meeting which was organised by civil society groups from Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi campaigning under the banner of "No UID". The speakers brought to light many concerns, unanswered questions and problems of the UID scheme.

Since 2009, when the UID Bill was presented to the general public by Nandan Nilekani, the project has been characterized as a landmark initiative that will transform India, bring in good governance, and provide relief and basic services for the poor. The scheme is rapidly being put in place; the draft Bill has been put before the Parliament of India and the resident numbers and data have been collected.

The UID proposes to take the finger prints and iris scans of every resident of India for authentication of each individual. J. T. D'Souza, an expert in free software technology exposed the flaws of the entire technical aspect of the UID project. He presented the risks and loopholes that technology such as iris and fingerprint scanners pose, and the risks in using a biometric system as a form of identification system. Contrary to the claim of the UID authority, that a scheme based on biometrics is foolproof, he explained how fingerprints are not unchanging, both fingerprints and iris scans can be easily spoofed (with a budget of only $10), and there are many ways in which the technology can break, be inconsistent, or be inaccurate.

From a human rights perspective the lack of democracy in the entire project was stressed. Usha Ramanathan reiterated the fact that no white paper was issued, the Bill has not gone through the Parliament and yet citizens’ data is being collected, citizens were given only a two week period to comment on the Bill, and in practice the UID number will not be voluntary for individuals.

The UID authority has posited the scheme as bringing benefits to the poor, plugging leakages in the Public Distribution System and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), as well as enabling inclusive growth by providing each citizen with a verifiable and portable identity. These claims were debunked. An identity number will not fix the waste of grain that takes place every day, the portability of the number raises new problems of accessibility and distribution of resources, and the MGNREGS system is already working to be financially inclusive with a majority of its members already having a bank account.

In response to hearing the presentations of the speakers and the comments by the audience, senior Member of Parliament of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of India (RSP), Abani Roy called for the launching of a massive campaign to resist this expensive and dangerous project through which several companies will gain massive contracts from the public exchequer.

The campaigners for No UID plans to hold further meetings across the country and lobby Parliamentarians in the coming months.

For more information contact: Mathew Thomas (Bangalore) mathew111983@gmaill.com, Elonnai Hickok (Bangalore) elonnai@cis-india.org , Sajan Venniyoor (Delhi): +91-9818453483 - Bobby Kunhu (Delhi): +91-9654510398

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

Attentional Capital in Online Gaming : The Currency of Survival

praskrishna — 2015-04-03T10:46:56Z

This blog post by Arun Menon discusses the concepts of production, labour and race in virtual worlds and their influence on the production of attention as a currency. An attempt is made to locate attentional capital, attentional repositories and attention currencies within gaming to examine 'attention currencies and its trade and transactions in virtual worlds. A minimal collection of attention currencies are placed as central and as a pre-requisite for survival in MMOs in much the same way that real currency become a necessity for survival. The approach is to locate attentional capital through different perspectives as well as examine a few concepts around virtual worlds.

Virtual Worlds1 have been examined extensively for their capacities in creating simulated spaces for fun, play, and entertainment. Presently there is a trend in research studies worldwide to focus on examining questions of informational labour, production, ownership, racism, and the currencies of trade. By drawing examples from the published works of some of the leading writers in this field , I explore these questions and their connections with attention currency and the attention economy2 in gaming. I posit attention currency as a third currency in addition to virtual and real currencies in the ability in which it operates as a currency. Through the concepts put forth, an attempt is made for a reading of attentional capital, attention currencies, attention repositories, trades in attention, and the functions of attention as a currency in gaming economies besides a reading of confluences in terminologies and application and to expand them to examine attention economies in gaming. The games examined for this purpose are wide ranging, such as Eternal Duel, Rising Era from the Fantasy RPG Genre, Travian, T.K.O from the RTS genre, and select and limited readings of and around WoW. All of these fall under the MMO genre.3

Introduction

Edward Castronova is a professor at Indiana University and has prolifically written on virtual economies. His most prominent works are 'Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games' and 'Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality' and has done extensive research and commentaries on the economies of virtual worlds and online games. His concept the 'Avatarial Capital' (Castronova 2005) is articulated in a similar manner as Human Capital4 , and Cultural Capital.5 Castronova's Avatarial capital is approached as a set of non-material factors such as in-game knowledge, experience, growth, skills and other character related functions. Along the same lines as human capital and cultural capital, increases in the investments in Avatar Capital proportionally increases the power of the entity (p. 41 Castronova 2005 also refer p. 110-114).

What would be ideally termed, in a broader fashion, as 'attentional capital' is articulated by Castronova as Avatar Capital in a minimalist manner, such that it can be argued that avatar capital forms an essential and basic part of attentional capital in gaming. Some concepts that are accepted as exemptions (real world problems – race, class, and gender – devoid in Synthetic Worlds) are addressed by Nakamura when she engages with questions of human capital and cultural capital in fantasy warfare games such as World of Warcraft (WoW). By examining concepts of production and segregation of production processes as well as organic systems of production and designed systems of production, an attempt is made to read racialisation of informational labour within virtual worlds in light of designed races, rather than real races and posit that other forms of racism and racial warfare exist. This in contrast to Nakamura's examination dealing with racial stereotyping of informational labour, particularly of the fourth world labour, an attempt is made to posit that racial and/or class warfare (not similar in the manner that Nakamura addresses racial warfare) is present and inevitable in any designed world that has characteristics of Role Play. I posit that such forms of racial warfare need not necessarily be examined as a proxy warfare among leisure gamers and worker gamers but as inherent in any fantasy construct that places racial choices as essential to imagining certain types of roles within the game.

Lisa Nakamura is a professor in the Institute of Communications Research and Director of the Asian American Studies program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work revolves around questioning race, ethnicity, and identity in Virtual Worlds. Robbie Cooper who has written expansively on Avatar Identities and their relation with the real identities of gamers (and thus relevant to locating any shifts in attention trades) has been approached through secondary readings, reviews and a partial (limited preview) reading of the text, due to the availability or lack thereof of the text in question. By addressing avatar identities and their links to real world identities, connections can be made in the way attentional capital and attention currency interacts with, and between, virtual, and real world currencies. Although questions of the Virtual - Real Binary6 arise through multiple tangents, it is only examined as a part of discussing the Earth - Synthetic binary that Castronova uses. An attempt is made to clarify some of the terms which are common to this field and place them in perspective. The terms, their limitations and some binaries are juxtaposed for discussion. This is not to imply that Castronova cannot be used to read virtual worlds (or rather their economies), on the contrary his narrative becomes more central as his predictions on exponential growth and impact7 of virtual worlds (economies) are realized.8

By using these authors and their concepts, I posit that Attention can be read as a currency of transaction that enables the survival of the player in virtual gaming worlds and at most stages forms a pre-requisite often similar to real world currencies – a basic amount of which ensures human survival. Drawn from the concepts of Goldhaber who posits that attention is an essential pre-requisite to human survival, I extend his reading to virtual worlds to locate the transactions in attention and attentional capital and how they influence the flows of attention as a currency – making a collection of attention currency essential to survival in a virtual world.

In the following segments some of the terminologies, their dichotomies, and a commentary is made on the terms common to this area. The specific usage by these writers and the commentary is speculative, interpretative, and by no means a closed debate. I explore the terms and attempt to make connections with the attention economy in gaming and in the process explore the possibilities of expanding or broadening some of the terms.

Synthetic Worlds

Castronova (2005) describes Synthetic Worlds as[C]rafted places inside computers that are designed to accommodate large numbers of people. He goes on to describe Synthetic Worlds as the playgrounds of imagination being host to ordinary human activity. The only notable difference between simulated worlds in offline settings and online settings is that the latter can accommodate a large number of people. This definition basically stands for almost all online games, be they client-server, browser-based, persistent worlds,9 text based (also MUDs10),and many more where multiple users can engage with each other in an online setting, but by focusing on MMORPGs and visual superiority. Castronova in this process isolates multiple genres of games that are capable of social, political, and economic activity similar to that of graphically constructed worlds.

On developing his thesis Castronova seems to suggest an undue emphasis on worlds that are graphically represented and superior (visually well defined and designed), and such games/worlds being viable synthetic worlds. Viability can be interpreted as the immersion of the player in the game as one factor. On the other hand the economic viability of the synthethic world could be another factor, economic in that there are active gold farming (termed secondary) markets in that game. In such a case synthetic worlds as a term is applicable to even non-graphical text based constructs that run online. Julian Dibbell's documentation of the LambdaMoo community reiterates a certain complexity in the textual construction of the synthetic world, even though it is not visually or graphically represented.

On a similar note, virtual economic activity is not restricted to graphical worlds either.11 The economic activities and organizations that Castronova ascribes to these synthetic worlds are present in almost every virtual world (graphically or textually defined), where there is an aggregation of human activity and congregation of human avatars.12

The possibilities of human economic activity both within the virtual world and the real world can be connected through an examination of gold farming. Depending on attentional capital (and the attentional repository of the entire virtual world) economic activity connects to real world trade as well. Here the popularity of the game and the ability of the secondary market to generate profits is paramount. Synthetic Worlds or in an expansive definition Virtual Worlds and the attentional capital and repositories of attention are examined that support basic forms of communication, social interaction and game play.

In 'what is a synthetic world' an essay in Space, Time, and Play, Castronova, et al uses the term 'Synthetic Worlds' interchangeably with virtual worlds, the difference being a focus on the 'interconnections' between the two worlds. A reading of Castronova (2005), would suggest that his usage limited what synthetic (or virtual) worlds are capable and constitute of. By using Synthetic Worlds and Virtual Worlds interchangeably throughout this article, I intend to broaden Synthetic Worlds beyond Castronova's imposed limitations.13

When Castronova says that all synthetic worlds are MMORPGs, he has arguably limited the usage to only games that have an RPG element – furthermore, those with graphical clarity and representation. If say the Virtual World in question such as Eternal Duel were to be examined, it would not fall under what Castronova describes as a synthetic world largely because of its focus on a text based construction of Etheria. Interestingly, Etheria is not identified as a 'diasporic' homeland as much as the cities, the clans, or the game itself. In Eternal Duel, players tended towards their clans identity or the city they were based close to rather than 'Etheria' the Land itself. Unlike SL, WoW, and others where there is an identification towards the whole game 'land' such as a citizen of Lindenberg or Azeroth. Agreed that graphical constructions use visual aids to better connect with an imagined homeland, whereas the same immersive effect is restricted through text. Text based games such as these depend on the interpretative and subjective interpretations of the gamer to create, in the imagination, an idea of the homeland.

Even though Castronova (2005) states that virtual worlds as a conceptual term is closed and synthetic worlds are more open and interconnected (such that its not possible to read them as sealed and separate disconnected systems), it is possible that synthetic worlds are in fact limited in that they are applicable to certain graphically functional and visual worlds (MMORPGs according to Castronova) by express definition.

Perhaps it is relevant to look at MMORPGs as one among many other genres of online games, where there is a collection of avatars and a common synthetic world is constructed. Mizuko Ito in her documentation and usage of the 5thD project notes that the gamer and paired guide were able to construct 'micro-worlds' through narrative experiences of the real world in Simcity 2000, a city building simulation game. This construction of the micro-world was facilitated through a transfer of narrative experiences from the guide to the young gamer, through what is percieved as logical in the real world without actual knowledge of the scripts and algorithms behind the game that dictated its response. Reading micro-worlds as synthetic worlds has its own pitfalls and problems but such a reading is possible particularly when using the alone together phenomenon. Though an 'out of context' reading might be appropriate in an offline setting as well, where games have a sustainable14 capacity for immersion, the only failure, if any, would be evolution which is a predominant characteristic of virtual worlds in a massive setting.

Whereas RPG games in an offline setting do not have any types of evolution that is sustainable, this feature is resultant of the 'massive' effect in online games, such that narratives of the game are constantly rewritten and brief, even short periods of disconnections leads to a narrative disjunct in the player, which may surface as a diasporic experience. Diasporic experiences here are similar to real world diasporic displacements in that there is a severance from the imagined 'homeland' of the avatar. A severance results in the displacement of the avatar. Evolution of the world is a prominent feature in any persistent or even a temporary time-bound world, where there is an aggregation of human interest. Constant human activity, economic, social, and political create narrative disjuncts in the timeline for those players who are removed from that particular community. MMORPGs have strong evolutionary elements drawn from and often ascribed to the massive element15 such that any form of change within virtual synthetic worlds are resultant of the activities of thousands of people participating in that world including their organization, collective achievements in the achievement hierarchies and engagement in their virtual worlds.

There are often diasporic experiences faced by players on withdrawal from a community of gamers. The Uru Diaspora was one such – the diasporic effects were documented by Celia Pearce in Communities of Play. An extensive reading of identities, associations and severance of the homeland has been documented – examining concepts like the virtual homeland and association with the homeland such that there is a sense of rights and citizenship that arise out of this 'belonging', to eventually lead to a 'resurrection'. I would interpret diasporic experiences such as these as indicative of the immersive nature of the narrative architecture in an online game. Although the concept of the narrative architecture as one is largely applied to offline games, a confluence of human activity produces its own narrative, such that importing 'narrative architecture' to read into online spaces becomes possible.

Castronova's suggestion that there are possibilities of a thriving parallel economy in and through secondary markets16 makes it possible to locate avatar capital and by extension attentional capital more accurately. That is by terming avatar capital as a part of attentional capital, the outworld17 relevance of avatar capital and the possibility of attention flows functioning as a currency within virtual worlds and between the real world is made.18 It is possible to argue that Castronova implies certain attentional repositories when he posits that exploration, expansion, and advancement (p.110 Castronova 2005) are necessities to build up the player level, experience, and other intangible capital, which develops as the Avatar[ial] Capital, much in the same manner as Human Capital, Cultural Capital, and Gaming Capital (Pierre Bordieu's term 'Cultural Capital' is influential to both Castronova's 'Avatar[ial] Capital' and later Consalvo's 'Gaming Capital'). In the following sections, an attempt is made at approaching attention currency and its operations and positing attention as the currency of survival rather than the investments of either virtual or real world currencies.

Avatarial Capital, Attentional Capital, and the Repositories of Attention

Whereas Castronova places avatar skills and experience20 as 'avatar capital' alone is limiting, in that the focus is on one avatar rather than a set of avatars. This limit also manifests in the set of resources that the avatar has access to, particularly attention, which changes the accesses to resources in-world and out-world and effects the production of attention currency in its turn. Thus, it is almost cyclical in that attentional capital in repositories ensure survival, survival leads to greater activity and production in virtual worlds, which in turn gives greater accesses to in-world resources and avatarial capital and which then through the hierarchies of achievement produces more attentional capital.

Even though Castronova articulates the avatarial capital as a necessity (along with physical capital) for survival, he leaves out the relevance of ranking systems (that Hamari and Lehdonvirta (2010) posit as the achievement hierarchy) that seemingly organize a massive amount of data into statistically and graphically available information in almost every virtual world and through this activity build channels of attention. Attention then flows in often unpredictable manners21 and ensures the survival of the player or avatar character in that game. Every game has a system that organizes seemingly irrelevant information on avatars to provide a daily statistical representation on growth, (re-)investment, level, experience, amount of virtual gold, player vs player and non-player character 'kills' . In some hierarchies attemtpted attacks and successful kills are also recorded and made public with a ratio in percentage, the time aristocracy that lehdonvirta 2005, 2007 addresses can be located by this percentage represented in the achievement hierarchy, and so forth in a ranked hierarchy . Depending on the design and architecture of the game world (Synthetic Worlds), there may be detailed statistical data that provides for in-game information and players that are active, joined recently, completed a certain quest, requests assistance with another quest, etc., are news items that are filtered into general gameverse ranking, clan, community, alliance or group ranking.22 Central to the attentional capital and its flows are these gameverse23 ranking systems both internal to the game and external tools that pull data from the server to plot out potential targets for attacks, raids, and so forth.24 Metagaming, or influences on the game from outside the game and its rules, affects every scenario of gaming in some manner. Metagaming most often than not, dictates the attention of individuals and their investments in time and labour.

For instance – Travian which is a popular MMORTS25 has an array of scripts, tools, paid services, external data aggregators – i.e., external to the game - that assist in finding other players/alliances and groups for warfare. Although the game itself has sufficiently developed communication and social interaction systems26, players ranking 1-150027 most often use a variety of external tools and IM programs to support their gameplay.28 Skype or MSN29 becomes preferred means of communication, coordination, and policy30 discussion – and this is not limited to one game server (Travian) whose example I am citing. The number ranges that have been chosen select players whose achievements ranking is comparatively in the top 10 – 20 per cent in terms of activity, presence, and by extension, economic activity, in an international server this number would be a maximum of 1500-2000 whereas on regional servers which witness lower members the number ranges of active gamers with a reasonable growth rate are fixed at around 500-1000. These players have sufficient amount of attentional capital invested in their game to join larger groups based on common cultural symbols and perceived commonalities, which may amount to social commonalities.

Attentional Capital, though it draws from avatarial capital, is broader than just in-game related ranking.31 Attentional capital (and attentional repositories, which makes attention the basic currency of survival) would ideally encompass a larger sphere including real life associations as well as virtual world associations and experiences32 Avatarial capital limits itself to the collection of intangible non-material capital within gaming worlds alone, there is very little discussion (by Castronova or Nakamura who uses avatarial capital) on the extent to which avatarial capital can be streched. If the term is indeed limited to single virtual worlds, a concept of consolidation of avatars (naturally avatarial capital), which occurs at multiple points should also be articulated in light of attentional repositories which allow for the aggregation of attention to reach the threshold required for survival (and thus trade, activity, and so forth). This is not constant but almost always in flux, a lack of investment for a short period would mean death gradual or instant, and depends entirely on the disposition and design of the game in question.

Advancement and progression of an avatar is addressed by Castronova (2005) as the accumulation of the various forms of avatar capital within a virtual world enabling the 'avatar' greater access to the virtual world and the systems of production within the virtual world, defined or rather limited by a requirement for progression. If the avatar grows, more accesses to the game's systems become available, stagnation on the other hand limits these accesses. In a collective sense the growth of a lot of avatars (in an MMORPG) collectively denotes the growth of a synthetic world. Thus, essential to the aggregation of Avatarial Capital as well as attentional capital is the evolution of a synthetic world. Evolution that may be incorporated into the design of the game but is also in a state of constant change and extremely dynamic. A stagnation in the growth of avatars (in a collective) has repurcussion s in the exchanges of attention, exchanges of virtual currencies as well as the collective attention that resides in a synthetic world.. Stagnation even in markets inflicts attrition that destabilizes the virtual world – a lack of attention could well mean the stagnation and eventual decay of the virtual world – this effect can be attributed to Illusory Attention and the decay of attention – for more refer Goldhaber (1997, and 2008). The evolution and advancement could be rapid such that a break from this world for even a short duration, may result in minor diasporic effects. A loss of contact with a community that has developed and evolved in absentia of the player-avatar and non-investment, either of time or resources by the player makes the narrative disjunct more pronounced.By narrative disjunct, I imply that the narrative of the player and the narrative of the community is not in tune, such that diasporic yearnings may be present even without the closure of the game world which is what transpired in Uru – The uru diaspora is documented very well by Celia Pearce and Artemesia in “Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds”, 2009 MIT Press. This narrative growth and subsequent disjunct captures the essence of persistent worlds and evolution within them most appropriately. Thus, Synthetic Worlds as a conceptual term is limiting rather than liberating as Castronova (2003, 2005) implies, even with its conceptual failings at achieving a state of 'inter-connectedness'34 with the Real World, Virtual World is a conceptually anchored term to articulate human activity in online gaming spaces, perhaps broader than synthetic worlds.

Avatar capital can locate the influences of attentional capital. Castronova (2005) describes “the accumulated experience points and skills and attributes [as] avatar capital ”, which is the advancement through specific actions resulting in the growth or increment of non-physical capital of the avatar. What are the non-physical capital of the avatar? Non-physical capital is dependent on the design and genre of the game or MMORPG oriented games will have forms of character development that as represented as levels and stages, which when attained allows for further progression in gameplay. Some of these include but are not limited to the attributes, the skills, experience points, all depending on the design and model of the game world concerned. Empire building games on the other hand would design a different set of avatarial capital altogether.

Avatar capital enables further progression in the game world and makes accessible quest lines36, virtual goods linked to those quest lines, and higher growth, ability to gain more from attacks and so forth (The Sway of the stars as a Elvish37 race weapon grants additional gold income and experience points with each kill – largely for NPC attacks, i.e., Non Player Character attacks, other weapons38 are preferred for PvP {Player vs Player} attacks). At this stage the attempt is not to examine the 'real' value attached to the weapon in a fashion that Castronova et al (2008) does, but to locate the attentional capital that is generated by the possession of such a virtual good which enhances avatar capital. Thus, an almost cyclical progression, I extrapolate this further when examining production. So, its possible to articulate avatarial capital as a small part of attentional capital and its collection in what I would term as attentional repositories.

Whereas the Physical Capital is juxtaposed as the virtual money or goods/items and rewards that the avatar earns as part of gameplay (and subsequent reinvestment of rewards), and is the distinguishing link between real and virtual currencies. The time that is invested in production of virtual goods and the subsequent investment in attention (as a currency) and attentional capital (as the non material investments – such as expertise and the abstract concept called experience) can be located in the growth in what Castronova terms as the Avatar Capital.

Castronova et al (2009) examines the virtual world/synthetic world EverQuest and attempts a mapping of its economy. The authors attempt to read macroeconomic behaviours using real world definitions and attempt an economic mapping quite similar to how real world economies are mapped, the research concludes that real world patterns are present in virtual worlds and in the ways and means that virtual goods are traded. They examine the 'reality' of a virtual sword [Footnote: Please refer page 686, New media and society, 5, 11, 2009, the examination of the reality of the sword, similar to the painting 'this is not a pipe' points to reality of value associated with that object, an object that is considered unreal, non exitent in many terms, Michel Foucault also comments on issues of perception, reality, and the painting and its paradox of Rene` Magritte's painting “the Treachery of Images” 1929-30 – Foucault's focus on representation and simulcura is not necessary to interpreting castronova et al's reading of virtual reality and the real value associated with a virtual good. ] . Are they 'really real'? Castronova et al notes through their study that virtual goods often follow real world patterns and thus can be mapped with real world usages and affordances. Items are classified and graphically represented as furniture, food, clothing, accessories, collectibles and so forth. Castronova et al (2009) by noting that all virtual goods had certain real world categories, armour - clothing, food – what avatars ate and drank, furniture – solid items avatars kept in their huts (homes, etc), and so forth, locate the relevance and psychological value of virtual goods, even if they serve no 'real' purpose. They also noted that virtual worlds scarcely held items that had “no real world uses or affordances”. This is incidentally reiterated to some effect in the AVEA report, which also notes that the demand for virtual goods are a result of the designed spaces (Hamari and Lehdonvirta 2010). The attempt by Williamson et al (2010) and Castronova (2003, 2005) have been locating the shifts in 'Real Life' towards 'Avatar Life'. Castronova himself dictates that such a shift towards virtual worlds is inevitable and as discussed earlier, and although speculative, has materialized and noted by none other than Consalvo (2007) and Nakamura (2009).

Returning to the discussion, the authors note that currency is representational (The value of the paper currency we use is backed by gold from the treasury of the government), thus items and in-world currencies also serve the representational purpose and in trades against real currency indicate the investment of time and labour. Such that the value of a virtual good, or in some extreme gold farming cases the value of an avatar and character, are dependent on the time and effort that has been invested in its development and the level that it holds in the ranking statistics. A virtual good such as a sword may then indicate value associated with the time it would take to develop the sword. For instance: Race levels in the fantasy text-based browser game Eternal Duel require opals to gain race experience, Opals as a gem acts as any other gem in the game except that it cannot be traded and has to be earned through grinding, farming, mining, and similar other means that would require an investment in a great deal of time. Higher race levels bring higher access for each of the six races that are available in the game – the game in question is Eternal Duel [henceforth E.D.] and Rising Era. The elf39 race gets a higher healing rate after each activity related to production such as mining and attacks, whereas the human race gets a higher gold bonus, increasing the chances of each race to develop in its own course. The higher the experience level, the higher the chances of earning opals in attacks. Race weapons and armour provide added advantage in that any other activity of production would return higher returns for the investment of time. Thus, in the end, the value that is assigned to virtual goods where real money trades come into effect are:

That they denote an investment in time and labour which is saved in the means by which most virtual goods in gaming are acquired, and
The investment in the focused cognitive resources termed as attention transacts as real value and by extension as currency. This would be one method of locating attentional capital.

Attentional capital when it performs the functions of a currency is also representational in that the value of the item (the virtual good – including any virtual item that can be traded including avatars) depends on the market listings, the time (invested in development of that virtual good) and associated 'illusory attention' (a term borrowed from Goldhaber to situate attention and its potential and capacity to act as a currency), which is traded against real money. This form of trade saves the time that is otherwise invested in the production of this item, thus saving the purchasing party a considerable amount of time, which is transacted for real currency. Such gold farming trades are also called as RMT (real money trades – noted by Nakamura p.5 who cites Consalvo p.149-150, also refer lehdonvirta 2005, lehdonvirta and hamari and lehdonvirta 2010), the AVEA report classifies MMORPGs as the first genre of RMT. Why is the representational aspect of currencies necessary? Very simply if real currencies are representational and 'acquires' (however, that may be interpreted) a certain amount of 'reality' such that value associated with the currency and the item can be balanced and traded. It is clearly possible to interpret attentional capital having similar potential to 'acquire' real value and then emulate the functions of a currency that can be transacted for goods. But is attentional capital the same as attention currency (or for that matter attentional repository)?

I posit that Attentional Capital and by extension Attentional Repositories are dependent on the construction (visual and textual) of the avatar, in-group or out-group racial, ethnic, cultural, and other means of identification, symbolic associations with a particular identity or group, or a perception of a common shared culture, this is similar to constructing communities and Derek Lomas (2008) uses Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Community' to explore notions of associations (through self-representation) that can locate attentional capital in social networking.40 Lomas (2008) examines attentional capital that is built and developed through the elaborate constructions (including self representation) of profiles, through which there is an accumulation of attention (which is what I posit as the attention repository – a collection of attentional capital). The attention repository can be construed of as independent – associated to a player, or as a complex network of repositories that feed into each other through association, expression, and representation – as in a collective or a small group. Thus, the known/recognizable group identification of a particular player would mean a larger repository of attentional capital than a player with little or a lesser known group identification, even though that player may have a higher level of avatarial capital and physical capital to match. The repositories of the group would then feed into the attentional capital of the player, making identification (in-group, out-group, and so forth) easier and granting a certain amount of attention to the profile, which later results in an increased activity (and therefore, survival) in the concerned virtual world. On the notion of survival Goldhaber (1997) states thus:

“[P]ractically everyone must have some money to survive, so attention in some quantities is pretty much a prerequisite for survival, and attention is actually far more basic.”

In a similar manner, Goldhaber locates the relevance of currency (money) as 'the' essential pre-requisite for survival and suggests that attention is as relevant (if not more), I posit that attention in gaming (in all its capacities discussed earlier) is required minimally, as a pre-requisite amount, or what I would articulate as a threshold in the repositories for ensuring survival. This is where I propose that a threshold exits, which can be achieved or realized by the collection of attentional capital when there is

a certain amount built in the repository through what Castronova terms as Avatarial Capital42, and
the threshold limit is achieved through other associations or connections to other repositories.

This is where the discussion earlier on the connections of attention repositories comes into clearer focus. These associations43 have their own repositories (not necessarily unintended when represented in player profiles)44 and often these associations are capable of feeding attention into the players own repository.

The repositories of attention that I have explored and mentioned here are situated outside of the player avatars in other synthetic worlds, which is to say that there are – in some instances – multiple points of consolidation of avatars (and their repositories) to result in this threshold of survival being realized earlier without the collection of Avatarial capital. This is complex to articulate as well as demonstrate largely because it requires an in depth analysis, the data for which is nearly inaccessible (although, it is true that Castronova and his team were granted full access by Sony into their EverQuest Databases).

The multiple points of consolidation of avatars implies the consolidation of their attentional repositories of multiple avatars in multiple similar or different (in terms of genre) virtual worlds. In gold farming practices most trades are dependent on this threshold for survival as well as trades, for the threshold limit in the attentional repositories also implies the point at which trade can take place.45

For instance, avatar A is present on server 1 46 but has in earlier periods taken part in other servers 1-'n' and these avatars would be A1-A'n', where n is the identifiable version of the avatar in any synthetic world regardless of classification.47 Server 1 being a new game, avatar A will have a very short threshold of attentional capital and avatarial capital – assuming that, as yet, there has been no or minimal investments of time and labour in the development of the avatar that results in avatarial or physical capital.

The repository of avatar A at this juncture will be minimal in that particular synthetic world. For transactions of A1 avatar (that is gold farming for that avatar as a 'virtual good') there has to be an aggregation of attentional repository, which should ideally realize a threshold. This is achieved either through association or inter-connectedness of social viral networks, such that there are higher chances of survival, and in the case of gold farming higher chances of trade. In the event that there is minimal avatarial capital aggregation in A1, the possibility of avatarial consolidation at multiple points still exist. The pre-requisite threshold is achieved not by investments in A, but the investments made earlier in A'n' which feeds into the repository of A1 and survival is ensured. The repositories A1-A'n' would have a consolidated repository that enables avatar A1 to either initiate trade (a real world trade) or equally ensure survival rests in this consolidated repository, which has achieved a certain threshold. Note that this theory of multiple points of consolidation of avatars is not a common occurrence and is largely noticed in successful gold farming trades, and prominent players in any game server that incorporates avatar self representation through profiles, much like social networking profiles. The consolidated repository would mean that the threshold is reached at an earlier stage, than if the normal route of game play were to be taken where avatarial and non physical capital are built up.

To substantiate with a real world example, SARSteam48 is present on at least 2 of the 10 Travian international servers and is familiar with 8ag.49 Both having served in common and prominent alliances in multiple Travian servers for a considerable period of time, such that each ensure the others protection, if and when, by chance, they are present in nearby strategic locations in any server. In any new server 50 a chance encounter would mean that either player would list a PNAP51 in their profiles naming the other. This connection takes place regardless of actual contact and negotiation for a PNAP and ensures that the other multitudes of players planning an attack are made aware of strategic connections that the player possess to his advantage thus enabling a further exchange of attentional capital against illusory attention. Players viewing the PNAP and alliance markings, tags, and so forth will cease offensive strategies. As Goldhaber (1997) states there is always an exchange of illusory attention in such cases52, attention may be seen as flowing in both direction when in actuality attention flows are unidirectional compensated by Illusory attention. Lomas (2008) suggests that attention flows are regulated by self representation through profile pages and in the gaming context the same is true. Self representation is deliberative (also noted by Lomas 2008) and by representing selective information an attempt is made at controlling the attentional flows from that profile. For instance, in E. D. listing a mine's quality in the profile page might enable other players to invest their time and labour at mining so as to make a profit and to 'mine out' the mine and thus also make a profit for the owner.

In both the instances above, the focus is on one or two players and in such an out of context state, attention repositories and the threshold of trade and survival do not seem relevant, add to this the sheer numbers of an MMO and viral connections in an ever increasing spiral and attention repositories and the threshold becomes an essential part of survival in gaming and trade in gold farming.

Markets and Synthetic Worlds

In this section an attempt is made to read into trading and markets for virtual goods in synthetic worlds and outside of it thereby attempting to place secondary markets and their assumed or presumed legality and/or some form of incorporation into the regular internal market of the game. This would make reading production and segregation of production more accessible later on. Castronova (2003, 2005) does not directly engage with describing the secondary market in Synthetic Worlds, although the market activities that he points out – such as selling game goods on online auction sites (p.16), GNP of Norrath (the country in EverQuest – Sony) being higher than the per-capita income of India and China (p.19) – are activities that connect the internal game markets to the external ones, namely the secondary market, or more commonly known and accessible as the gold farming markets. Are gold farming markets the same as secondary (as external) markets , how are they different from the primary (internal) markets? Almost all secondary markets are external auction markets such as Ebay, or more formalized gold farming trade markets such as Virtualeconomies.net, agamegold.com, myMMOshop.com, gamegoldcentral.com and many others collectively form the external trading markets and economic organizations in the real world that profit from virtual labour and investment (in time and real money). Gold farming also takes place through listings in from forums to social networking sites and gold farming in India largely thrives through such listings. Dibbell (2006) notes the emergence of brokers, traders, and a multitude of intermediaries in the professional transactions of virtual game gold. The AVEA report corroborates thus:

[It is] now possible for any player, no matter how experienced or inexperienced, dedicated or casual, to obtain high-ranking avatars and possessions simply by purchasing them from a website. Virtual goods were commodified.

- AVEA report 2010 p.11

The core feature(s) of synthetic worlds as Castronova puts it would be applicable to any immersive environment such that his definition is applicable to most games particularly the ones recently released such that those functions are no longer limited in Online Gaming but contributes to the Alone Together phenomenon as well. Castronova states these worlds as "worlds—the fact that they are radically manufacturable places that can be shared by many people at once." The manner of sharing of worlds from a distanced perspective makes it possible to read some synthetic worlds as offline games that are shared in online spaces not directly with other players but as hinted earlier through the achievements hierarchy that is constructed online, even though actual gameplay is strictly offline. For instance, the recent release of games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Witcher, and many more allow for a certain type of alone together phenomenon which takes place through forum posts, player profiles, and discussions. Note that although there is no online gameplay, similar effects of online gameplay are reflected in the statistics that appear online and create an achievement hierarchy regardless of online activity. Although attentional capital plays a role in such spaces, there is very little connections to survival and team play that it results in.

Immersion and Immersive Environments - A Different Perspective

Immersive environments can be considered as emotionally invested spaces, spaces where there is a investment in the character as well as the synthetic world. Ethnographic interviews point to immersion being a key motivator for role playing games. Role Play or games that implemented certain elements of role play.

Immersive environments are often described as the emotional investments that the player makes in the character or the game environment. Turkle (1995) describes role play as the practice of pretending to be someone else within a fictional space.

The reinvestment of virtual physical and non physical capital enables the avatar better access to production and production capacities. This is manifested dependent on the design of the synthetic world and almost any item can be assigned a value. Castronova (2005) notes thus:

“The advancement system can be used to induce a player’s emotional investment in all kinds of actions. It can endow seemingly trivial and inconsequential acts—the slaying of a digital dragon—with significant personal and social consequences. Prestige shifts; alliances change; power and wealth flow in new channels; and, most important of all, people feel happier. In the historical record of MMORPGs, the willingness of people to acquire vast storehouses of truly arcane knowledge (the casting times of hundreds of spells; the order of birth of various gods; the number of iron ingots required to make a medium-quality dwarven hammer) has been demonstrated over and over. Advancement mechanisms turn the synthetic world into a place where value can be assigned to anything, and behaviour directed accordingly. ”

The emotional investment that Castronova notes through the investment of virtual and real resources in advancement, is probed into by Williamson et al. (2010, in print). Williamson et al suggest through their hypothesis that immersion may take on two (central) functions -

that of a journey for the player to discover their 'true self', through a character constructed in role play as a space for role freedom, and
as a means of escapism.

On a superficial reading both hypotheses seem very similar, Williamson et al distinguishes these two features using an ethnographic approach. Players who engage in the first central element describe virtual worlds (refer Williamson et al 2010, in print) as a space where they can express which is otherwise socially constrained offline. To paraphrase a quoted comment, a player feels they can be anything they want in role-play whereas in real life they are who they are. Another player feels that their Avatar is similar to their real life but is capable of doing or being more (flirty, casual, and outgoing) than they are in their real lives. Williamson et al support their second hypotheses on immersion, namely as a means of escapism by using ethnographic studies. Players focus on the Virtual World as something to 'get away' from real life hassles, largely all comments that Williamson et al notes are positive, as such there is no indication if there were any connotations of addiction involved with immersion. Not an avoidance of real life situations but more in terms of relaxation, rest, a break and so forth. In fact Williamson et al seem to be moving away from such connotations by making this remark. Although I do not want to address questions of addictions and violence arising out of excessive gaming, these arise out of some of the discourses I point out. More can be found in the works of Florence Chee. The article in particular can be accessed on her page. Henry Jenkins and his stand on immersion has been addressed in an earlier blog post and would be relevant when addressing immersion in role play (and RPGs) in offline games.

The Segregation of Production - Reading Nakamura and Racial Production

Lisa Nakamura provides an insight into reading racial stereotypes in virtual worlds and posits that subjects carefully avoid real world racism, and racial references shifts into narratives of racial warfare in the imaginary world. Nakamura problematizes the informationalized capitalism that constructs Asian players as informational labourers and outsiders to the aesthetic integrity of the world of warcraft that the beauty of the game has somehow been polluted or tarnished by third world and fourth world informational labourers.

Nakamura addresses the informational dispossession of fourth world workers and gold farmers in particular and the real world racism that is inherently present in the caricaturisation that follows informational labour. She compares Consalvo and Castronova to discuss racialization, among other social evils, which as far as Castronova (2005) describes is ideally exempt from virtual worlds.

A strong focus on racialization in the real world being imported into virtual spaces and the connotations that accompany farming or for that matter how race becomes a derogatory insult in communities that have farming cultures is present. This takes the form of (almost) imagined racial warfare in virtual worlds and Nakamura attempts to locate this in light of Chinese (and Korean) informational labour and gold farming. The derogatory connotations associated with Chinese (and Korean) players as stereotypical farmers, and thus contaminated where the aesthetic integrity of MMO worlds are concerned (Nakamura substantiates using Consalvo, p. 6). Gold farming except for legally accepted modes are considered as cheating. Consalvo points out that cheating need not be approached as a flaw or weakness in the game design that is exploited or circumvented by players, rather cheating is an inherent part of gaming culture and is a necessary element that contributes to sustained immersion.

One problem would be the actual produsage of virtual goods that are dependent on racial factors that often separate production and consumption. This form of segregation of production on racial and accumulated avatarial terms would lead to a more nuanced reading of production on racial factors. Produsage is a term recently used in the New Media and Culture Journal to locate the production and simultaneous consumption on the Internet in the larger picture. In the virtual world produsage can stand for the production and consumption patterns of virtual worlds – a detailed report on the same has been recently published by the Advanced Virtual Economy Applications Project in conjunction with the Helsinki Institute of Information and Technology.

Is produsage similar to prosumption, the convergence of production and consumption in social media? Whereas produsage is limited to examining the dissemination of content and the engagement with creative, collaborative, and often adhoc content, prosumption is more applicable in the virality of that content through the networks that it flows through. I would interpret the former as being form and style specific and the latter architecturally informed in that the structures of technology through which content flows rather than the form of the content is given more weightage.

An examination of avatarial capital and its influences on racial production leads to the flows of attention that influence production processes. Influencing production in a systematic manner, attention as a currency dictates the prosumption of virtual goods. The AVEA report notes MMORPGs as the first genre in RMT (Real money trades). Although the AVEA reports literature focuses on 'Game Time' investments in grinding, mining, and farming – repetitive tasks that produce avatarial material and non material capital. A distinction should be made that the Game economy is not dependent on time factors alone, such that the investments of virtual and real money does not always translate into time spent in the acts of virtual production. Attention often mediates this process, such that the flow of attention would effectively enhance a player of low net worth (materially) and disenfranchise players who have invested time, effort, and money in the game and have a higher net worth in material functions. Virtual material wealth and non material wealth plays very little role in the enhancement and disenfranchisement of players and their respective investments in the virtual worlds. This is not to suggest that this is a common norm, production inevitably draws attentional capital in the automated ranking and listings that showcase this 'achievement', which also results in contest and conquest over command on virtual commodities. The AVEA report and works by Lehdonvirta (Ville) and Hamari (Juho) interpret the achievement hierarchy that those who have worked, deserve the fruit of their labour.

Avatar rights53 and the Declaration of the rights of avatars are tied into the concepts of this achievement hierarchies that Hamari and Lehdonvirta uses and their materialization, if you will, in real value. Production and time are classically linked through labour and effort and to import that reading into a virtual space devoid of certain nuanced reformulations would be regressive. This is reflected in the AVEA report findings, although their trajectories are ideologically motivated. To posit that early MMORPGs had an achievement structure through which players steadily climbed the backbone of social and economic structure destabilized by the emergence of secondary markets is highly problematic. Firstly for it locates an evolutionary trajectory, the idyll (almost echoing of a Christian pre-lapsarian) state followed by the fall, so to speak, or destabilisation of the idyllic aesthetic beauty and 'integrity' by secondary markets or gold farming markets and resellers – Nakamura (2009) reiterates this perceived violation of 'western' aesthetics by eastern guest works and informational labourers. Secondly it locates all investments as a simple matter of time investment (which flows in either/both way), and to locate the connections between real and virtual currencies as simple matters of produsage or prosumption linked to time (whichever term seems more appropriate, i.e., depending on the form of content or the structure that enables its flow – naturally please read content also as virtual content, digital content, and so forth inclusive of virtual goods and services) is limiting and problematic. The problematics are not the input of time and effort but the flow of attention that dictates most gameplay formation54 and strategy in any game that has a massive environment with a PvP structure. In intense-PvP-character focused MMORPGs such as Eternal Duel the avatarial capital are a) different parameters central to role play and character development and b) dependent on racial choices that allow for different progression pathways.

Nakamura notes that “China-men” are often equated with NPCs or non-player characters whose only role in the game is either grinding, or providing information and equipment. Grinding is a repetitive task, largely of killing monsters again and again to gain items, currencies, and experience in-game. By equating NPCs and Chinese players together, PvP attacks becomes nothing more than 'taking a stroll in the wilderness' and attacking 'monsters'. People who are profiled as Asian, either through their avatars or through their actions, mannerisms, associations and so forth (earlier I made an argument on in-group and out-group associations that facilitated certain forms of attentional capital flows, note that both negative and positive flows are possible). Such profiling along with informational labour dehumanizes the subjects as mere characters in a racial war. I posit that outworld racism, racist tendencies, and remarks such as that noted above and documented by Nakamura becomes only one half of racial production and game play in virtual worlds. Most fantasy genres are built on concepts of warfare with often racial connotations, such that survival, quest progression, and the accumulation of avatarial capital depends on the imaginary, constructed, and designed racial warfare in virtual worlds. All MMORPGs have some element of conflict, warfare which is often a part of design. Survival is not just a matter of survival in harsh game environment but also from other avatars. Survival also depends on the ability of the avatar to exercise command over other goods and services within the virtual world.

This ability to command better resources in the virtual world dictates the survival of the avatar and in cases of warfare (constant struggle is an element of MMORPGs and warfare is the eventual representation of that struggle) the more virtual goods that an avatar commands, the better its chances of survival. Although a commentary of Nakamura's text, an attempt is made to locate instances where attentional capital and its accumulation need not necessarily assist survival in the game.

Racial production or what I would posit as the production of virtual goods dependent on race in MMO Fantasy RPGs is dependent on the attentional shifts that are regulated by the games own internal market ranking systems. What the AVEA project report terms as the achievement hierarchies, for the hierarchy or ranking is not singular but varied and distributed across multiple aspects of development in a game. These hierarchies also facilitate shifts in attentional capital and its flows (other than self representation through profiles and avatars) and locate racial characteristics of an avatar and achievement hierarchies linked to race. For instance, ED ranks players based o their race choices, for all six races in the game with race trophies being awarded to the first three in the list. The trophies are much sought after for the bonus-benefits that they provide. This leads to a form of racial warfare, within the races - for the race trophy, and outside the races for higher achievement ranking. Quests which require the collection of one soul from each race for access to higher capability weapons have players in a constant state of warfare. Attentional capital here dictates the production, often racial production in that the high level weapons, armour, and other virtual goods that are produced are race specific. Often players tend to speculate and buy race weapons only to resell in the internal market after making enhancements to it, even though the weapon or armour itself is quite useless in terms of race compatibility. A look at the top seven race weapon internal market listings in ED and comparison with the players character profiles and race choice will show that four out of seven players have listed weapons they cannot use or equip. Race armour and other weapons have similar statistics in the internal markets in that most are not items of use by players but for speculation general compatibility armour on the other hand has very few players investing in major enhancements. Their efforts at producing these weapons and enhancing them is to speculate on the market and on possible players who will need them as they progress to level 300, and thus make a considerable profit by selling it, or renting it out through an in-game contract system.

In conclusion I also introduce the concept of class production and game world race production of virtual goods and items, such that character race plays a relevant part in imagined racial warfare but not so much in the production of virtual goods, which is driven by market demand and supply. Attentional capital and avatarial capital plays pivotal roles in the systems of production and I have made an attempt to locate them from different perspectives. I posit that attentional capital flows through the self representation in profiles and the ingroup and outgroup identitification along with associations to race, class, and identity which are not necessarily outworld alone. As Nakamura (2009) notes there are no real world races in virtual worlds but the image of the farmer has been associated with real world Chinese and Korean players such that it forms a basic dichotomy between leisure players and worker players, worker players who are dehumanized subjects similar to non player characters run by the artificial intelligence of the game. Attentional currency through many of these perspectives performs the role of a currency that facilitates or enables further progress and survival. Trading in race weapons and armour and virtual goods, that are of no other interest to the game character than pure profit, assists the collection and expansion of other forms of material and non material avatarial capital.

References

AVEA Project Report. (2010). The Advanced Virtual Economy Applications Project, Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, Accessed June 12th 2010. <http://virtual-economy.org/files/AVEA%20Project%20Final%20Report%208%20June%202010.pdf>.
Castronova, E. (2003). On Virtual Economies, in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research. Vol 3. Issue 2.
Castronova, E. (2005). Synthetic worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Castronova, E., James J. Cummings, Will Emigh, Michael Fatten, Nathan Mishler, Travis Ross and Will Ryan. (2007). What is a Synthetic World? In Space Time Play Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: the Next Level. Birkhäuser Basel (p. 174–177).
Castronova, E., Dmitri Williams, Cuihua Shen, Rabindra Ratan, Li Xiong, Yun
Huang, and Brian Keegan. (2009). As real as real? Macroeconomic Behavior in a Large-scale Virtual World. New Media & Society. 11. 685. Accessed 22 April 2010. <http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/5/685>.
Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Cooper, R. (2007). Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators. London: Chris Boot.
Dibbell, J. (2006). Play Money. New York: Basic Books.
Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2000). Getting the attention you need. Harvard Business Review, 78(5), pp. 118-126.
Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of businesses. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Goldhaber, M. (1997). The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net.
Hamari, J., and V. Lehdonvirta. (2010). Game Design as Marketing: How Game Mechanics Create Demand for Virtual Goods, in Journal of Business Science and Applied Management. Vol 5. Issue 1. Accessed 21 May 2010.
Lehdonvirta, V. (2005) Real-Money Trade of Virtual Assets: Ten Different User Perceptions. In: Proceedings of Digital Arts and Culture (DAC 2005), 52-58. IT University of Copenhagen: Copenhagen.
Lehdonvirta, V. (2007) MMORPG RMT and sumptuary laws. Virtual Economy Research Network. <http://virtual-economy.org/blog/ mmorpg_rmt_and_sumptuary_laws>.
Lomas, D. (2008). Attentional Capital and the Ecology of Online Social Networks. In M. Tovey (Ed.), Collective Intelligence, (pp 163-172) Oakton: EIN Press.
Nakamura, L. (2009). Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft, in Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol 26. Issue 2. Accessed 12 Feb. 2010 <http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/15295030902860252 >.
Simon, H. A. (1971). Designing organizations for an information-rich world. In M. Greenberger (Ed.), Computers, communications and the public interest (pp.40-41). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
Williams, D., T. Kennedy & R. Moore (2010, in press). Behind the Avatar: The Patterns, Practices and Functions of Role Playing in MMOs. Games & Culture.

The Virtual Worlds Research Project {VWRP} has conducted extensive studies and workshops on defining virtual worlds – three main prominent characteristics of which are depiction, space and analogic – for more please refer their report published and freely available.
The Attention economy was first implied in the works of Simon H.A (1971) who focuses on the exchange of attention as a relevant factor in the information economy – that the resource that is made scarce is not information but attention expended in its consumption is one of the seminal points made by Simon H. A. The term although was popularized by the writings of Davenport and Beck 2000, 2001 and Goldhaber 1997, 2008. For more details for the “attention economy hypothesis in brief”.
Three kingdoms online is a merger of MMORPG and MMORTS with a focus on Real Time Strategy similar to Travian. World of Warcraft is a classical Role Playing Game Set in the Massive Environment where millions of players can join in a game – Which is what is termed an MMORPG. Eternal Duel and Rising Era are Text Based MMORPGs that have a smaller base and depends entirely on textual and not graphical representation.
Although similar to Peirre bourdieu's (Bourdieu and Passeron 1973) concept of human capital, it involves the examination of non material gains that are linked to an avatar, such as in-game experience, in-game knowledge and so forth.
Refer Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" (1973).
The Virtual - Real Binary has been addressed in many disciplines in different capacities, concerning identity, presence, production, and labour. Here I skirt the actual binary but use it to lend credence to the virtual currency and by extention also the attention currency.
What Castronova would like to term as part of 'the exodus'.
Nakamura and Consalvo note this limitation in different manners and points to the realization of Castronova's speculative predictions.
Either browser- or client-based.
MUDs stands for Multi-user Domain.
The term graphical worlds may be misleading, I use the term to denote the visually superior worlds that Castronova seems to imply as Synthetic Worlds, his main case study being Sony's EverQuest. Doing this I also posit that text based virtual worlds are active economically, even if not as much as graphical worlds, and the term synthetic worlds can be expanded to include the text based genre as well.
As against NPCs or non player characters.
And thus subjective in nature.
By sustainable I suggest that immersion (emotional or otherwise) in the game world does not face massive disjuncts or breaks. A game that has a cohesive narrative architecture (please refer Jenkins works on narrative architectures) could be immersive.
The 'massive element' is used to locate some central points of departures between RPGs and MMORPGs, evolution being one of them.
Also defined as gold farming markets, there are some questionable problems is definitions due to legality, concepts of cheating and so forth. Mia Consalvo (2007) approaches cheating as part of gaming culture and admits that even EULAs do not sufficiently address what activities and circumventions maybe regarded as cheating and how exactly that affects some players. Some players have the ability to pay for farming services, but that does not necessarily mean its cheating, since he is still investing labour (through a process of outsourcing of that labour) into the game.
This term is not common, I use this term outworld synonymously with out-game, and as a antonym to in-game and inworld. The term implies activities within the game and its impact, influence, or some other variable that is outside of that game mostly in the real world. Thus, although technically, these terms are not synonymously cohesive - for the purposes here is used as such.
Although Castronova urges that there is an impact of synthetic economies on real world economies, I believe locating the attentional capital and its function as a currency within virtual worlds and its shifts and flows effected through real world stereotypes, uses, and affordances (as Castronova himself notes that there are very almost no virtual goods that do not have some form of real world categorization and uses and/or affordances), can be located through gold farming as a trade practice.
Can attentional capital also be read as linked to “all” non-material capital?
Presuming that they are obtained within the game and not through metagaming, Castronova does not examine metagaming in this manner except to locate gold farming practices that he terms as secondary market activities.
Considering that social and viral networks and their effects can be often hinted at but rarely predicted beforehand. Without sufficient avatar capital, there may be very little attentional capital and trades in attentional capital that ensure survival in any game. As such predicting outcomes based on possible attentional capital can be unproductive.
Depending on how communities and groups are organized in the game world. They could be limited to 60 as in Travian, or above 200 as in Eternal Duel, depending on certain circumstances membership is also often limited, a reason why attentional capital of high performing groups stay well above the threshold of survival. Almost all groups will have internal communications, IGM – In-Game Mailing/Messaging, internal or devised chat functionality – for instance Travian has a server chat that accommodates players of the clan but is rarely used, Skype is preferred and if not Gtalk and Msn is preferred means of communication and strategizing as well. This is noticeable in International .com servers and the English .in servers, as for other servers this may not hold true. Eternal Duel also has chat functionality but is not clan specific. Both games have their own internal forums for the clan pages as well as game support forums internationally and regionally.
Also termed Metaverse where factors external to the game influence the game – practices that are termed as metagaming.
Although at this juncture Bots and their usage should be explored, it might derail the argument on attentional capital flows. Automated programs are forms of circumventions that are often banned in the TOS and EULA of the game, but still used by many players. Multihunters or staff of the game working specifically on detecting circumvention arose out of modding and circumvention. Consalvo explores cheating to a fair amount and places cheating as a part of game culture, such that it allows players who are stuck at certain points to bypass the narrative requirement to complete a certain quest, do a certain activity and so forth. Therefore, she places cheating not so much as loopholes in design exploited by circumvention rather an essential part of a game in its ability to maintain, or sustain immersion.
Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy is a subdivision of games that focus on Empire building in a persistant or resetting massive environment.
Technologies that facilitate communication and interaction are necessary for any forms of trade and activity to develop online. An ingame messaging system, a contract system, in-game chat functionality make up for synergized communities that can strategize better in such games.
This ranking range depends entirely on the server and the number of people playing the game. The range denotes the highest investors in the game, in terms of activity, presence, and production. These number ranges are applicable for the international .com travian servers. The numbers would be much lower compared to Indian or other regional servers. A report can be obtained on Travian World analyzer but is limited to server resets – every 300 days for normal servers. http://travian.ws/ - note that this is not the original travian site or in any manner supported by travian or their staff, but an external site that aggregates travian data for assistive gameplay.
Gathered from the Travian Forums and Strategy guides. The exact tools are numerous including user scripts and is not elaborated further.
Both are Chat and Instant Messaging Clients.
Policy here implies in-game production - From basics such as War and Peace to profit sharing, production sharing, resource collection for common growth and so forth.
Avatar capital is largely represented in the player profile page or in the in-game ranking system or external tools that pull data off the server to provide ranking and player search functionalities. One such case would be the extensive in-game ranking systems in Eternal Duel a text-based fantasy MMORPG, another instance would be Travian Servers which run on time bound resets and has extensive external tools to locate, plan, and strategize ideal locations, attack maneuvers, defense, farm finders and so forth. These systems act in the ways attention flows from particular activities that avatars undertake.
Attentional currency as the currency of survival is part of the paper currently in a draft version and will be linked on my personal blog when published.
Avatrial death naturally.
Castronova suggests that the term is more appropriate as it indicates an interconnected relationship that is not part of the real- virtual binary.
Quest lines would be particular pathways that a player character/avatar can choose for development depending on racial attributes experience points and so forth. For example, the Sway of the stars in a High eld RW1 (Race weapon 1) which is available after crossing a certain level (indicated by experience points gathered). Note that all of this is dependent on the virtual world and the design and plot of the world concerned. The example is taken from Eternal Duel.
Quest lines would be particular pathways that a player character/avatar can choose for development depending on racial attributes experience points and so forth. For example, the Sway of the stars in a High eld RW1 (Race weapon 1) which is available after crossing a certain level (indicated by experience points gathered). Note that all of this is dependent on the virtual world and the design and plot of the world concerned. The example is taken from Eternal Duel.
The game does not name the weapon as elvish, rather it is just termed as a high elf race weapon. The word Elvish is not particularly popular either for some reason.
Which are also virtual goods. In the paper macroeconomic behavior in large scale virtual worlds, the authors attempt to locate if the virtual 'sword' can be considered as having 'real' value.
or the Elven Race, one of the race choices when building a character. Race choices in character building has benefits including race weapons, race specific growth benefits and so forth, all of which are tied into the production of avatarial capital and indirectly attentional capital.
His study is on social networks, particularly Myspace.com, but can be used to read into attentional capital in gaming.
And hints at the reduction of identities into interests where self representation is concerned.
I would choose to expand this concept and make it broader so as to make it applicable to other social networks and is not limited to gaming.
Such as ethnic, cultural, racial, to form an in-group or out-group association, or through common cultural symbols and so forth as mentioned earlier.
I quote a recent debate with a few colleagues who suggested that I seem to suggest through my writing that the formation of these repositories are resultant of vague unintended actions on part of players and argued that the associations noticeable in the profiles of players are not always unintended but in most cases calculated and placed with deliberative intent. Without going into too much detail, I should clarify that that there might be the influence of the smart cow syndrome (for the lack of a better term for articulating this), where prominent groups have players who game for attention so as to be able to enter these groups (again I suggest that this would be a tactic for survival) failure to be associated with the group and other high level players often imply certain death (virtual avatar death that is). In such a case arguably there is deliberation and contemplation before networking or creating associations through profiles. For instance, a low level player would choose group A or group B – Z dependent on their position and the assumed allegiance and loyalty of the group portrayed through their own profile pages and thus their own repositories (yes this is illusory attention at work), and capabilities of the group to ensure survival of the player – this is deliberative. To return to my point there are often other messages and profile tags that the player uses to denote either strategy or tactics employed by the player and this I posit is unintended, a Gual character posting a Roman slogan on the profile, or some message indicative of strategy. So many troops killed in the first few weeks, so many players farmed and so forth, are unintended but assists in the inter-connection of these repositories perhaps a little more than group identities which are in constant flux (in worlds like travian from which this example is sourced).
assuming that it is non coercive and profitable.
Thus represented as A1 avatar on server 2 would be A2 and n number of servers to indicate A'n'.
For instance SARSteam on Travian interbational severs would be A1 and A2, and on ED servers would be A3 and so forth provided that avatar is linked or recognizable to SARSteam, or any of its members.
SARSteam is a prominent avatar of a player in Travian.
The authors Travian Avatar.
Travian servers reset after approx 300 days, where the endgame is the successful completion of a Wonder of the World.
A PNAP is a personal non aggression pact regardless of alliance affiliations, such that in the event that two players are in opposing and competitive alliances a PNAP would mean that either alliance would consider non aggression on the listed player regardless of alliance stand on other players. Applicable mostly unless in the event of war when PNAPs are suspended. The notion of the PNAP is similar to the NAPs forged between alliances, except its between a few players. Alone together phenomenon occurs to some extent in such cases.
Goldhaber (1997) places Illusory attention in perspective with that of a speaker and an audience. Through a reading of Lomas (2008) I posit that a similar situation is present in the self representation in player profiles.
Avatar rights are interesting concepts that question notions of property and copyrights and ownership.
By formation, I imply how game play progresses and forms dependent on attention flows towards a particular strategy in the game.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attentional-capital-online-gaming

August 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:40:34Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society. We bring you news and media coverage, research and event updates for the month of August 2010

News Updates

RIM Offered Security Fixes
In India Talks, BlackBerry Maker Said It Could Share Metadata, Notes Show
http://bit.ly/ahT7jD

New Project to Assess Potential of Creating Open Government Data Initiatives in Chile, Ghana and Turkey
Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation (founded in 2009 by Tim Berners-Lee) has made an announcement on moving forward with a project to assess the potential of creating open government data
initiatives in Chile, Ghana, and Turkey - the first step of what we hope to be a global initiative focusing on low- and middle-income countries.
http://bit.ly/d337Ex

Govt and BlackBerry firm wait for the other to hang up
Sunil Abraham speaks to Archna Shukla on the stand-off between the Government of India and RIM. The news was published in expressindia.com.
http://bit.ly/cGeipL

Call, text, email complaint against rogue auto driver
Harassed by an auto driver? Helplines give you no relief? Here's the people's way to help you out. Just report your issue online, call or even SMS sitting in a noisy restaurant, and be heard.
http://bit.ly/atiiGW

Call to increase awareness of intellectual property rights
We need more knowledge on IPR itself, says IT Secretary
http://bit.ly/avxY16

Civil Society groups urge State Judicial Academy to restructure agenda for Judges' Roundtable meet
Some of the Civil Society groups in the country have urged the Maharashtra State Judicial Academy to restructure the agenda for the 'Judges Roundtable on Intellectual Property Rights Adjudication' being held in Mumbai on July 24 and 25 to promote public interest and a deeper understanding of intellectual property amongst judicial officers. FICCI is the joint organiser of the event.
http://bit.ly/dCDZl0

More Debate on UID Project Needed
A press conference on UID was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur spoke about the UID. Proceedings from the conference was covered in the Hindu on 27 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/cSEsaP

UID coverage in Udayavani
A press conference was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur were the speakers. Leading Kannada newspaper Udayavani covered this event.
http://bit.ly/c3AU5s

Open is the Future
The third Open World Forum will gather together decision-makers from the open digital world, in Paris. 1,500 participants from 40 countries will come together to analyze the technological, economic and social impact of Open Source, the invisible engine behind the digital revolution. The aim: to interpret future trends and cross-fertilize initiatives.
http://bit.ly/amY9Qc

Upcoming Events

No UID till Complete Transparency, Accountability and People's Participation: A Public Campaign
An interactive meeting on UID's lack of a feasibility study, cost involved and dangers of abuse is being held in New Delhi at the Constitution Club Auditorium, Rafi Marg on 25 August, 2010. The meeting is jointly organised by INSAF, PEACE, Citizens' Action Forum, People's Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka, Slum Janandolana - Karnataka, Alternate Law Forum, The Centre for Internet and Society and concerned individuals.
http://bit.ly/8YsBIJ

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment
Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.
http://bit.ly/aoOkPR

Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps towards an Open and Inclusive Internet? at the Internet
Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems at the Internet Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Data in the Cloud: Where Do Open Standards Fit In?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Data in the Cloud: Where do Open Standards Fit In? on 16 September, 2010 at the Internet Governance Forum.
http://bit.ly/94AF4h

International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from
27th to 29th October, 2010....Registrations to begin soon!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Research

Political is as Political does
The Talking Back workshop has been an extraordinary experience for me. The questions that I posed for others attending the workshop have hounded me as they went through the course of discussion, analysis and dissection. Strange nuances have emerged, certain presumptions have been questioned, new legacies have been discovered, novel ideas are still playing ping-pong in my mind, and a strange restless excitement – the kind that keeps me awake till dawning morn – has taken over me, as I try and figure out the wherefore and howfore of things. I began the research project on Digital Natives in a condition of not knowing, almost two years ago. Since then, I have taken many detours, rambled on strange paths, discovered unknown territories and reached a mile-stone where I still don’t know, but don’t know what I don’t know, and that is a good beginning.
http://bit.ly/9hY9sR

Digital Natives: Talking Back
One of the most significant transitions in the landscape of social and political movements, is how younger users of technology, in their interaction with new and innovative technologised platforms have taken up responsibility to respond to crises in their local and immediate environments, relying upon their digital networks, virtual communities and platforms. In the last decade or so, the digital natives, in universities as well as in work spaces, as they experimented with the potentials of internet technologies, have launched successful socio-political campaigns which have worked unexpectedly and often without precedent, in the way they mobilised local contexts and global outreach to address issues of deep political and social concern. But what do we really know about this Digital Natives revolution?
http://bit.ly/bZNoSX

Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause
Digital Natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to
understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.
http://bit.ly/b1GS7F

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge: Barriers and Solutions for Persons with Disabilities in India
Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur and Consumers Association of India in association with Madras Library Association organised a seminar on Access to Knowledge on 31st July, 2010 at the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Auditorium in Guindy, Chennai. The Principal Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu Department of Information Technology was the chief guest. Former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal gave the keynote address. Prof Subbiah Arunachalam, Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash participated in the seminar. Nirmita and Pranesh made presentations on access to knowledge.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Intellectual Property

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as Amended in 2010
In this post the author examines the issue of privacy in light of the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as amended by the Copyright Amendment Bill in 2010. Four key questions are examined in detail and the author gives
suitable recommendations for each of the questions that arise.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Internet Governance

Does the Government want to enter our homes?
When rogue politicians and bureaucrats are granted unrestricted access to information then the very future of democracy and free media will be in jeopardy. In an article published in the Pune Mirror on 10 August,
2010, Sunil Abraham examines this in light of the BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry messenger service that the Government of India plans to block if its makers do not allow the monitoring of messages. He says that civil society should rather resist and insist on suitable checks and balances like governmental transparency and a fair judicial oversight instead of allowing the government to intrude into the privacy
and civil liberties of its citizens.
http://bit.ly/dkVHoS

UID Project in India - Some Possible Ramifications
Having a standard for decentralized ID verification rather than a centralized database that would more often than not be misused by various authorities will solve ID problems, writes Liliyan in this blog entry. These blog posts to be published in a series will voice the expert opinions of researchers and critics on the UID project and present its unique shortcomings to the reader.
http://bit.ly/bOyBS8

Civil Liberties and the amended Information Technology Act, 2000
This post examines certain limitations of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended in 2008). Malavika Jayaram points out the fact that when most countries of the world are adopting plain English instead of the conventional legal terminology for better understanding, India seems to be stuck in the old-fashioned method thereby, struggling to maintain a balance between clarity and flexibility in drafting its laws. The present Act, she says, is although an improvement over the old Act and seeks to address and improve on certain areas in the right direction but still comes up short in making necessary changes when it comes to fundamental rights and personal liberties. The new Act retains elements from the previous one making it an abnormal document and this could have been averted if there had been some attention to detail.
http://bit.ly/croc9T

Feedback to the NIA Bill
Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok introduce the formal submission of CIS to the proposed National Identification Authority of India (NIA) Bill, 2010, which would give every resident a unique identity. The submissions contain the detailed comments on the draft bill and the high level summary of concerns with the NIA Bill submitted to the UIDAI on 13 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/bhinUB

Openness

Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do? The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
http://bit.ly/ciohYy

Civic Hacking Workshop
CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.
http://bit.ly/c3TF2t

Telecom

'Containing Inflation' - A myth
We need problem-solving, not confused rhetoric or misguided action, says Shyam Ponappa. The article was published in Business Standard on 7 August, 2008.
http://bit.ly/9frC8q

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2010-bulletin

First Post-Bilski Decision - Software Patent Rejected

praskrishna — 2011-08-23T03:24:25Z

In the first decision post-Bilski, the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) rejected a software patent claimed by Hewlett-Packard. The ruling in this case has buttressed the fact that the Bilski decision furthered the cause of narrowing the patentability of software even though the Supreme Court of the United States totally avoided mentioning software patents or the applicability of the machine or transformation test for software patents in its decision.

As eagerly as it was awaited, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos (2010) was a dampener as far as its impact (or the lack of it) on patentability of software was concerned. The Supreme Court totally avoided even mentioning software patents or the applicability of the machine or transformation test for software patents in its decision and while many claimed that it was status quo maintained, a few of us found a silver lining in the Court’s ruling of abstract ideas as unpatentable and its admission of an argument that patents do not necessarily promote innovation and may, sometimes result in limiting competition and stifling innovation. Our hope that the Bilski case furthered the cause of narrowing the patentability of software was not misplaced is evident from the first decision post-Bilski, of the BPAI, which rejected a software patent claimed by Hewlett-Packard. The BPAI, in In Re Proudler, rejected a patent claim for software made by Hewlett Packard on the ground that software, being an abstract idea, is not patentable. The BPAI relied on, among others, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos in holding that an abstract idea was not patentable.

The case before the BPAI was on appeal from the decision of the patent examiner who refused patent for the claim on the ground that it was obvious (on basis of prior art analysis) and therefore, “barred at the threshold” for patentability under US patent law. The patent was claimed for “a method of controlling the processing of data” comprising “defining security controls for a plurality of data items, and applying individualised security rules to each of the data items based on a measurement of integrity of a computing entity to which the data items are to be made available”. It was essentially a claim for software facilitation data processing and involving security controls for several data items. The BPAI refused patent for the claim but differed from the patent examiner in its reasoning. The BPAI held that all claims related to non-patentable subject matter and hence, could not be granted patent.

In coming to this conclusion, the BPAI relied on previous decisions including In Re Nuijten which held that Section 35 of the US Code of Patents which allows patents for a machine, a manufacture, a process or a composition of matter constitutes “the exclusive reach of patentable subject matter”. In ruling that HP’s claim was not patentable, BPAI also held that software, being an abstract idea, was not patentable. The line of argument relied on by the BPAI was something like this – “[A] machine, a manufacture, a process or a composition of matter” constitutes the exclusive reach of patentable subject matter. Thus, laws of nature, abstract ideas, and natural phenomena are excluded from patent protection as held in the well known case of Diamond v. Diehr. The Federal Circuit in its decision in In re Warmerdam has held that an abstraction is not a patentable subject matter. In other words, a claim that recites no more than software, logic or a data structure (that is, an abstraction) does not fall within any statutory category. It has been held in Microsoft Corp. v. AT & T Corp. that an abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment. Finally, and most significantly, the Bilski case has put the nail in the coffin by ruling that abstract ideas are not patentable. Against the background of these precedents, BPAI has confirmed the unpatentability of software on the ground that it is an abstract idea.

It is interesting that the BPAI also mentioned that “no true hardware structure is recited” in the claims to buttress its conclusion that the idea claimed was an abstract one. This means that the BPAI took note of the fact that although a hardware structure may have been essential to implement the abstract idea forming the claim such structure itself was not claimed for patent. The innovation claimed lay in the software alone and not in the hardware and therefore, did not merit patent protection. Thus, a claimed invention which is a combination of hardware (required to implement the software) and software may not be patentable as long as there is no ingenuity in the hardware as software alone, being a mere algorithm and an abstraction, falls outside the scope of patentable subject matter.

The first post-Bilski decision gives us more than one reason to cheer about –

It refused patent for software on the ground that it was an abstract idea and hence, did not fall under patentable subject matter. Acceptance of software as merely an abstract idea is catching up and is thus, good news for those who challenge the patentability of software.
The BPAI, in ruling software as an abstraction and thus, unpatentable relied directly on the Bilski decision and therefore, provided a clear, much-needed guideline for conclusively interpreting the Bilski decision as one restricting the patentability of software.
The decision supported the argument that any combination of hardware and software, to be patentable, must demonstrate ingenuity in the hardware component. As long as there is no claim for hardware, the software itself, being an abstraction, cannot be patented. This brings about greater clarity in the definition of software to be limited to an algorithm (and thus, abstract) and to be looked at in isolation from a hardware component which is solely used to implement the software and no more.

It will be interesting to follow the developments in this case and in other future claims for software which may rely on the Bilski decision. In Re Proudler is certainly encouraging for limiting software patents especially in the aftermath of Bilski. As far as patentability of software is concerned, the Bilski decision may not be that insignificant after all.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/post-bilski

The Bilski Case - Impact on Software Patents

praskrishna — 2011-08-23T03:24:31Z

The Supreme Court of the United States gave its decision in Bilski v Kappos on 28 June, 2010. In this case the petitioners’ patent application sought protection for a claimed invention that explains how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market can protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The Court in affirming the rejection by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit also held that the machine- or-transformation test is not necessarily the sole test of patentability. The Court’s ruling of abstract ideas as unpatentable and its admission that patents do not necessarily promote innovation and may sometimes limit competition and stifle innovation have provided a ray of hope. In the light of the developments, the Bilski decision as far as patentability of software is concerned may not be totally insignificant, says Krithika Dutta Narayana.

The United States Supreme Court’s much awaited decision of last month in Bilski v. Kappos (2010) (Bilski), a case that was touted as a potential watershed in the debate surrounding patentability of software, was disappointing, even though it was not without any impact. While the Supreme Court affirmed the rejection by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) of a patent claim for a business method, it failed to define with clarity, any test for patentability which might have constituted a precedent for future cases involving patentability of software or business method. At the same time, it held that the “machine- or- transformation” test which was the test followed by the CAFC in rejecting the claim, was not the sole test to determine patentability, thus effectively providing no guideline to determine patentability of software or business methods in future cases.

The Supreme Court in Bilski, affirmed the rejection by the CAFC in In re Bilski (2008) of a patent claim involving a method of providing insurance against fluctuating energy prices due to changes in weather. The applicants, Bernard L. Bilski and Rand Warsaw filed a patent application for such a method of hedging risks – essentially a claim for a business method – under Section 101 of US Patent Act before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The examiner at the USPTO rejected the claim on the ground that the claim was not for patentable subject matter and that “the invention is not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulates (an) abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without any limitation to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not directed to the technological arts”. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) took a re-look at the examiner’s decision and held that the “machine or apparatus” test was in itself insufficient to determine patentability since a claim that included transformation of a physical object from one state to another would also be patent eligible subject matter. The BPAI also struck down the requirement of the invention to be a “technological art”. Thus, it rejected the Bilski claim on the ground that it did not cause transformation of a physical object from one state to another, since transformation of financial liabilities and risks does not constitute transformation of physical matter.

In its decision on October 30, 2008, the CAFC affirmed the ruling of the BPAI and laid down the machine or transformation test for patentability and held that Bilski’s claim was neither tied to any machine or apparatus to derive the result nor did it cause transformation of any physical object from one state to another and is hence, unpatentable subject matter. The Court reasoned that the “machine or transformation” test was crucial for determining patentability as it ensured that the claim based on a fundamental principle did not preempt all other uses of the principle. This test was the first test since the US Supreme Court’s decision in Diamond v. Diehr (1981) – which held that laws of nature, mathematical formulae and algorithms are not patentable – that had a huge potential for laying down definitive rules for patentability including declaring software and business methods to be outside the realm of patentable subject matter. If this test was upheld in the Supreme Court, that would effectively put an end to the rise of software patents since software, in most cases, did not cause transformation of physical object from one state to another. Thus, the decision of the Supreme Court had huge stakes for both sides of the software patent debate.

In light of the same, the Supreme Court’s ruling holding that the machine or transformation test is not the sole test for determining patentability and at the same time, failing to provide any other test on which to determine patentability, was a sore disappointment. Though, it affirmed the rejection of Bilski’s patent claim on the ground that the subject matter claimed was abstract and thus not a patentable “process” under section 101, its core decision was only limited to this particular claim and it did not lay down a concrete and definitive guideline for future claims. However, one must not be too quick to dismiss this decision as either going against the interests of open society and free software or as a completely inconsequential case that simply maintains status quo. There are important takeaways for the patentability of software in the Bilski decision – The Court did not totally reject the machine or transformation test relied on by the CAFC. It only held that the machine or transformation test is not the sole test on basis of which the patentability of a subject matter of a claim can be decided. The Court, in fact, held that the “machine or transformation test” was a “useful and important clue, an investigative tool for determining whether some claimed inventions are processes under section 101.” This leaves open the possibility of using the test to determine patentability in future cases and this is good news for opponents of software patents since software (an algorithm designed to be operated upon by a computer) is merely an abstract idea which, in most cases, does not involve transformation of a physical object from one state to another.

Bilski’s claim was essentially interpreted to be a patent for a business method. The Supreme Court was completely silent on the issue of patentability of software in its decision and stuck to only the narrow issue in hand – that of the patentability of a particular business method. This means that the “machine or transformation test”, whose applicability was ruled out in this particular case, may still be applicable for software patents. Nothing in this case precludes an opponent of a software patent from urging the courts to use the “machine or transformation test” to rule on patentability. Thus, the very fact that the Supreme Court only dealt with the narrow issue in hand ensures that the “machine or transformation test” is not altogether dismissed.

The main ground on which Bilski’s claim was rejected was that the patent claim was for an overly abstract idea which was not patent-eligible. The Court held that the basic concept on which the claim was based – the concept of hedging risks against risk is an unpatentable abstract idea. Further, some of the claims are constituted by equations and are purely mathematical in nature and are abstract and thus not patentable. This means that basic concepts and use of mathematical formulae constitute abstract ideas which are unpatentable. This test can strike down many software patents as these are simply algorithms executed by a computer and incorporate very fundamental and basic concepts which are abstract in nature and are thus, not patentable. This test for determining patentability on the basis of the claim being abstract as laid down in Bilski reaffirms the patentability test laid down in Diamond v. Deihr which kept laws of nature, mathematical formulae and algorithms outside the scope of patentable subject matter. This may serve as an important test to determine and especially, limit the patentability of software in coming years.

Notwithstanding the fact that Bilski’s claim has been interpreted to be one of a business method patent, when examined in detail, the claims indicate that the ‘method’ cannot be implemented without a computer. Certain claims for calculating probability (and risk), although mathematical or algorithmic in nature, have too many variables to be executed in any way other than by using a computer.1 Such algorithms which can be executed only by a computer fall under the category of software and the patent is thus, also, a software patent. That being said, the ruling of the Court that the claim is for an overly abstract idea and thus not patentable lends credence and indicates that software patents can be validly claimed to be abstract ideas not falling under the scope of patentable subject matter.

Another important outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling was the invalidation of the 1998 CAFC decision in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group2 which opened the floodgates for software patents by holding that a practical application of an algorithm or formula to produce “useful, concrete and tangible result” was sufficient to constitute patentable subject matter. The State Street test was too broad and afforded an opportunity for many frivolous patent applications to be admitted. In fact, Justice Stevens, in his concurring opinion, has stated that it would be a “grave mistake” to follow the test. By clearly striking down and dismissing such a test to determine patentable subject matter, the Court in Bilski has precluded future software patent claims for taking recourse to this test and has effectively, to an extent, made it that much harder for a software to be granted patent. The test in State Street Bank which opened the floodgates for software patents was definitively dismissed.

The Court in the 1978 case of Parker v. Flook, had rejected patent for a mathematical algorithm on the ground that an algorithm was a law of nature although its use was limited to a specific field in this case (the “field of use” test) and added an insignificant post solution activity (“post solution activity” test). The test laid down in Flook had been subsequently questioned and thus, subtly dismissed by the Court in Diehr in 1991. The Court in Bilski emphasized on the test for patentability laid down in Flook and opined that the two tests may well come in handy in future challenges or oppositions to a patent claim while determining if the claim pertained to an idea that was abstract and hence, not patentable. Thus, this test can be used in future for invalidating software patents which are characterized by broad claims adding insignificant post solution activity.

It is heartening to note that the Court looked at the importance of patent law while recognizing that patents are not always necessary to encourage innovation. It noted that patents could also limit competition and stifle innovation. They can have ill effects such as increasing prices while slowing progress and could actually be deterrent to free flow of information within society. By recognizing and validating this, the ruling not only helped increase awareness about the debate surrounding software patents but also showed that the Courts are open to such an approach to patent law in future. This can only be good news for busting software patents.

For further reading

Claim 4 of Bliski's claims is as follows - “perform a Monte Carlo simulation across all deals at all locations ... over the last 20 years of weather patterns and establish the payoffs from each deal under each historical weather pattern “ Such a simulation would involve multiple parameters such as deals, locations, weather patterns, to establish a payoff.
149 F.3d. 1368.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/bilski-case

科技改變社會數位原生代計畫

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:22:00Z

The Chinese language press covered the Digital Natives workshop in Taipei.

8月16日到18日，原生代工作坊（Digital Natives）將在中研院舉辦數位，關注年輕世代如何運用科技改變社會，荷蘭的國際發展組織、印度的網路與社會研究中心，以及台灣關心資訊社會實踐的研究機構與民間組織，將一起探索數位原生代的全球現象。

荷蘭Hivos人道發展合作組織（the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation）知識計畫召集人史傳密拉（Josine Stremmelaar）表示，Hivos知識計畫的目的，是希望結合在地與全球力量，關注社會與災害議題。

史傳蜜拉認為，過去沒有足夠的知識，讓在地與全球的組織作分享，如果無法處理知識快速流通及傳播，無法面對層出不窮的全球問題。

Hivos數位原生代計畫主持人簡森（Fieke Jansen）指出，全球年輕人運用科技，為社會做出貢獻，有些年輕人運用Facebook串連社會力量，表達年輕人對社會議題的憤怒與重視，她希望藉由工作坊，讓年輕人有更深入的討論，以及為過去行動作整理與分享。

尼善‧沙認為，數位原生代涵蓋就學的年輕人，也包括進入產官學界的年輕人，不同的領域透過科技促成社會的改變。2010 年，全世界的年輕人將達到12億人，其中有85％居住在開發中國家。這些年輕人潛能的開發，彼此的互相串連，將帶來社會的重組。

在中研院即將舉辦的工作坊將有16個國家，28 位與會者從微觀家庭到政治的各種脈絡中，來討論「數位原生代回應」的政治、影響與歷程，以及瞭解年輕人如何用科技改變現況，科技如何形塑人與人的新關係。

Pad.ma公共近用數位媒體典藏計畫共同創辦人馬荷卓（Namita A. Malhotra），她同時也是facilitator工作坊引導員。馬荷卓經營數位媒體典藏計畫，她希望透過紀錄片或影片的方式，來紀錄社會變動，也紀錄民眾如何用社會力量來對抗法律、社會跟言論審查。馬荷卓跑過的國家包括泰國、緬甸、印尼、印度等，透過影片紀錄不同國家情況，這次工作坊也會播出其中一部紀錄片。

開拓文教基金會李士傑表示，開拓文教基金會致力於讓資訊科技變成社會改變的關鍵力量，積極推廣全球資訊網給公民社會、非政府組織使用，這次與荷蘭、印度一同舉辦國際數位原生代工作坊，希望分享經營網路論壇，構想民間議題與對話的經驗，這次工作坊結合數位原生代國際浪潮，將國際關注的焦點與支持力量與台灣分享交流。

Pad.ma公共近用數位媒體典藏計畫共同創辦人馬荷卓（Namita A. Malhotra），將在數位原生代工作坊放映關於民眾力量對抗全球的影片。

Read the original in echinanews.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digital-natives-chinese-press

科技改變社會數位原生代掀波

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:22:26Z

The Chinese press published an article on Digital Natives.

8月16日到18日，原生代工作坊（Digital Natives）將在中研院舉辦數位，關注年輕世代如何運用科技改變社會，荷蘭的國際發展組織、印度的網路與社會研究中心，以及台灣關心資訊社會實踐的研究機構與民間組織，將一起探索數位原生代的全球現象。

數位原生代工作坊的主要提問是，為何數位原生代變成理解當代的一個重要的範疇？我們認為什麼樣的人是數位原生代？我們認為數位原生代在浮現的資訊社會中，扮演著什麼樣的角色？我們該如何將科技實踐，整合到我們這個時代的政治關懷中？

年輕世代的力量
荷蘭Hivos人道發展合作組織（the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation）知識計畫召集人史傳密拉（Josine Stremmelaar）表示，Hivos知識計畫的目的，是希望結合在地與全球力量，關注社會與災害議題。

史傳蜜拉認為，過去沒有足夠的知識，讓在地與全球的組織作分享，如果無法處理知識快速流通及傳播，無法面對層出不窮的全球問題。

Hivos數位原生代計畫主持人簡森（Fieke Jansen）指出，全球年輕人運用科技，為社會做出貢獻，有些年輕人運用Facebook串連社會力量，表達年輕人對社會議題的憤怒與重視，她希望藉由工作坊，讓年輕人有更深入的討論，以及為過去行動作整理與分享。

科技與社會的關係
印度網際網路社會中心研究主任尼善‧沙（Nishant Shah），希望透過數位原生代計畫，讓年輕人瞭解自己，認識人際關係，也瞭解自己在社會上的位置。

尼善‧沙認為，數位原生代涵蓋就學的年輕人，也包括進入產官學界的年輕人，不同的領域透過科技促成社會的改變。2010 年，全世界的年輕人將達到12億人，其中有85％居住在開發中國家。這些年輕人潛能的開發，彼此的互相串連，將帶來社會的重組。

在中研院即將舉辦的工作坊將有16個國家，28 位與會者從微觀家庭到政治的各種脈絡中，來討論「數位原生代回應」的政治、影響與歷程，以及瞭解年輕人如何用科技改變現況，科技如何形塑人與人的新關係。

Pad.ma公共近用數位媒體典藏計畫共同創辦人馬荷卓（Namita A. Malhotra），她同時也是facilitator工作坊引導員。馬荷卓經營數位媒體典藏計畫，她希望透過紀錄片或影片的方式，來紀錄社會變動，也紀錄民眾如何用社會力量來對抗法律、社會跟言論審查。馬荷卓跑過的國家包括泰國、緬甸、印尼、印度等，透過影片紀錄不同國家情況，這次工作坊也會播出其中一部紀錄片。

開拓文教基金會李士傑表示，開拓文教基金會致力於讓資訊科技變成社會改變的關鍵力量，積極推廣全球資訊網給公民社會、非政府組織使用，這次與荷蘭、印度一同舉辦國際數位原生代工作坊，希望分享經營網路論壇，構想民間議題與對話的經驗，這次工作坊結合數位原生代國際浪潮，將國際關注的焦點與支持力量與台灣分享交流。

Pad.ma公共近用數位媒體典藏計畫共同創辦人馬荷卓（Namita A. Malhotra），將在數位原生代工作坊放映關於民眾力量對抗全球的影片。

Read the original

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digital-natives-china

Information is Beautiful hacks in India with David Cameron

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:22:51Z

The Prime Minister took some of the UK's top hackers and data experts with him to India this week. David McCandless was with them.

This week, I was lucky enough to accompany UK Prime Minister's delegation to India.

I was part of a small contingent of politically active programmers and civic-minded dataheads out to explore links between tech, transparency and community-based democracy in India. The raw stuff of David Cameron's 'Big Society' initiative.

(To the businessmen, journos and politicos in the delegation, we were known simply as "The Hackers" - an image we played up by sometimes rebelliously removing our ties)

The key event of the trip was a hackday hosted by Google India in the southern central city of Bangalore.

I have to confess a slight colonial attitude going into the meet. Thinking of the UK as a great hacking nation and leading data port, I was expecting to be helping the collected Indian IT professionals and activists improve their skills and give them fresh ideas on how to bootstrap their democracy.

However, our Indian counterparts very quickly astonished us with brilliant and powerful data projects and grass roots hacks using simple tools and technologies to solve everyday civic issues. Some of which I wanted to exhibit here.

Bus Map Hack

Information designer Arun Ganesh was frustrated by the bus maps in his native Chennai.

Chennai's bus map goes from this…

The official map was incomplete and incomprehensible - and had been 'under construction' for six years.

Passionate about maps and geo-mapping, Arun took it upon himself to design a new map to help the enormous number of people (Chennai has a population of over 4 million) who used the buses every day. Unfortunately, he faced a major challenge: over 5,000 separate buses & bus routes.

… to this

So he turned to crowd-sourcing on the web to gather data on all the routes. Local travellers poured timetables and bus details into his app. And in just 3 days he had compiled enough data to create a fresh map with a clean comprehensible design. And an accompanying interactive app BusRoutes.in for painless route planning.

Then he went further. Using the data - and a fair walking distance of 500 metres - he visualised the areas covered by all the bus routes. The resulting heatmap instantly and cleverly reveals which areas of the city are poorly served by the bus network.

Karnataka Learning Partnership

Education is a big issue in India, where close to 35% of the population are illiterate. The Karnataka Learning Partnership works to improve government schools in Karnataka region by running literacy, maths and library-use programs across the southern Indian state.

Karnataka schools monitored

Mashing Googlemaps and their detailed data through a web interface, the Akshara Foundation provides a dynamic monitoring and look up service for the quality of schools in each area. It's not unlike the recently launched SchooloScope here in the UK.

(Please note: the site is in beta and not live yet. You can see their work at blog.klp.org.in.)

National Election Watch

Using information liberated by the 2006 Right to Information Act in India, Nationalelectionwatch.org tracks the backgrounds of every single politician in India. An incredible feat given the enormity and intricacies of Indian democracy.

Over 1200 NGOs work to collect data from affidavits filed by the candidates on their financial, criminal and educational background. The myneta.info website acts as an instant power check on a system unfortunately tainted by widespread corruption and bribery.

The crime-o-meter

Pages on particularly criminal MPs feature a 'crime dial' visualisation to get the message across.

Missed Calls

Despite a thriving tech-sector, India still has relatively low internet uptake. Just 0.05% of the 1.2 billion population are active internet users. Compared to around 40% in the UK and 29% in China.

But nearly half the population own mobile phones. So SMS and missed calls have become a dominant form of free information exchange, especially when ingeniously hacked together.

In a typical hacked service, information providers set up phone numbers. Information seekers phone the number and then immediately hang up, registering a 'missed call'. The information provider then sends them an SMS with the info they might be seeking. Carpenter jobs or internet cafes in the locality, for example.

Ironically, lax privacy protection - by our standards - in the country actually improves this service. While banned here, triangulation of mobile signals to determine the location of a call is freely permitted in India. So services are able to text back localised information. All for free.

Hacktastic!

Thanks to Harry Metcalfe at TellThemWhatYouThink.Org, Tim Green from DemocracyClub.org.uk, Edmund von der Burg at YourNextMp.com, and Pranesh Prakash at the Centre for Internet and Society for their help and input.

Read the original in the Guardian

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/information-beautiful

July 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T09:41:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet & Society. We bring you updates of our research, news and media coverage, information on our events and other updates for the month of July 2010.

News Updates

Call for Case Studies on ICT
CIS invites organisations to participate in a study focusing on best practices in the use of ICTs in education for persons with disabilities.
http://bit.ly/d03jS0

Networking? Not working
Concerns about privacy, wastage of time and trivialized communication are some reasons ‘refuseniks’ are going off sites such as Facebook and MySpace, writes Shreya Ray in Livemint.
http://bit.ly/dpdKhX

Digital them about yourself?
If you’re on Facebook or have a blog, you could be a digital native, says Akhila Seetharaman.
http://bit.ly/ahA6Ts

Next CPOV Conference in Leipzig
Two CPOV conferences have been held so far. The first one in Bangalore and the second one in Amsterdam, the third is to be held in Leipzig.
http://bit.ly/cLN8XE

CIS featured in the Report on Research and Funding Landscape within the Arts and Humanities in India
Centre for Internet and Society has been listed as an area of excellence and innovative research in this report.
http://bit.ly/9GJsJ7

UID Act may be released for debate, may be introduced in monsoon session
An article by Karen Leigh & Surabhi Agarwal in livemint on June 30, 2010.
http://bit.ly/9Hq5dg

A New Age in News
Citizen journalism and online piracy were key topics during the opening day of the Mekong Information and Communication Technology conference. The 2010 Mekong ICT conference in Chang Mai, Thailand, has brought together an experienced crowd of experts from all over the globe. They have gathered to discuss the status, trends and the current situation of the ICT world.
http://bit.ly/bdGzbQ

Activists welcome privacy Bill, but point out concerns
Experts have welcomed the government's move to bring in a law for protecting individual privacy, amid concerns about the potential misuse of personal data it is collecting to execute social welfare and security schemes.
http://bit.ly/bnddaJ

Upcoming Events

Locating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex: A Lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin
The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), IT for Change and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are hosting a lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women's Studies, Miami University, Ohio, USA at CIS, Bangalore on 23 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/9zy2Fa

Promoting Education through ICT
ICT workshop in New Delhi from 27th to 29th October, 2010...Registrations to begin soon!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Research

The Attention Economy - A Brief Introduction
This post examines attention economy as a brief prelude to a paper and monograph to be published on it. It examines the current theses on attention economy and a few approaches to reading attention economy in gaming besides foregrounding the attention economy and its functions and influence in MMORPGs.
http://bit.ly/OP7QFl

The Making of an Asian City
Nishant Shah attended the conference on 'Pluralism in Asia: Asserting Transnational Identities, Politics, and Perspectives' organised by the Asia Scholarship Foundation, in Bangkok, where he presented the final paper based on his work in Shanghai. The paper, titled 'The Making of an Asian City', consolidates the different case studies and stories collected in this blog, in order to make a larger analyses about questions of cultural production, political interventions and the invisible processes that are a part of the IT Cities.
http://bit.ly/MXxyXP

Internet, Society and Space in Indian City: First Report
This is the first report on the progress of the research on Internet, Society and Space in Indian City. The post is a collection of some of the initial focus of these studies. I have started simultaneously exploring and testing various arguments and have listed some key observations from the ones that are nearing completion.
http://bit.ly/Ndmday

Digital Natives Workshop in Taipei: Only a Few Seats Left!!!
The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Frontier Foundation is holding a three day Digital Natives workshop in Taipei from 16 to 18 August, 2010. The three day workshop will serve as an ideal platform for the young users of technology to share their knowledge and experience of the digital and Internet world and help them learn from each other’s individual experiences.
http://bit.ly/P4mCKv

Accessibility

NMEICT Funds Book Conversion Project for the Print Disabled
IIT, Kharagpur, Daisy Forum of India, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands to undertake a project for the print disabled. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) is funding this project.
http://bit.ly/bWHi00

Right to Read: Campaign Updates
A nationwide campaign on Right to Read was co-organised by CIS along with the Daisy Forum of India and Inclusive planet to highlight the lack of content in accessible formats and accelerate change in the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, which presently does not permit the conversion of books in accessible formats for the benefits the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons. The campaign is affiliated with the global R2R campaign started by the World Blind Union in April 2008.
http://bit.ly/akoaSj

Intellectual Property

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
CIS analyses the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, from a public interest perspective to sift the good from the bad, and importantly to point out what crucial amendments should be considered but have not been so far.
http://bit.ly/KLBQDx

A Guide to Key IPR Provisions of the Proposed India-European Union Free Trade Agreement
The Centre for Internet and Society presents a guide for policymakers and other stakeholders to the latest draft of the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement, which likely will be concluded by the end of the year and may hold serious ramifications for Indian businesses and consumers.
http://bit.ly/Rw7whN

Openness

Open Access to International Agricultural Research
Open access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.
http://bit.ly/cspMYY

Telecom

Catching up on broadband
The govt can invest some of the Rs 1,00,000 crore from the spectrum auctions to help India catch up on broadband, says Shyam Ponappa in his latest article published in the Business Standard on July 1, 2010.
http://bit.ly/ag67TU

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2010-bulletin

praskrishna — 2011-08-23T03:25:02Z

In this post the author examines the issue of privacy in light of the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as amended by the Copyright Amendment Bill in 2010. Four key questions are examined in detail and the author gives suitable recommendations for each of the questions that arise.

India's Copyright Act was established in 1857 and was most recently amended in 2010. Although India at present is not a member of WIPO, the provisions in the proposed Bill will work to make the Act WIPO compliant. When looking at privacy in the context of copyright, four key questions arise:

How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian Law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?

Technologies such as digital rights management technologies were developed to be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. DRM technologies pose as a privacy threat, because in their ability to monitor what is happening to a copyrighted work, they are also able to collect personal information and send it back to a host without knowledge of the user. The host is then able to use that data for marketing or commercial purposes. In the Copyright Act, 1957 there are no current provisions against DRM circumvention. In the proposed Copyright Bill 2010 there are two proposed provisions to prevent anti circumvention of DMR technologies, and one provision that clarifies what is a DMR technology.

Proposed Legislation

Section 2 (xa): Defines Rights Management information.
Section 65A : Protection of Technological Measures - Any person who knowingly makes or has in his possession any plate for the purpose of making infringing copies of any work in which copyright subsists shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years. The section includes that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure, shall maintain a complete record of such other persons including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him.
Section 65B: Protection of Rights Management Information – Any person who removes or distributes, copies or broadcasts any rights management information without authority shall be by punishable with imprisonment.

Recommendation

We find that in this provision the privacy of an individual is brought into question, because there are no safeguards against the commercialization of information, and no formal process of redress if an individual discovers that his information is being used without his consent/prior knowledge. We would recommend that it be clearly articulated in the provision that the collection and commercialization of information and personal data is prohibited by DRM technologies and host companies, and a method of redress be put in place.

Under the present copyright does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?

Because DRM technologies often employ the use of spy-ware, it is important that an individual has the ability to know if spy-ware is being used on their computer systems. Currently reverse engineering is permitted under provision 52 (ac). The amended version of provision 52 is less clear on if reverse engineering would be allowed.

Current Legislation

Provision 52 (ac): Certain acts not to be in infringement of copyright include the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programs in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any elements of the program while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer program was supplied. The following acts shall not constitute in infringement of copyright, namely:

Proposed

The proposed amendment reads:

52 (1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyrights, namely:

(i) (a) a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work not being a computer program for the purposes of:

(ii) private use, including research

(iii) Criticism or review, whether of that work or of any other work.

The exclusion of computer program in the proposed bill makes it unclear under what circumstances reverse engineering would be allowed.

Recommendation

We would recommend that for clarity purposes a specific clause be added to the act that details under what circumstances a person is allowed to reverse engineer a product for protection of their own privacy.

How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy?

In India under the current Copyright Act, 1957 there are no provisions for the benefit of disabled persons, thus currently permission from copyright holders needs to be exclusively sought every time the visually challenged person requires access. Under the Constitution of India and the Berne Convention, India has committed to enshrining the rights of the disabled.

Proposed Legislation

The proposed amendment of the Act will grant compulsory license in respect of publication of any copyrighted works not covered by the exception under section 52 (1) (zb).

The Bill also proposes a board that would establish the credentials of the applicant and satisfy itself that the application has been made in good faith. This compromises the anonymity that most individuals enjoy when a disabled person tries to access a digital library.

Recommendation

We recommend that the proposed Bill limits the authentication process a disabled person must go through when accessing digital libraries, etc, and the extent to which records are to be kept of transaction This will serve to protect the anonymity and privacy of disabled persons.

What is On the horizon?

Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

ACTA is a proposed legislation with the objective to combat counterfeiting and piracy. Partners in the negotiations include the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland. The treaty will oblige each Contracting Party to adopt, in accordance with its legal system, the measures necessary to ensure the application of the treaty. Though ACTA has not been enacted, many worry that ACTA would facilitate privacy violations by trademark and copyright holders against private citizens suspected of infringement activities without any sort of legal due process. The Act would allow for random searches of laptops, MP3 players, and cellular phones for illegally downloaded or ripped music and movies.

Recommendation

We find that copyright infringement does not appear to justify a three strike regime or cross border searches. ACTA and other international treaties raise the question that if India became compliant with certain international standards, the standards would be too stringent without safeguards, and pose as a risk to a person’s privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-privacy

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T03:59:50Z

Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), IT for Change, and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.

Internet governance has significant impact on human rights. This is reflected by the inclusion of human rights considerations in the Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Tunis Agenda, which gave the IGF its mandate. However, human rights discussions have not featured prominently at the IGF. What discussions there have been tended to focus on civil and political rights without also sufficiently considering how the internet relates to cultural, social and economic rights. The indivisibility of rights has not received the attention it requires.

The Internet governance and human rights communities work in different spaces and rarely have the opportunity to interact. The presence of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank la Rue at the 2009 IGF and again at the 2010 IGF shows that this is beginning to change. The 2010 IGF presents a valuable opportunity to place human rights more firmly on the Internet governance map and to identify opportunities for collaboration with mainstream human rights communities.

With an increasing emphasis on the development agenda in the IGF it is also a good opportunity to look at the links between human rights, development and the Internet.

Join the conversation with human rights, Internet governance and development activists as we review pressing IG issues such as access, diversity, equality, freedom, openness and development with a view to strengthening the human rights agenda at the IGF.

More concretely, we hope to:

continue building effective collaborations promoting human rights in Internet governance, and,
identify appropriate spaces for intervention in the 2010 IGF.

Agenda:

Moderator: Chad Lubelsky. Global Networking, Policy & Advocacy Coordinator,

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

14:00 Introduction: Background and rationale of the session, aims and objectives. Anriette Esterhuysen (APC)

Keynote speaker : Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

Keynote speaker: Arvind Ganesan, Director or Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch.

14:45 Questions

15:00 Open discussion session on 'Human rights and internet policy: the interconnectedness of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights'. Moderated by Lisa Horner (Global Partners) and Anja Kovacs (the Centre for Internet and Society).

15:40 Coffee/tea break

16:00 Breakout group discussions

16:40 Report Backs

17:00 Plenary discussion on the way forward (Anriette Esterhuysen, APC and Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change)

17:20 Closing remarks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/internet-governance-human-rights

Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet?

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T03:59:34Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet? at the Internet Governance Forum on

Although cyber-utopian visions have long been discredited, the promise that the Internet contains as a tool to work towards democratisation and greater social justice has not yet lost its attraction. This workshop will consider what kind of Internet architecture is needed, what kind of 'openness' and Internet 'freedom' is required to ensure that such visions can actually translate into reality. While the importance of freedom of expression has been fairly widely acknowledged, a concerted approach to many more Internet governance issue is urgently required if those who are at the forefront of struggles for social justice online are to continue to do their important work. The interplay between access to knowledge (including access to information and access to culture) on the one hand and human rights on the other, too, for example, requires our urgent attention.

The aim of this workshop will be, then, to come to a more in-depth and more rounded understanding of what issues impact the democratising potential of the Internet and how exactly they do so, so that we can also start communicating about these with greater clarity. To reach this aim, the workshop will bring together activists, researchers and other stakeholders with expertise on different regions of the world and, consequently, at times diverging opinions on what the problems and solutions with regard to Internet governance are, and will bring them in debate with each other.

The workshop will be organized in a roundtable format in order to increase the involvement of the participants. Initial remarks of the speakers will be followed by debate, and active moderation will ensure that the discussions are dynamic. The issues raised by the speakers will be grouped under several axes, including: (i) Civic empowerment online: towards a new public sphere?; (ii) governmental and private control over information and personal data; (iii) Cases of tension between copyright protection and access to knowledge online. Cases such as the adoption of laws following the three strikes model and the adoption of open data regulations will be taken into consideration.

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?
Security, Openness and Privacy

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? Yes
If so, please provide the link to the report:
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?chronoformname=Workshopsreports2009View&curr=1&wr=94

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:
Civil Society:
Robert Guerra – Freedom House, US
Anja Kovacs – Centre for Internet and Society, India
Kevin Bankston – EFF, US

Academics:
Marília Maciel - Center for Technology and Society - Brazil
Jeremy Malcolm - Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Government:
Johan Hallenborg – Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden
José Murilo Junior – Brazilian Ministry of Culture, Brazil

Business sector:
Alan Davidson – Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs for the Americas
Cornelia Kutterer, Microsoft, Belgium

Multistakeholder initiative:
Susan Morgan, Global Network Initiative

Remote moderator:
Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza - Center for Technology and Society, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil

(A moderator is still to be determined but will be chosen from among the civil society and academic speakers. All speakers have confirmed their participation)

Biographies:
There are no panelists biographies associated to this workshop at the moment.

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:
Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza - Center for Technology and Society, Getulio Vargas Foundation – civil society
Johan Hallenborg, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs - government
Anja Kovacs, Centre for Internet and Society - civil society
Jeremy Malcolm. Consumers International - civil society
Marília Maciel - Center for Technology and Society, Getulio Vargas Foundation – civil society

Organization:Centre for Internet and Society, India, and Center for Technology and Society of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil

Contact Persons: Anja Kovacs and Marília Maciel

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/freedom-of-expression

Centre for Internet and Society

Copyright bill restricts Net access

Under lock without key

Print impaired get short shrift

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act

How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?

Proposed Legislation

Under the copyright, does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?

Current Legislation

How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy?

Proposed Legislation

What is On the Horizon?

Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:

Summary of UID Public Meeting, August 25 2010

The Meeting and Project

The Project

Technological Flaws

Civil Rights

Benefits to the Poor

Response of the Audience

The Opinion of the MPs

Conclusion

Resources from the Meeting

No UID Campaign in New Delhi - A Report

Attentional Capital in Online Gaming : The Currency of Survival

Introduction

Synthetic Worlds

Avatarial Capital, Attentional Capital, and the Repositories of Attention

Markets and Synthetic Worlds

Immersion and Immersive Environments - A Different Perspective

The Segregation of Production - Reading Nakamura and Racial Production

References

August 2010 Bulletin

News Updates

Upcoming Events

Research

Accessibility

Intellectual Property

Internet Governance

Openness

Telecom

First Post-Bilski Decision - Software Patent Rejected

The Bilski Case - Impact on Software Patents

科技改變社會 數位原生代計畫

科技改變社會數位原生代掀波

Information is Beautiful hacks in India with David Cameron

Bus Map Hack

National Election Watch

Missed Calls

July 2010 Bulletin

News Updates

Upcoming Events

Research

Accessibility

Intellectual Property

Openness

Telecom

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as Amended in 2010

How do DRM technologies undermine privacy and what safeguards are present in the Indian Law to protect citizens’ right to privacy?

Proposed Legislation

Recommendation

Under the present copyright does a person have the ability to expose privacy infringement?

Current Legislation

Proposed

Recommendation

How does the proposed exception for the disabled undermine privacy?

Proposed Legislation

Recommendation

What is On the horizon?

Examples of Proposed Legislation: The Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Recommendation

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment

Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet?

科技改變社會數位原生代計畫