The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 81 to 95.
Open Government Data Study
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study
<b>CIS produced a report on the state of open government data in India, looking at policy, infrastructure, and particular case studies, as well as emerging concerns, future strategies and recommendations. The report is authored by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, and Nishant Shah. We are grateful to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for providing generous funding for this report.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>Cross-posted from the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.transparency-initiative.org/reports/open-government-data-study-india">Transparency and Accountability Initiative website</a>.</p>
<h2>Open Government Data Study: India</h2>
<p>India provides one of the most fascinating examples of the use of open government data in a developing country context. It has one of the best right to information laws in the world and the government’s approach to open data builds on this legacy of making open data relevant to Indian citizens. An estimated 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day and a key issue for India, and other developing countries, is how open data can be accessible to them.</p>
<p>This paper reviews the progress being made towards open government data in India. Using case studies, it examines some of the pressing challenges facing the adoption of OGD in India. These include infrastructural problems, privacy concerns and the power imbalances that improved transparency can unwittingly create. It also examines government attitudes towards open data and related policies and reviews the relationships between open government data, the media and civil society.</p>
<p>The authors argue that the Indian Government’s responsibility should not stop short at just providing information, but also extend to making it available and accessible in a way that facilitates analysis and enhances offline usability – and ultimately makes it accessible to the poorest.</p>
<p>The paper concludes by suggesting technical and policy strategies to develop, promote, implement and maintain a robust open government data policy in India.</p>
<p>Download the <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-government.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Open Government Data">report</a> [PDF, 1.03 MB]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-government-data-study</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen DataFeaturedPublicationsOpenness2015-09-03T08:08:22ZBlog EntryThe Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report
https://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india
<b>iCOMMONS, the OPEN VIDEO ALLIANCE, and the CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY have initiated a research project which seeks to survey the online video environment in India and the opportunities this new medium presents for creative expression and civic engagement. This report seeks to define key issues in the Indian context and begins to develop a short-term policy framework to address them.</b>
<p>The basic assumption of this paper is that the online video medium should support creative and technical innovation, competition, and public participation, and that open source technology can help develop these traits. These assumptions are not elaborated upon here. Instead, this report looks at questions of “openness” that are not strictly technological; that are specific to video in India; and that provide points of entry to a simple policy framework.</p>
<p>The paper is organized in the following parts:</p>
<ul><li>The first chapter, <strong>THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF INDIAN VIDEO</strong>, provides a brief historical timeline of events from the first screening of the Lumiere Brothers films in India in 1896, through the beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter traces the traditional channels of dissemination of video content in India, and establishes the close and unique bond that the visual medium has formed with Indian society.</li><li>The second chapter, <strong>DIGITAL MEDIA AND NETWORK TRANSFORMATIONS</strong>, looks at recent media transformations like the rise of the Internet and peer-to-peer networking, the proliferation of telecommunications, and other developments which form the backbone of the emerging online video medium. Peer-to-peer and associative networking provides a new means of content circulation throughout the country.</li><li>The third chapter, <strong>MAPPING CONTENT ON THE INTERNET</strong>, traces the various types of visual content visible over these new networks, exploring case studies of videos circulating on the Internet which have raised new questions of censorship, freedom of speech, and the openness of the medium.</li><li>The fourth chapter, <strong>THE ‘OPEN VIDEO’ QUESTION</strong>, creates a judgment-based framework to assess the openness of the medium. This chapter lays out a series of questions around the broad spectrum of openness, viewed from various perspectives of access, participation, open source technology, and availability, with the intent of mapping the circumstances under which online video operates in India. Moreover, the chapter focuses on the structural limitations to video which can be addressed by policy, or even an absence of policy.</li></ul>
<p><em>Whereas the report consciously makes an effort to explore not only transitory web videos but also films, the terms ‘video’ and ‘film’, in many parts are treated interchangeably. Although films and videos represent different traditional mediums of recording, the interest of this report in examining the ‘online video’ content in India, consists of both types of material—accessed perhaps with little distinction</em>.</p>
<p>The scope of this paper is extremely broad and touches upon a wide variety of issues in India, where each area has a peculiar specificity of its situation—urban or rural, geographic, and so on. Links and references have been provided in the footnotes for background readings of these issues.</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/online-video-india-survey-v1" class="internal-link" title="The Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report">Click here</a> to download the report. [PDF, 1.22 MB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpennessOpen ContentPublicationsOpen Video2011-10-03T09:31:30ZBlog EntryDigital Natives with a Cause? A Report
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-a-report
<b>Youth are often seen as potential agents of change for reshaping their own societies. By 2010, the global youth population is expected reach almost 1.2 billion of which 85% reside in developing countries. Unleashing the potential of even a part of this group in developing countries promises a substantially impact on societies. Especially now when youths thriving on digital technologies flood universities, work forces, and governments and could facilitate radical restructuring of the world we live in. So, it’s time we start listening to them.
</b>
<p>Youth are often seen as potential agents of change for reshaping their own societies. By 2010, the global youth population is expected reach almost 1.2 billion of which 85% reside in developing countries. Unleashing the potential of even a part of this group in developing countries promises a substantially impact on societies. Especially now when youths thriving on digital technologies flood universities, work forces, and governments and could facilitate radical restructuring of the world we live in. So, it’s time we start listening to them.</p>
<p>Download the Digital Natives Report <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/digital-natives-with-a-cause.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-a-report'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digital-natives-with-a-cause-a-report</a>
</p>
No publisherpushpaPublicationsDigital Natives2012-01-03T10:28:41ZBlog EntryDigital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers
<b>The Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon conference co-organised by Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society is being held from 6 to 8 December at the Hague Museum for Communication. The position papers are now available online.</b>
<p>The emergence of digital and Internet technologies have changed the world as we know it. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are all undergoing a significant translation, across the world, in developed and emerging Information and Knowledge societies. These processes also affect the ways in which social transformation, political participation and interventions for development take place.</p>
<p>The Digital Natives with a Cause? research inquiry seeks to look at the potentials of social change and political participation through technology practices of people in emerging ICT contexts. It particularly aims to address knowledge gaps that exist in the scholarship, practice and popular discourse around an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital and Internet technologies in social transformation processes.</p>
<p>The programme has three main components. The first is to incorporate the users (often young, but not always so) as stakeholders in the construction of policies and discourse which affect their lives in very material ways. The second is to capture, with a special emphasis on change, different relationships with and deployment of technologies in different parts of the world. The third is to further extend the network of knowledge stakeholders where scholars,practitioners, policy makers and the Digital Natives themselves, come together in dialogue to identify the needs and interventions in this field.</p>
<p>In the late summer of 2010 two workshops, in Taiwan and South Africa, brought together 50 Digital Natives from Asia and Africa to place their practice in larger social and political legacies and frameworks. The ‘<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/talkingback/?searchterm=talking%20back" class="external-link">Talking Back</a>’ workshop in Taiwan looked at the politics, implications and processes of talking back and being political and the ‘<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/my-bubble-my-space-my-voice-workshop-perspective-and-future" class="external-link">My Bubble, My Voice and My Space</a>’ workshop in Johannesburg looked at change, change processes and the role of Digital Natives in it.</p>
<p>For the Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon that will be held in The Hague, The Netherlands from 6 to 8 December 2010, Digital Natives from the workshops in Taipei and Johannesburg have provided us with their take on social change and political participation in the following position papers. They look at issues of: what does it mean to be a Digital Native? What is the relationship of people growing up with new technologies and change? What are the processes by which change is produced? Can you institutionalize Digital Natives with a Cause Activities? How do you make it sustainable in each context?</p>
<p>We hope you will find the Digital Natives with a Cause? position papers inspiring, thought-provoking and challenging.</p>
<p><img alt="" /> Download the position papers <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/position-papers.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Thinkathon Position Papers">here </a>[PDF, 1173 KB] <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/position-papers.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Thinkathon Position Papers"><br /></a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/position-papers</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsDigital NativesFeaturedPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-05-15T11:34:35ZBlog Entrye-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-handbook
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society is proud to announce the launch of its first publication, the “e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities" in collaboration with the G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Information Communication Technologies) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and sponsored by the Hans Foundation. The handbook is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union has written the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D has written the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict has written the foreword.
</b>
<p>The book is based on the online e-accessibility toolkit for policy makers (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/">www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org</a>) which was released by G3ict and ITU in February 2010. The book has contributions from over 60 experts around the world on ICT accessibility and is a most valuable addition to policy makers and regulators, advocacy and research organisations and persons with disabilities on the implementation of the ICT dispositions of the UNCRPD. We wish to express our sincere appreciation to all the contributors, G3ict and the ITU for making this possible.</p>
<p>The handbook was released by Smt.Vibha Puri Das, Secretary, Dept of Higher Education, Ministry of HRD at the International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT held from 27 to 30 October 2010 in New Delhi. The printed book comes with a CD containing its daisy version. It is divided into four chapters:</p>
<ol>
<li>The Accessibility Imperative</li>
<li>Policies and Programs</li>
<li>Solutions that Work</li>
<li>Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective</li>
<li>Appendix A: Accessibility Policy Comparison Grid </li>
</ol>
<p>Also there are two appendices:</p>
<ol>
<li>Appendix A: Accessibility Policy Comparison Grid</li>
<li>Appendix B: Online Toolkit Site Map</li>
</ol>
<p>The topics mainly focus on:</p>
<ul>
<li>What is ICT accessibility?</li>
<li>What the CRPD says about ICT accessibility</li>
<li>How to best assess disability demographics and the impact of ICT barriers</li>
<li>Identifying ICT accessibility legislative, regulatory, policy and programs gaps versus CRPD guidelines and mandates</li>
<li>Engaging Disabled Persons Organizations and other key stakeholders in policy making </li>
<li>Policy development by area</li>
<li>Setting standards</li>
<li>Public procurement</li>
<li>Promoting assistive technologies</li>
<li>Promoting accessible product development & Universal Design</li>
<li>International cooperation</li>
<li>Wireless phones</li>
<li>Radios</li>
<li>Television</li>
<li>Remote consoles</li>
<li>Landline phones</li>
<li>Websites</li>
<li>Personal computers</li>
<li>Software</li>
<li>Electronic kiosks</li>
<li>Broadband services</li>
<li>Country analysis:</li>
<li>United States of America</li>
<li>United Kingdom</li>
<li>Australia</li>
<li>Germany</li>
<li>Portugal</li>
<li>New Zealand</li>
<li>Canada</li>
<li>Ireland</li>
<li>Italy</li>
<li>Sweden</li>
<li>European Union</li>
<li>Japan</li>
<li>Korea</li>
<li>Developing countries</li>
<li>Summary </li>
</ul>
<p>The publication of this book would not have been possible without the generous support of The Hans Foundation, to whom we would like to express our sincere thanks. We trust that readers will find this book most useful in their accessibility work.</p>
<p>The complete version of the book is available in pdf and daisy formats. These can be downloaded by clicking on the links below:</p>
<ul>
<li>e-Accessibility Policy Handbook: <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/e-accessibility" class="internal-link" title="e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities">PDF</a></li>
<li>e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities: <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/daisy-format" class="internal-link" title="e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities - Daisy">Daisy Format </a></li>
</ul>
<p><b> Note</b>: Daisy users can read the book in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.daisy.org/projects/amis/downloads/Setup-amis31-U.S.English.exe">Amis</a> or <a class="external-link" href="http://emerson-reader.googlecode.com/files/emerson-win32-x86-0.6.3.msi">Emerson</a></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities: <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/e-accessibility-braille" class="internal-link" title="e-Accessibility Policy Handbook (Braille)">Braille File</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-handbook'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-handbook</a>
</p>
No publishernirmitaAccessibilityPublications2013-07-30T08:29:06ZBlog EntryAnalysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis
<b>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.</b>
<p>
The full submission that CIS and 21 other civil society organizations made to the Rajya Sabha Standing Committee on HRD (which is studying the Bill) is <a title="Copyright Bill Analysis" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/upload/copyright-bill-submission">available here</a>. Given below is the summary of our submissions:</p>
<h2 class="western">Existing Copyright Act</h2>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The Indian Copyright
Act, 1957 has been designed from the perspective of a developing
country. It has always attempted a balance between various kinds of
interests. It has always sought to ensure that rights of authors of
creative works is carefully promoted alongside the public interest
served by wide availability and usability of that material. For
instance, our Copyright Act has provisions for: </p>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">compulsory and
statutory licensing: recognizing its importance in making works
available, especially making them available at an affordable rate.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">cover versions:
recognizing that more players lead to a more vibrant music industry.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY">widely-worded
right of fair dealing for private use: recognizing that individual
use and large-scale commercial misuse are different.</p>
</li></ul>
<p align="JUSTIFY">These provisions of
our Act <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/watchlist/report/india">have been lauded</a>,<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="#sdfootnote1sym"></a></sup>
and India has been rated as <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/summary-report-2010">the most balanced copyright system in a
global survey</a><sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote2anc" href="#sdfootnote2sym"></a></sup>
conducted of over 34 countries by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.consumersinternational.org/">Consumers International</a><sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote3anc" href="#sdfootnote3sym"></a></sup>.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The Indian Parliament
has always sought to be responsive to changing technologies by paying
heed to both the democratisation of access as well as the securing of
the interests of copyright holders. This approach needs to be lauded,
and importantly, needs to be maintained.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><br /></p>
<h2 class="western">Proposed Amendments</h2>
<h3 class="western">Some positive amendments</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Fair
Dealings, Parallel Importation, Non-commercial Rental</strong>: All works
(including sound recordings and cinematograph films) are now covered
the fair dealings clause (except computer programmes), and a few
other exceptions; parallel importation is now clearly allowed; and
non-commercial rental has become a limitation in some cases.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Persons with
disabilities</strong>: There is finally an attempt at addressing the
concerns of persons with disabilities. But the provisions are
completely useless the way they are currently worded.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Public
Libraries</strong>: They can now make electronic copies of works they
own, and some other beneficial changes relating to public libraries.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Education</strong>:
Some exceptions related to education have been broadened (scope of
works, & scope of use).</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Statutory and
compulsory licensing</strong>: Some new statutory licensing provisions
(including for radio broadcasting) and some streamlining of existing
compulsory licensing provisions.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Copyright
societies</strong>: These are now responsible to authors and not owners
of works.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Open
licences</strong>: Free and Open Source Software and Open Content
licensing is now simpler.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Partial
exemption of online intermediaries</strong>:
Transient and incidental storage of copyrighted works has
been excepted, mostly for the benefit of online intermediaries.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Performer’s
rights</strong>: The general, and confusing, exclusive right that
performers had to communicate their performance to the public has
been removed, and instead only the exclusive right to communicate
sound/video recordings remains.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Enforcement</strong>:
Provisions on border measures have been made better, and less prone
to abuse and prevention of legitimate trade.</p>
</li></ul>
<h3 class="western"><br /></h3>
<h3 class="western">Some negative amendments</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>WCT and WPPT
compliance</strong>: India has not signed either of these two treaties,
which impose TRIPS-plus copyright protection, but without any
corresponding increase in fair dealing / fair use rights.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Increase in
duration of copyright</strong>: This will significantly reduce the public
domain, which India has been arguing for internationally.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Technological
Protection Measures</strong>: TPMs, which have been shown to be
anti-consumer in all countries in which they have been introduced,
are sought to be brought into Indian law.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Version
recordings</strong>: The amendments make cover version much more
difficult to produce.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Moral rights</strong>:
Changes have been made to author’s moral rights (and performer’s
moral rights have been introduced) but these have been made without
requisite safeguards.</p>
</li></ul>
<h3 class="western"><br /></h3>
<h3 class="western">Missed opportunities</h3>
<ul><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Government-funded
works</strong>: Taxpayers are still not free to use works that were paid
for by them. This goes against the direction that India has elected
to march towards with the Right to Information Act.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Copyright
terms</strong>: The duration of all copyrights are above the minimum
required by our international obligations, thus decreasing the
public domain which is crucial for all scientific and cultural
progress.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Criminal
provisions</strong>: Our law still criminalises individual,
non-commercial copyright infringement.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Libraries and
archives</strong>: The exceptions for ‘public libraries’ are still
too narrow in what they perceive as ‘public libraries’.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Educational
exceptions</strong>: The exceptions for education still do not fully
embrace distance and digital education.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Communication
to the public</strong>: No clear definition is given of what constitute a
‘public’, and no distinction is drawn between commercial and
non-commercial ‘public’ communication.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Internet
intermediaries</strong>: More protections are required to be granted to
Internet intermediaries to ensure that non-market based
peer-production projects such as Wikipedia, and other forms of
social media and grassroots innovation are not stifled.</p>
</li><li>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>Fair dealing
and fair use</strong>: We would benefit greatly if, apart from the
specific exceptions provided for in the Act, more general guidelines
were also provided as to what do not constitute infringement. This
would not take away from the existing exceptions.</p>
</li></ul>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/copyright-bill-analysis</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeConsumer RightsCopyrightFair DealingsPublic AccountabilityIntellectual Property RightsRTIFeaturedBroadcastingPublicationsSubmissionsTechnological Protection Measures2011-09-21T06:01:54ZBlog EntryA Guide to Key IPR Provisions of the Proposed India-European Union Free Trade Agreement
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-guide-to-the-proposed-india-european-union-free-trade-agreement
<b>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. </b>
<div class="visualClear">In its ongoing negotiation for a FTA with the EU, a process that began in 2007 and is expected to end sometime this year, India has won several signicant IP-related concessions. But there remain several IP issues critical to the maintenance of its developing economy, including its robust entrepreneurial environment, that India should contest further before ratifying the treaty. This guide covers the FTA's IP provisions that are within the scope of CIS' policy agenda and on which India has negotiated favorable language, as well as those provisions that it should re-negotiate or oppose.</div>
<div class="visualClear"> </div>
<div class="visualClear">Download the guide <a title="A Guide to the Proposed India-European Union FTA" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/a2k/publications/CIS%20Open%20Data%20Case%20Studies%20Proposal.pdf">here</a>, and please feel free to comment below.</div>
<div class="visualClear"> </div>
<div class="visualClear">You may also download a <a title="India-EU FTA TRIPS Comparison Chart" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/upload/India-EU_FTA_Chart.odt">chart</a> comparing the language proposed by India and the EU respectively with that included in the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).</div>
<div class="visualClear"> </div>
<div class="visualClear">Following is a summary of CIS' findings:</div>
<div class="visualClear"> </div>
<div class="visualClear">
<div class="visualClear">
<ul><li>India has become a de facto leader of developing countries at the WTO, and an India-EU FTA seems likely to provide a model for FTAs between developed and developing states well into the future.</li><li>The EU has proposed articles on reproduction, communication, and broadcasting rights which could seriously undermine India's authority to regulate the use of works under copyright as currently provided for in the Berne Convention, as well as narrowing exceptions and limitations to rights under copyright.</li><li>The EU asserts that copyright includes "copyright in computer programs and in databases," without indicating whether such copyright exceeds that provided for in the Berne Convention. Moreover, by asserting that copyright "includes copyright in computer programs and in databases," the EU has left open the door for the extension of copyright to non-original databases.</li><li>India should explicitly obligate the EU to promote and encourage technology transfer -- an obligation compatible with and derived from TRIPS -- as well as propose a clear definition of technology transfer.</li><li>The EU has demanded India's accession to the WIPO Internet Treaties, the merits of which are currently under debate as India moves towards amending its Copyright Act, as well as several other international treaties that India either does not explicitly enforce or to which it is not a contracting party.</li><li>In general, the EU's provisions would extend terms of protection for material under copyright, within certain constraints, further endangering India's consumer-friendly copyright regime.</li><li>An agreement to establish arrangements between national organizations charged with collecting and distributing royalty payments may obligate such organizations in India collect royalty payments for EU rights holders on the same basis as they do for Indian rights holders, and vice versa in the EU, but more heavily burden India.</li><li>The EU has proposed a series of radical provisions on the enforcement of IPRs that are tailored almost exclusively to serve the interests of rights holders, at the expense of providing safety mechanisms for those accused of infringing or enabling infringers. </li><li>The EU has proposed, under cover of protecting intermediate service providers from liability for infringement by their users, to increase and/or place the burden on such providers of policing user activity.</li></ul>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-guide-to-the-proposed-india-european-union-free-trade-agreement'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/a-guide-to-the-proposed-india-european-union-free-trade-agreement</a>
</p>
No publishergloverDevelopmentConsumer RightsCopyrightAccess to KnowledgeDiscussionEconomicsAnalysisTechnological Protection MeasuresIntermediary LiabilityinnovationIntellectual Property RightsPatentsPublications2011-08-30T13:06:03ZBlog EntryThe 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301
<b>Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.</b>
<h1>Special 301 Report: Unbalanced Hypocrisy</h1>
<p>The United States Trade Representative has put yet another edition of the Special 301 report which details the copyright law and policy wrongdoings of the US's trading partners. Jeremy Malcolm of Consumers International notes that the report this year claims to be "well-balanced assessment of intellectual property protection and enforcement ... taking into account diverse factors", but:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[I]n fact, the report largely continues to be very one-sided. As in previous editions, it lambasts developing countries for failing to meet unrealistically stringent standards of IP protection that exceed their obligations under international law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More the report changes, <a href="http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/consumers-international-ip-watch-list-2009">the more it stays the same</a>. <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4684/195/">Despite having wider consultations</a> than just the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA, consisting of US-based IP-maximalist lobbyists like the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, National Music Publishers Association, Association of American Publishers, and Business Software Alliance) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA, consisting of US-based pharma multinationals), things haven't really changed much in terms of the shoddiness of the Special 301 report.</p>
<h1>India and the 2010 Special 301 Report</h1>
<p>The Special 301 report for 2010 contains the following assessment of India:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>India will remain on the Priority Watch List in 2010. India continues to make gradual progress on efforts to improve its legislative, administrative, and enforcement infrastructure for IPR. India has made incremental improvements on enforcement, and its IP offices continued to pursue promising modernization efforts. Among other steps, the United States is encouraged by the Indian government’s consideration of possible trademark law amendments that would facilitate India’s accession to the Madrid Protocol. The United States encourages the continuation of efforts to reduce patent application backlogs and streamline patent opposition proceedings. Some industries report improved engagement and commitment from enforcement officials on key enforcement challenges such as optical disc and book piracy. However, concerns remain over India’s inadequate legal framework and ineffective enforcement. Piracy and counterfeiting, including the counterfeiting of medicines, remains widespread and India’s enforcement regime remains ineffective at addressing this problem. Amendments are needed to bring India’s copyright law in line with international standards, including by implementing the provisions of the WIPO Internet Treaties. Additionally, a law designed to address the unauthorized manufacture and distribution of optical discs remains in draft form and should be enacted in the near term. The United States continues to urge India to improve its IPR regime by providing stronger protection for patents. One concern in this regard is a provision in India’s Patent Law that prohibits patents on certain chemical forms absent a showing of increased efficacy. While the full import of this provision remains unclear, it appears to limit the patentability of potentially beneficial innovations, such as temperature-stable forms of a drug or new means of drug delivery. The United States also encourages India to provide protection against unfair commercial use, as well as unauthorized disclosure, of undisclosed test or other data generated to obtain marketing approval for pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical products. The United States encourages India to improve its criminal enforcement regime by providing for expeditious judicial disposition of IPR infringement cases as well as deterrent sentences, and to change the perception that IPR offenses are low priority crimes. The United States urges India to strengthen its IPR regime and will continue to work with India on these issues in the coming year. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This short dismissal of the Indian IPR regime, and subsequent classification of India as a "Priority Watch List" country reveals the great many problems with the Special 301.</p>
<h2>On Copyrights</h2>
<ol>
<li>
<p>The report notes that there are "concerns over India's inadequate legal framework and ineffective enforcement". However, nowhere does it bother to point out precisely <em>how</em> India's legal framework is inadequate, and how this is negatively affecting authors and creators, consumers, or even the industry groups (MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc.) that give input to the USTR via the IPAA. Nor does it acknowledge the well-publicised fact that the statistics put out by these bodies have time and again <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates">proven to be wrong</a>:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Apart from this bald allegation which has not backing, there is a bald statement about India needing to bring its copyright law "in line with international standards" including "the WIPO Internet Treaties". The WIPO Internet Treaties given that more than half the countries of the world are not signatories to either of the WIPO Internet Treaties (namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty), calling them 'international standards' is suspect. That apart, both those treaties are TRIPS-plus treaties (requiring protections greater than the already-high standards of the TRIPS Agreement). India has not signed either of them. It should not be obligated to do so. Indeed, Ruth Okediji, a noted copyright scholar, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1433848">states</a>:</p>
</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Consistent with their predecessors, the WIPO Internet Treaties marginalize collaborative forms of creative engagement with which citizens in the global South have long identified and continue in the tradition of assuming that copyright’s most enduring cannons are culturally neutral. [...] The Treaties do not provide a meaningful basis for a harmonized approach to encourage new creative forms in much the same way the Berne Convention fell short of embracing diversity in patterns and modes of authorial expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Some of the of the 'problems' noted in the report are actually seen as being beneficial by many researchers and scholars such as Lawrence Liang, Achal Prabhala, Perihan Abou Zeid <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/iipenforcement/bibliography">and others</a>, who argue that <a href="http://www.altlawforum.org/intellectual-property/publications/articles-on-the-social-life-of-media-piracy/reconsidering-the-pirate-nation">lax enforcement has enabled access to knowledge and promotion of innovation</a>. In a panel on 'Access to Knowledge' at the Internet Governance Forum, <a href="http://a2knetwork.org/access-knowledge-internet-governance-forum">Lea Shaver, Jeremy Malcolm and others</a> who have been involved in that Access to Knowledge movement noted that lack of strict enforcement played a positive role in many developing countries. However, they also noted, with a fair bit of trepidation, that this was sought to be changed at the international level through treaties such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Agreement (ACTA).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The scope of an optical disc law are quite different from copyright law. The report condemns "unauthorized manufacture and distribution of optical discs", however it does not make it clear that what it is talking about is not just unlicensed copying of films (which is already prohibited under the Copyright Act) but the manufacture and distribution of blank CDs and DVDs as well. The need for such a law is assumed, but never demonstrated. It is onerous for CD and DVD manufacturers (such as the Indian company Moserbaer), and is an overbearing means of attacking piracy.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The report calls for "improve[ment] [of India's] criminal enforcement regime" and for "deterrent" sentences and expeditious judicial disposition of IPR infringement cases. While we agree with the last suggestion, the first two are most unacceptable. Increased criminal enforcement of a what is essentially a private monopoly right is undesirable. Copyright infringment on non-commercial scales should not be criminal offences at all. What would deter people from infringing copyright laws are not "deterrent sentences" but more convenient and affordable access to the copyright work being infringed.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<h2>On Patents</h2>
<p>Thankfully, this year the Special 301 report does not criticise the Indian Patent Act for providing for post-grant opposition to patent filings, as it has in previous years. However, it still criticises section 3(d) of the Patent Act which ensures that 'evergreening' of drug patents is not allowed by requiring for new forms of known substances to be patented only if "the enhancement of the known efficacy of [the known] substance" is shown. Thus, the US wishes India to change its domestic law to enable large pharma companies to patent new forms of known substances that aren't even better ("enhancement of the known efficacy"). For instance, "new means of drug delivery" will not, contrary to the assertions of the Special 301 report and the worries of PhRMA, be deemed unpatentable.</p>
<p>The United States has been going through much turmoil over its patent system. Reform of the patent system is currently underway in the US through administrative means, judicial means, as well as legislative means. One of the main reasons for this crumbling of the patent system has been the low bar for patentability (most notably the 'obviousness' test) in the United States and the subsequent over-patenting. An <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/us/447/303/case.html">American judgment</a> even noted that "anything under the sun that is made by man" is patentable subject matter. It is well-nigh impossible to take American concerns regarding our high patent standards seriously, given this context.</p>
<h2>Miscellanea</h2>
<p>The harms of counterfeit medicine, as <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates">we have noted earlier</a>, are separate issues that are best dealt under health safety regulations and consumer laws, rather than trademark law.</p>
<p>Data exclusivity has been noted to be harmful to the progress of generics, and seeks to extend proprietary rights over government-mandated test data. It is [clear from the TRIPS Agreement][de-trips] that data exclusivity is not mandatory. There are clear rationale against it, and the Indian pharmaceutical industry [is dead-set against it][de-india]. Still, the United States Trade Representative persists in acting as a corporate shill, calling on countries such as India to implement such detrimental laws.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Michael Geist, professor at University of Ottowa <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4997/125">astutely notes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Looking beyond just Canada, the list [of countries condemned by the Special 301 report] is so large, that it is rendered meaningless. According to the report, approximately 4.3 billion people live in countries without effective intellectual property protection. Since the report does not include any African countries outside of North Africa, the U.S. is effectively saying that only a small percentage of the world meet its standard for IP protection. Canada is not outlier, it's in good company with the fastest growing economies in the world (the BRIC countries are there) and European countries like Norway, Italy, and Spain.
In other words, the embarrassment is not Canadian law. Rather, the embarrassment falls on the U.S. for promoting this bullying exercise and on the Canadian copyright lobby groups who seemingly welcome the chance to criticize their own country. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His comments apply equally well for India as well.</p>
<h1>IIPA's Recommendation for the Special 301 Report</h1>
<p>Thankfully, this year <a href="http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2010/2010SPEC301INDIA.pdf">IIPA's recommendations</a> have not been directly copied into the Special 301 report. (They couldn't be incorporated, as seen below.) For instance, the IIPA report notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The industry is also concerned about moves by the government to consider mandating the use of open source software and software of only domestic origin. Though such policies have not yet been implemented, IIPA and BSA urge that this area be carefully monitored.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Breaking that into two bit:</p>
<h2>Open Source</h2>
<p>Firstly, it is curious to see industry object to legal non-pirated software. Secondly, many of BSA's members (if not most) use open source software, and a great many of them also produce open source software. <a href="http://hp.sourceforge.net/">HP</a> and <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/">IBM</a> have been huge supporters of open source software. Even <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/">Microsoft has an open source software division</a>. [Intel][intel], <a href="http://www.sap.com/usa/about/newsroom/press.epx?pressid=11410">SAP</a>, <a href="http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/open_source/index.html">Cisco</a>, <a href="http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml">Dell</a>, <a href="http://www.sybase.com/developer/opensource">Sybase</a>, <a href="http://www.entrust.com/news/index.php?s=43&item=702">Entrust</a>, <a href="http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/articles/2009/IntuitPartnerPlatformAddsOpenSourceCommunity.html">Intuit</a>, <a href="http://www.synopsys.com/community/interoperability/pages/libertylibmodel.aspx">Synopsys</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/opensource/">Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/22/jbuilder_eclipse/">Borland</a>, <a href="http://w2.cadence.com/webforms/squeak/">Cadence</a>, <a href="http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=6153839">Autodesk</a>, and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9967593-16.html">Siemens</a> are all members of BSA which support open source software / produce at least some open source software. And <em>all</em> BSA members rely on open source software (as part of their core products, their web-server, their content management system, etc.) to a lesser or greater extent. BSA's left hand doesn't seem to know what its right hand -- its members -- are doing. Indeed, the IIPA does not seem to realise that the United States' government itself uses [open source software], and has been urged to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7841486.stm">look at FOSS very seriously</a> and is doing so, especially under CIO Vivek Kundra. And that may well be the reason why the USTR could not include this cautionary message in the Special 301 report.</p>
<h2>Domestic Software</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/indias-copyright-proposals-are-un-american-and-thats-bad.ars">this insightful article by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica</a> notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Open source is bad enough, but a "buy Indian" law? That would be <a href="http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/sell2usgov-vendreaugouvusa/procurement-marches/buyamerica.aspx?lang=eng">an outrage</a> and surely something the US government would not itself engage in <a href="http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/sell2usgov-vendreaugouvusa/procurement-marches/ARRA.aspx?lang=eng">as recently as last year</a>. Err, right?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, the IIPA submission do not provide any reference for their claim that "domestic origin" software is being thought of being made a mandatory requirement in governmental software procurement.<br />
</p>
<h2>WCT, WPPT, Camcording, and Statutory Damages</h2>
<p>The IIPA submission also wish that India would:</p>
<ol>
<li>Adopt a system of statutory damages in civil cases; allow compensation to be awarded in criminal cases;</li>
<li>Adopt an optical disc law;</li>
<li>Enact Copyright Law amendments consistent with the WCT and WPPT;</li>
<li>Adopt an anti-camcording criminal provision.</li>
</ol>
<p>Quick counters:</p>
<ol>
<li>Statutory damages (that is, an amount based on statute rather than actual loss) would result in ridiculousness such as the $1.92 million damages that the jury (based on the statutory damages) slapped on Jammie Thomas. The judge in that case <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/judge-slashes-monstrous-jammie-thomas-p2p-award-by-35x.ars">called the damage award</a> "monstrous and shocking" and said that veered into "the realm of gross injustice."</li>
<li>The reasons against an optical disc law are given above. Quick recap: it is a) unnecessary and b) harmful.</li>
<li>India has not signed the WCT and the WPPT. Indian law satisfies all our international obligations. Thus enacting amendments consistent with the WCT and the WPPT is not required.</li>
<li>Camcording of a film is in any case a violation of the Copyright Act, 1957, and one would be hard-pressed to find a single theatre that allows for / does not prohibit camcorders. Given this, the reason for an additional law is, quite frankly, puzzling. At any rate, IIPA in its submission does not go into such nuances.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Further conclusions</h2>
<p><a href="http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-special-301-report-and-not-so.html">Shamnad Basheer</a>, an IP professor at NUJS, offer the following as a response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Dear USA,</p>
<p>India encourages you to mind your own business. We respect your sovereignty to frame IP laws according to your national priorities and suggest that you show us the same courtesy. If your grouse is that we haven't complied with TRIPS, please feel free to take us to the WTO dispute panel. Our guess is that panel members familiar with the English language will ultimately inform you that section 3(d) is perfectly compatible with TRIPS. And that Article 39.3 does not mandate pharmaceutical data exclusivity, as you suggest!
More importantly, at that point, we might even think of hauling you up before the very same body for rampant violations, including your refusal to grant TRIPS mandated copyright protection to our record companies, despite a WTO ruling (Irish music case) against you.</p>
<p>Yours sincerely,</p>
<p>India."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Basheer's suggestion seems to be in line with that Michael Geist who believes that other countries should join Canada and Israel in openly refusing to acknowledge the validity of the Special 301 Reports because they lack ['reliable and objective analysis'][geist-reliable]. And that thought serves as a good coda.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshDevelopmentConsumer RightsAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightPiracyAccess to MedicineIntellectual Property RightsData ProtectionFLOSSTechnological Protection MeasuresPublications2011-10-03T05:37:27ZBlog EntryExceptions and Limitations in Indian Copyright Law for Education: An Assessment
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/exceptions-and-limitations
<b>This paper examines the nature of exceptions and limitations in copyright law for the purposes of the use of copyrighted materials for education. It looks at the existing national and international regime, and argues for why there is a need for greater exceptions and limitations to address the needs of developing countries. The paper contextualizes the debate by looking at the high costs of learning materials and the impediment caused to e-learning and distance education by strong copyright regimes. </b>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/exceptions-limitations-education" class="internal-link" title="Exceptions and Limitations for Education">Dowload the pdf</a></p>
<p>Read the original article in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bepress.com/ldr/vol3/iss2/art7/">Law and Development Review</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/exceptions-and-limitations'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/exceptions-and-limitations</a>
</p>
No publisherlawrenceIntellectual Property RightsPublications2011-10-20T14:08:01ZBlog EntryTechnological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment
<b>In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.</b>
<p><a href="http://www.wipo.int/enforcement/en/faq/technological/faq03.html">Technological Protection Measures</a> are sought to be introduced in India via the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010. This should be quite alarming for consumers for reasons that will be explained in a separate blog post on TPMs that will follow shortly.</p>
<p>In this post, I will restrict myself to a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Bill, which talks of "protection of technological measures". (Section 65B, which talks of Right Management Information will, similarly, be tackled in a later blog post.)</p>
<p>First off, this provision is quite unnecessary. There has been no public demand in India for TPMs to be introduced, and the pressure has come mostly from the United States in the form of the annual "Special 301" report prepared by the United States Trade Representative with input coming (often copied verbatim) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. India is not a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) which requires technological protection measures be safeguarded by law. That provision, interestingly, was pushed for by the United States in 1996 when even it did not give legal sanctity to TPMs via its copyright law (which was amended in 2000 by citing the need to comply with the WCT).</p>
<p>TPMs have been roundly criticised, have been shown to be harmful for consumers, creators, and publishers, and there is also evidence that TPMs do not really decrease copyright infringement (but instead, quite perversely through unintended consequences, end up increasing it). Why then would India wish to introduce it?</p>
<p>Leaving that question aside for now, what does the proposed law itself say?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>65A. Protection of Technological Measures </p>
<p> (1) Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.</p>
<p> (2) Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from:</p>
<p> (a) doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act:</p>
<p> Provided that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure for such a purpose shall maintain a complete record of such other person including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him and the purpose for which he has been facilitated; or</p>
<p> (b) doing anything necessary to conduct encryption research using a lawfully obtained encrypted copy; or</p>
<p> (c) conducting any lawful investigation; or</p>
<p> (d) doing anything necessary for the purpose of testing the security of a computer system or a computer network with the authorisation of its owner; or</p>
<p> (e) operator; or [<em>sic</em>]</p>
<p> (f) doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user; or</p>
<p> (g) taking measures necessary in the interest of national security.</p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Implications: The Good Part</h1>
<p>This provision clearly takes care of two of the major problems with the way TPMs have been implemented by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) it aligns the protection offered by TPMs to that offered by copyright law itself (since it has to be "applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act"). Thus, presumably, TPMs could not be used to restrict <em>access</em>, only to restrict copying, communication to the public, and that gamut of rights.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) and 65A(2) it aligns the exceptions granted by copyright law with the exceptions to the TPM provision. Section 65A(1) states that the act of circumvention has to be done "with the intention of infringing ... rights", and s.52(1) clearly states that those exceptions cannot be regarded as infringement of copyright. And s.65A(2)(a) states that circumventing for "a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act" will be allowed.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>A third important difference from the DMCA is that</p>
<ul>
<li>It does not criminalise the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools (including code, devices, etc.). (More on this below.)</li>
</ul>
<h1>Implications: The Bad Part</h1>
<p>This provision, despite the seeming fair-handed manner in which it has been drafted, still fails to maintain the balance that copyright seeks to promote:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>TPM-placers (presumably, just copyright holders, because of point 1. above) have been given the ability to restrict the activities of consumers, but they have not been given any corresponding duties. Thus, copyright holders do not have to do anything to ensure that the Film & Telivision Institute of India professor who wishes to use a video clip from a Blu-Ray disc can actually do so. Or that the blind student who wishes to circumvent TPMs because she has no other way of making it work with her screen reader is actually enabled to take advantage of the leeway the law seeks to provide her through s.52(1)(a) (s.52(1)(zb) is another matter!). Thus, while there are many such exceptions that the law allows for, the technological locks themselves prevent the use of those exceptions. Another way of putting that would be to say:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Bill presumes that every one has access to all circumvention technology. This is simply not true. In fact, Spanish law (in <a href="http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/rdleg1-1996.l3t5.html">Article 161 of their law</a>) expressly requires that copyright holders facilitate access to works protected by TPM to beneficiaries of limitations of copyright. Thus, copyright holders who employ TPMs should be required to:</p>
<ul>
<li>tell their customers how they can be contacted if the customer wishes to circumvent the TPM for a legitimate purpose</li>
<li>upon being contacted, aid their customer in making use of their rights / the exceptions and limitations in copyright law</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>How seriously can you take a Bill that has been introduced in Parliament that includes a provision that states: "Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from operator; or" (as s.65A(2)(e), read in its entirety, does)?</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Uncertainties</h1>
<p>As mentioned above, the provisions are not all that clear regarding manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools. Thus, the proviso to s.65A(2)(a) deserves a closer reading. What is clear is that there are no penalties mentioned for manufacture or dissemination of TPMs, and that only those who <em>circumvent</em> are penalised in 65A(1), and not those who produce the circumvention devices. However:</p>
<h2>On "shall maintain" and penalties</h2>
<p>In the proviso to s.65B(2)(a), there is an imperative ("shall maintain") requiring "any person facilitating circumvention" to keep records. It
is unclear what the implications of not maintaining such records are.</p>
<p>The obvious one is that the exemption contained in s.65(1)(a) will not apply if one were facilitated without the facilitator keeping records. Thus, under this interpretation, there is no independent legal (albeit penalty-less) obligation on facilitators. This interpretation runs into
the problem that if this was the intention, then the drafters would have written "Provided that any person facilitating circumvention ... for
such a purpose <em>maintain</em>/<em>maintained</em> a complete record ...". Instead, <em>shall maintain</em> is used, and an independent legal obligation seems,
thus, to be implied. But can a proviso create an independent legal obligation? And is there any way a penalty could <em>possibly</em> be attached
to violation of this proviso despite it not coming within 65A(1)?</p>
<h2>On "facilitating" and remoteness</h2>
<p>The next question is who all can be said to "facilitate", and how remote can the connection be? Is the coder who broke the circumvention a
facilitator? The distributor/trafficker? The website which provided you the software? Or is it (as is more likely) a more direct "the friend who sat at your computer and installed the circumvention software" / "the technician who unlocked your DVD player for you while installing it in your house"?</p>
<p>While such a record-keeping requirement is observable by people those who very directly help you (the last two examples above), it would be more difficult to do so the further up you get on the chain of remoteness. Importantly, such record-keeping is absolutely not possible in decentralized distribution models (such as those employed by most free/open source software), and could seriously harm fair and legitimate circumvention.</p>
<h1>More uncertainties</h1>
<p>It is slightly unclear which exception the bypassing of Sony's dangerous "Rootkit" copy protection technology would fall under if I wish to get rid of it simply because it makes my computer vulnerable to malicious attacks (and not to exercise one of the exceptions under s.52(1)). Will such circumvention come under s.65A(2)(a)? Because it does not quite fall under any of the others, including s.65(2)(b) or (f).</p>
<h2>On "purpose" as a criterion in 65A(2)(a)</h2>
<p>A last point, which is somewhat of an aside is that 65A(2)(a) states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There's something curious about the wording, since the Copyright Act generally does not prohibit any acts based on purposes (i.e., the prohibitions by ss.14 r/w s.51 are not based on <em>why</em> someone reproduces, etc., but on the act of reproduction). In fact, it <em>allows</em> acts based on purposes
(via s.52(1)). The correct way of reading 65A(2)(a) might then be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose expressly allowed by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But that might make it slightly redundant as s.65A(1) covers that by having the requirement of the circumvention being done "with the intention of infringing such right" (since the s.52(1) exceptions are clearly stated as not being infringements of the rights granted under the Act).</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>It would be interesting to note how leading copyright lawyers understand this provision, and we will be tracking such opinions. But it is clear that TPMs, as a private, non-human enforcement of copyright law, are harmful and that we should not introduce them in India. And we should be especially wary of doing so without introducing additional safeguards, such as duties on copyright holder to aid access to TPM'ed works for legitimate purposes, and remove burdensome record-keeping provisions.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightIntellectual Property RightsFLOSSTechnological Protection MeasuresPublications2012-05-17T16:51:38ZBlog EntryArguments Against Software Patents in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/arguments-against-software-patents
<b>CIS believes that software patents are harmful for the software industry and for consumers. In this post, Pranesh Prakash looks at the philosophical, legal and practical reasons for holding such a position in India. This is a slightly modified version of a presentation made by Pranesh Prakash at the iTechLaw conference in Bangalore on February 5, 2010, as part of a panel discussing software patents in India, the United States, and the European Union.</b>
<p>This blog post is based on a presentation made at the <a href="http://www.itechlaw-india.com/">iTechLaw conference</a> held on February 5, 2010. The audience consisted of lawyers from various corporations and corporate law firms. As is their wont, most lawyers when dealing with software patents get straight to an analysis of law governing the patenting of computer programmes in India and elsewhere, and seeing whether any loopholes exist and can be exploited to patent software. It was refreshing to see at least some lawyers actually going into questions of the need for patents to cover computer programs. In my presentation, I made a multi-pronged case against software patents: (1) philosophical justification against software patents based on the nature of software; (2) legal case against software patents; (3) practical reasons against software patents.</p>
<h2>Preamble</h2>
<p>Through these arguments, it is sought to be shown that patentability of software is not some arcane, technical question of law, but is a real issue that affect the continued production of new software and the everyday life of the coder/hacker/software programmer/engineer as well as consumers of software (which is, I may remind you, everywhere from your pacemaker to your phone). A preamble to the arguments would note that the main question to ask is: <strong>why should we allow for patenting of software</strong>? Answering this question will lead us to ask: <strong>who benefits from patenting of software</strong>. The conclusion that I come to is that patenting of software helps three categories of people: (1) those large software corporations that already have a large number of software patents; (2) those corporations that do not create software, but only trade in patents / sue on the basis of patents ("patent trolls"); (3) patent lawyers. How they don't help small and medium enterprises nor society at large (since they deter, rather than further invention) will be borne out by the rest of these arguments, especially the section on practical reasons against software patents.</p>
<h2>What are Patents?</h2>
<p>Patents are a twenty-year monopoly granted by the State on any invention. An invention has to have at least four characteristics: (0) patentable subject matter; (1) novelty (it has to be new); (2) inventive step / non-obviousness (even if new, it should not be obvious); (3) application to industry. A monopoly over that invention, thus means that if person X has invented something, then I may not use the core parts of that invention ("the essential claims") in my own invention. This prohibition applies even if I have come upon my invention without having known about X's invention. (Thus, independent creation is not a defence to patent infringement. This distinguishes it, for instance, from copyright law in which two people who created the same work independently of each other can both assert copyright.) Patents cover non-abstract ideas/functionality while copyright covers specific expressions of ideas. To clarify: imagine I make a drawing of a particular machine and describe the procedure of making it. Under patent law, no one else can make that particular machine, while under copyright law, no one can copy that drawing.</p>
<h2>Philosophical Justification Against Software Patents</h2>
<p>Even without going into the case against patents <em>per se</em> (lack of independent creation as a defence; lack of 'harm' as a criterion leading to internalization of all positive externalities; lack of effective disclosure and publication; etc.), which has been done much more ably by others like <a href="http://www.researchoninnovation.org/">Bessen & Meurer</a> (especially in their book <a href="http://researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/">Patent Failure</a>) and <a href="http://www.againstmonopoly.org/">Boldrin & Levine</a> (in their book <a href="http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm">Against Intellectual Monopoly</a>, the full text of which is available online).</p>
<p>But there is one essentially philosophical argument against software as subject matter of a patent. Software/computer programs ("instructions for a computer"), as any software engineer would tell you, are merely <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm">algorithms</a> ("an effective method for solving a problem using a finite sequence of instructions") that are meant to be understood by a computer or a human who knows how to read that code.</p>
<p>Algorithms are not patentable subject matter, as they are mere expressions of abstract ideas, and not inventions in themselves. Computer programs, similarly, are abstract ideas. They only stop being abstract ideas when embodied in a machine or a process in which it is the machine/process that is the essential claim and not the software. That machine or process being patented would not grant protection to the software itself, but to the whole machine or process. Thus the abstract part of that machine/process (i.e., the computer program) could be used in any other machine/process, as it it is not the subject matter of the patent. Importantly, just because software is required to operate some machine would then not mean that the machine itself is not patentable, just that the software cannot be patented in guise of patenting a machine.</p>
<h2>Legal Case Against Software Patents</h2>
<p>In India, section 3(k) of the Patent Act reads:</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<p>(3) The following are not inventions within the meaning of this Act: (k) a mathematical or business method or computer programme (<em>sic</em>) <em>per se</em> or algorithms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As one can see, computer programs are place in the same category as "mathematical methods", "algorithms", and "business methods", hence giving legal validity to the idea propounded in the previous section that computer programs are a kind of algorithms (just as algorithms are a kind of mathematical method).</p>
<p>Be that as it may, the best legal minds in India have had to work hard at understanding what exactly "computer programme <em>per se</em>" means. They have cited U.S. case law, U.K. case law, E.U. precedents, and sought to arrive at an understanding of how <em>per se</em> should be understood. While understanding what <em>per se</em> means might be a difficult job, it is much easier to see what it does <em>not</em> mean. For that, we can look at the 2004 Patent Ordinance that Parliament rejected in 2005. In that ordinance, sections 3(k) and (ka) read as follows:</p>
<blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote">
<p>(3) The following are not inventions within the meaning of this Act: (k) a computer programme <em>per se</em> other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; (ka) a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, it is clear that the interpretation that "computer programme <em>per se</em>" excludes "a computer programme that has technical application to industry" and "a computer programme in combination with hardware" is wrong. By rejecting the 2004 Ordinance wording, Parliament has clearly shown that "technical application to industry" and "combination with hardware" do not make a computer programme patentable subject matter.</p>
<p>Indeed, what exactly is "technical application to industry"? <a href="http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=technical">"Technical"</a> has various definitions, and a perusal through those definitions would show that barely any computer program can be said not to relate to a technique, not involve "specialized knowledge of applied arts and sciences" (it is code, after all; not everyone can write good algorithms), or not relate to "a practical subject that is organized according to scientific principles" or is "technological". Similarly, all software is, <a href="http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=software">by definition</a>, meant to be used in combination with hardware. Thus, it being used in combination with hardware must not, as argued above, give rise to patentability of otherwise unpatentable subject matter category.</p>
<p>In 2008, the Patent Office published a new 'Draft Manual Of Patent Practice And Procedure' in which it sought to allow patenting of certain method claims for software inventions (while earlier the Patent Office objected to method claims, allowing only device claims with hardware components). This Draft Manual was withdrawn from circulation, with Shri N.N. Prasad (then Joint Secretary of DIPP, the department administering the Patent Office) noting that the parts of the Manual on sections 3(d) and 3(k) had generated a lot of controversy, and were <em>ultra vires</em> the scope of the Manual (which could not override the Patent Act). He promised that those parts would be dropped and the Manual would be re-written. A revised draft of the Manual has not yet been released. Thus the interpretation provided in the Draft Manual (which was based heavily on the interpretation of the U.K. courts) cannot not be relied upon as a basis for arguments in favour of the patentability of software in India.</p>
<p>In October 2008, CIS helped organize a <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents">National Public Meeting on Software Patents</a> in which Indian academics, industry, scientists, and FOSS enthusiasts all came to the conclusion that software patents are harmful for <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/software-patents/software-patenting-will-harm-industry-consumer">both the industry as well as consumers</a>.</p>
<h2>Practical Reasons Against Software Patents</h2>
<p>This is going to be an attempt at distilling and simplifying some of the main practical arguments against patenting of software.</p>
<p>There are traditionally <a href="http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/2005/04/patent_economics_part_4_incent.html">four incentives that the patent system caters to</a>: (1) incentive to invent; (2) incentive to disclose; (3) incentive to commercialize; and (4) incentive to invent substitutes. Apart from the last, patenting of software does not really aid any of them.</p>
<ol>
<li>
<h3>Patent Landmines / Submarine Patents / Patent Gridlocks / No Exception for Independent Creation</h3>
<p>Given that computer programs are algorithms, having monopolies over such abstract ideas is detrimental to innovation. Just the metaphors say a lot about software patents: landmines (they cannot be seen/predicted); submarines (they surface out of the blue); gridlocks (because there are so many software patents around the same area of computing, they prevent further innovation in that area, since no program can be written without violating one patent or the other).</p>
<p>Imagine the madness that would have ensued had patents been granted when computer programming was in its infancy. Imagine different methods of sorting (quick sort, bubble sort) that are part of Computer Science 101 had been patented. While those particular instances aren't, similar algorithms, such as data compression algorithms (including the infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZW">LZW compression method</a>), have been granted patents. Most importantly, even if one codes certain functionality into software independently of the patent holder, that is still violative of the patent. Computer programs being granted patents makes it extremely difficult to create other computer programs that are based on the same abstract ideas. Thus incentives # (1) and (3) are not fulfilled, and indeed, they are harmed. There is no incentive to invent, as one would always be violating one patent or the other. Given that, there is no incentive to commercialize what one has invented, because of fear of patent infringement suits.</p>
<p>An apt illustration of this is the current difficulty of choosing a royalty-free video format for HTML 5, as it shows, in practical terms, how difficult it is to create a video format without violating one patent or the other. While the PNG image format was created to side-step the patent over the LZW compression method used in the GIF image format, bringing Ogg Theora or Dirac (both patent-free video format) to surpass the levels of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or VC-1 will be very difficult without infringing dozens if not hundreds of software patents. Chris DiBona of Google, while talking about <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/whatwg@lists.whatwg.org/msg15476.html">improving Ogg Theora</a> as part of its inclusion in HTML 5 specifications said, "Here’s the challenge: Can Theora move forward without infringing on the other video compression patents?" Just <a href="http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:jRnXmHcZCMsJ:www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%2520LA%2520News%2520List/Attachments/140/n_03-11-17_avc.html+http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in">the number of companies and organization that hold patents over H.264</a> is astounding, and includes: Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Télécom, Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC). As is the amount of royalties to be paid ("[t]he maximum royalty for these rights payable by an Enterprise (company and greater than 50% owned subsidiaries) is $3.5 million per year in 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year in 2007-08 and $5 million per year in 2009-10"; with royalty per unit of a decoder-encoder costing upto USD 0.20.)</p>
<p>Indeed, even the most diligent companies cannot guard themselves against software patents. FFII estimates that a very simple online shopping website <a href="http://webshop.ffii.org">would violate twenty different patents at the very least</a>. Microsoft recently lost a case against i4i when i4i surfaced with a patent covering custom XML as implemented in MS Office 2003 and MS Office 2007. As a result Microsoft had to ship patches to its millions of customers, to disable the functionality and bypass that patent. The manufacturers of BlackBerry, the Canadian company Research in Motion, had to shell out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP,_Inc.#RIM_patent_infringement_litigation">USD 617 million as settlement</a> to NTP over wireless push e-mail, as it was otherwise faced with the possibility of the court shutting down the BlackBerry service in the U.S. This happened despite there being a well-known method of doing so pre-dating the NTP patents. NTP has also filed cases against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, and Palm Inc. <a href="http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2005/12/15/rimntp_mud_splashes_microsoft.php">Microsoft was also hit by Visto Corporation</a> over those same NTP patents, which had been licensed to Visto (a startup).</p>
<ul><li>
<h4>Don't These Cases Show How Software Patents Help Small Companies?</h4>
<p>The astute reader might be tempted to ask: are not all of these examples of small companies getting their dues from larger companies? Doesn't all of this show that software patents actually help small and medium enterprises (SMEs)? The answer to that is: no. To see why, we need to note the common thread binding i4i, NTP, and Visto. None of them were, at the time of their lawsuits, actually creating new software, and NTP was an out-and-out "non-practising entity"/"patent holding company" AKA, patent troll. i4i was in the process of closing shop, and Visto had just started up. None of these were actually practising the patent. None of these were producing any other software. Thus, none of these companies had anything to lose by going after big companies. In other words, the likes of Microsoft, RIM, Verizon, AT&T, etc., could not file counter-suits of patent infringement, which is normally what happens when SMEs try to assert patent rights against larger corporations. For every patent that the large corporation violates of the smaller corporation, the smaler corporation would be violating at least ten of the larger corporation's. Software patents are more helpful for software companies as a tool for cross-licensing rather than as a way of earning royalties. Even this does not work as a strategy against patent trolls.</p>
</li></ul>
<p>Thus, the assertion that was made at the beginning is borne out: software patents help only patent trolls, large corporations that already have large software patent portfolios, and the lawyers who draft these patents and later argue them out in court.</p>
</li><li>
<h3>Term of Patents</h3>
<p>Twenty years of monopoly rights is outright ludicrous in an industry where the rate of turnover of technology is much faster -- anywhere between two years and five months.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h3>Software Industry Progressed Greatly Without Patents</h3>
<p>In India, software patents have never been asserted in courts (even though many have been <a href="https://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents">illegally granted</a>), yet the software industry in India is growing in leaps and bounds. Similarly, most of the big (American) giants of the software industry today grew to their stature by using copyright to "protect" their software, and not patents.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h3>Copyright Exists for Software</h3>
<p>As noted above, the code/expression of any software is internationally protected by copyright law. There is no reason to protect the ideas/functionality of that software as well.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h3>Insufficient Disclosure</h3>
<p>When ordinary computer programmers cannot understand what a particular software patent covers (which is the overwhelming case), then the patent is of no use. One of the main incentives of the patent system is to encourage gifted inventors to share their genius with the world. It is not about gifted inventors paying equally gifted lawyers to obfuscate their inventions into gobbledygook so that other gifted inventors can at best hazard a guess as to precisely what is and is not covered by that patent. Thus, this incentive (#2) is not fulfilled by the current system of patents either -- not unless there is a major overhaul of the system. This ties in with the impossibility of ensuring that one is not violating a software patent. If a reasonably smart software developer (who are often working as individuals, and as part of SMEs) cannot quickly ascertain whether one is violating patents, then there is a huge disincentive against developing software in that area at all.</p>
</li>
<li>
<h3>Software Patents Work Against Free/Libre/Open Source Software</h3>
<p>Software patents hinder the development of software and FOSS licences, as the licensee is not allowed to restrict the rights of the sub-licensees over and above the restrictions that the licensee has to observe. Thus, all patent clearances obtained by the licensee must be passed on to the sub-licensees. Thus, patented software, though most countries around the world do not recognize them, are generally not included in the default builds of many FOSS operating systems. This inhabits the general adoption of FOSS, since many of the software patents, even though not enforceable in India, are paid heed to by the software that Indians download, and the MP3 and DivX formats are not enabled by default in standard installations of a Linux OS such as Ubuntu.</p>
</li></ol>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Currently, the U.S. patent system is being reviewed at the administrative level, the legislative level, as well as the judicial level. At the judicial level, the question of business method patents (and, by extension, software patents) is before the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos"><em>Bilski v. Kappos</em></a>. Judge Mayer of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC, which heard <em>In re Bilksi</em>) noted that "the patent system has run amok". The Free Software Foundation submitted a most extensive <a href="http://endsoftpatents.org/amicus-bilski-2009"><em>amicus curiae</em> brief</a> to the U.S. Supreme Court, filled with brilliant analysis of software patents and arguments against the patentability of software that is well worth a read.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/arguments-against-software-patents'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/arguments-against-software-patents</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsAccess to KnowledgeSoftware PatentsIntellectual Property RightsPublicationsPatents2012-03-13T10:43:12ZBlog EntryReply comments of CIS in the matter of the WIPO draft proposal
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal
<b>Reply comments of CIS, Daisy Forum of India and Inclusive Planet to the comments filed by Steven J Metaliz in the matter of the WIPO draft proposal.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Reply-Comments-to-WIPO-draft-proposal</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:18:38ZFileStatement of CIS on the Matter of the Treaty for the Blind
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty
<b>Through this paper the Centre for Internet and Society is giving its statement in the matter of the Treaty for the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled, proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/CIS-Statement-on-Treaty</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityPublications2011-08-22T13:18:01ZFileWeb Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective – A G3ict White Paper
https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/g3ict-white-paper
<b>G3ict Publishes International Survey of Web Accessibility Policies White Paper by the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India</b>
<p>With 143 countries having signed the Convention, and 74 ratified it as
of today, web accessibility policy making is fast becoming a leading area of
concern for governments, disabled persons organizations and organizations
operating web sites for the public.</p>
<p>In this timely <a title="G3ict-White Paper" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Web%20Accessibility%20Policy%20Making-%20G3ict%20White%20Paper-%20CIS%20Bangalore-%20India%202009.pdf/at_download/file">White
Paper</a>, Nirmita Narasimhan, Program Manager at the <a href="https://cis-india.org/../" title="Centre for Internet & Society (CIS)">Centre for Internet & Society
(CIS)</a> in Bangalore, India, provides a very valuable overview of the
early policies and programs adopted by a selection of 15 ratifying
countries. Packed with references and useful links, the contents of this
White Paper will also be made available in the upcoming ITU-G3ict Toolkit for
Policy Makers.</p>
<p><a href="http://g3ict.com/press/press_releases/press_release/p/id_48">Link to the Press Release</a></p>
<p><a title="G3ict-White Paper" class="internal-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/Web%20Accessibility%20Policy%20Making-%20G3ict%20White%20Paper-%20CIS%20Bangalore-%20India%202009.pdf/at_download/file">Click
here to download the White Paper</a></p>
<p><img src="file:///C:/Users/Sanchia/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" alt="" />We would like to thank the following people who have helped preparing this
White paper:</p>
<p>Prashanth Ramdas, Asma Tajuddin, G. Aravind ,Katie Reisner, Sucharita
Narasimhan, Bama Balakrishnan, Nirmita Narasimhan</p>
<p>Expert Reviewers:<br />
Axel Leblois, Donal Rice, Immaculada Placienca Porrero, Kevin Carey, Licia
Sbarella, Sunil Abraham</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/g3ict-white-paper'>https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/g3ict-white-paper</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaAccessibilityPublications2011-10-19T10:37:07ZBlog EntryIndia Study Tour - Report: The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change
https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/india-study-tour-report-by-sagie-chetty
<b>CIS in collaboration with the LINK Centre, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and in association with different institutions across India organized a Lecture Tour by Sagie Chetty from 19th Oct to 30th Oct. A report on this study tour is given by Sagie Chetty.</b>
<h3 align="left">India Study Tour Report</h3>
<p>
2009-10-17 to 2009-11-01<br />Sagie Chetty, Masters of Management ICT Policy & Regulation<br />Student Number 0617514V<br />Supervision: LINK Centre<br />Graduate School of Public and Development Management<br />University of the Witwatersrand</p>
<div align="left"><br />Sagie Chetty is a Senior Manager at Eskom, South Africa’s largest Electricity Utility and a Masters of Management student in the field of ICT Policy and Regulation at Wits University. My research dissertation is entitled “Analysing processes for regulating interconnection in India and South Africa.” Wits LINK Centre and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore arranged for a study/lecture tour to India for the period from 17th October 2009 to 1st November 2009. As part of the tour, I presented a number of talks to students and faculty members at various universities and institutions around the country, on the subject of the Telecommunications Landscape in South Africa. I used the opportunity to inform students on the development of the telecommunications sector in South Africa; to build relationships between the LINK centre and the institutions I visited; and, most importantly, to conduct interviews with academia, economists and regulatory authorities in India to gather essential material for my research paper.</div>
<p>Presentations were held at a number of universities, namely the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai and IIT, Mumbai; the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore; and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS) and the Jamia Millia Islamia University – all based in Delhi. The visit concluded with meetings with officials from the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).</p>
<p>The presentations were well attended and discussions were robust and thought provoking. The South African telecommunications sector was seen as being non-competitive with unnecessarily high ownership by government in the telecommunications sector. From the information provided, students concluded that the SA telecommunications regulator was weak and lacking in the commensurate skills to manage this highly technical sector.</p>
<p>On the other hand, students gravitated between having admiration for India’s own telecommunications regulator, TRAI and criticism of TRAI’s inability to improve broadband take-up in India. Students commended TRAI’s technical skills, independence and its courage in standing up to powerful mobile companies and incumbent telecommunications companies. However, lack of policy direction with regard to broadband rollout is seen as a major failure. Comments regarding this failure are attributed to TRAI’s driving down of telecommunications prices to levels that do not allow for infrastructure investment. </p>
<p>The future for broadband in India lies in mobile technology and some predict that fixed line will be defunct by 2025. Some academics also believe that there are too many players in the telecommunications sector in India making spectrum allocation highly competitive and therefore, very expensive. These costs will have to be recovered and the end users will pay dearly for this. Therefore, the model that the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) is using for spectrum auctions is being questioned by students and academics.</p>
<p>The innovation that I observed in India relates to CIS’s early work in projects assisting the visually impaired to read; the writing of 4G standards at the IITs and the innovation with regard to interconnection usage charges (IUC) at TRAI. These are some of the lessons that I have taken back to South Africa.</p>
<p>My observation of students in India is that they are highly motivated and eager to learn. Entrance to the universities is highly sought after and universities have high standards and are generally difficult to get into. The IITs certainly are increasing the requirements for students to get into them. The institutions are vibrant and are fertile grounds for thought leadership and innovation. India is producing a veritable number of PhDs and institutions seem to offer funding for capable students. South Africa needs to re-examine the funding model for students here. My impression is that students in South Africa do not have similar support as their counterparts in India.</p>
<p>The talks generally concluded with a re-affirmation of the strong historical and cultural links between South Africa and India. Mahatma Gandhi’s time spent in South Africa developing his notion of non-violent protest is well known in India and will always bind our countries together.</p>
<p>India is a vibrant country with an economic engine that is gathering revolutions. Its future is bright and its institutions are producing bright young minds to take their place in this awakening economic giant. South Africans can do well in learning from this super power in the making.</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/telecom/SC%20Study%20Tour%20Report%202009-11-08%20_2_.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Sagie Chetty- Report">Report</a></p>
<h3>Videos</h3>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/india-study-tour-report-by-sagie-chetty'>https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/india-study-tour-report-by-sagie-chetty</a>
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No publisherradhaTelecomPublications2011-08-24T08:02:09ZBlog Entry