🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · radha
To highlight the issues faced by persons with print disability – those deprived of Indian books due to unfriendly copyright regulations – a group of organisations launched the Right To Read (R2R) campaign on September 26 - an article by L Subramani, Sep 28th, Bangalore, Deccan Herald. The campaign, jointly launched by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Daisy Forum of India (DFI), bookbole.com and Inclusive Planet, kickstarted at Loyola College in Chennai on Saturday. “This campaign was part of the World Blind Union’s (WBU) global campaign,” said Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager, CIS. “We are asking all the organisations to lend their support to our initiative.” The campaign comes at a time when the Indian government is preparing to consider changes to the copyright law, which it failed to implement two years ago after disability rights campaigners objected to the proposal to make books and other print materials be made in an “exclusive” format. Nirmita said that this would also be an occasion for activists to urge Government of India to throw its weight behind a WBU treaty tabled at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) asking for a global copyright regulation that takes into account the needs of persons with print disabilities. “The treaty is coming up for discussion at Geneva (WIPO's head quarters) in December,” Nirmita said and added: “Right now only three Latin American nations are supporting it. Since India has the largest number of persons with print disability, which includes the visually challenged, persons with autism and children with learning difficulties, our support would likely tilt the balance in favour of the treaty.” Now, the campaign will be gradually taken to other parts of the country, said Rahul Cherian from Inclusive Planet. A signature campaign and distribution of a declaration supporting accommodation of persons with print disability in copyright laws will also be held as part of the campaign. Link to article in Deccan Herald For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/2018right-to-read2019-campaign-launched-fighting-against-copyright-regulations
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · praskrishna
Two CPOV conferences have been held so far. The first one in Bangalore and the second one in Amsterdam, the third is to be held in Leipzig. The Critical Point of View (CPOV), a Wikipedia research initiative organized in partnership with the Centre of Internet and Society (Bangalore, India), has so far successfully produced two conferences: One in Bangalore in January 2010 and one in Amsterdam in March of the same year. Reports, videos, the mailing list and further resources can be accessed at the CPOV website . A reader based on the conferences is currently being produced and is planned to be released by January 2011 as a part of the INC reader series. A next conference is foreseen to take place in Leipzig (Germany) 25-26 September 2010 and will be a German speaking CPOV event. For news and updates check the project’s website . For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/CPOV-conference-Leipzig
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · praskrishna
The unique identification number project is executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction. Representatives of people's movements, mass organisations and institutions on Wednesday said the unique identification number (UID) project is being executed without any legislative or parliamentary sanction and demanded an end to it. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society told press persons here that neither the launch of the UID project nor the constitution of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had any legislative sanction. Nothing is known of how the chairperson of the authority is selected, while the project proposes finger-printing of the entire population and storing of biometric and personal data of every person throughout his life and thereafter. “Although the scheme is to only provide verification of identity, it is unclear what safeguards would prevent third parties from handling, sharing and utilising the data for any purpose,” he said. The UIDAI has agreed to use the services of foreign companies, their software and hardware. It appears that no thought has been give to the perils of placing in the hands of foreign companies data pertaining to the entire population of the country, Mr. Abraham felt. About the claims that the UID project will save crores of rupees by preventing misuse of various welfare schemes, Mr. Abraham questioned whether any feasibility study had been made in this regard. The UID, the National Population Registry and the NATGRID, once combined and connected, pose grave concerns pertaining to civil liberties and fundamental rights. Read the original article in the Hindu For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/Scrap-UID-project
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · radha
An article by M Ramya – Times of India, 26th September, 2009 CHENNAI: Mahendran loses track of time as he listens to portions from Romeo and Juliet through Tara. The final year B A (Tamil) student of Loyola College is pleased with the Rs 1.35-lakh Tara Textreader that allows him to access printed material without help and convey information without a scribe. "The Sangeetha software has an Indian accent. So I have no problem accessing material in English," says Mahendran, who has visual disabilities. Earlier, students like him could not access printed material that hadn't been digitized. Their computer systems could not read material that wasn't pre-recorded. Professor Jerald Inico, a lecturer in the computer science department and faculty in charge of the college's Resource Centre for Differently Abled, says the Textreader need not even be connected to a computer. He says: "We were trying to come up with a formula to evaluate students with visual disabilities because we felt that when scribes write down the answers for the students some of the content would be lost in translation. The equipment can scan the question paper and read it out and will also allow the student to answer verbally and store it as an audio clip. For students who become blind later in life and have not learnt Braille this is a big help." Tara, purchased from funds provided by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, can only speak English; now through Sangeetha the college is trying to install a Tamil optical character recognition software. While the students use Tara to read books now the equipment will be tested for exam evaluation during the April 2010 semester exams. But Mahendran is a bit wary. "If we can use Tara and still get extra time for the exams it will prove beneficial, but if we are given the same time as the others because we are using the textreader it will take time to comprehend what is being read to us and give the appropriate answers." The college is also supporting a nationwide Right to Read' campaign for persons with print impairments to be launched in Chennai on Saturday. Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) which is one of the organisers of the campaign, says: "Two years ago when we proposed a change in the Copyright Act a clause was incoporated that said that books can be reproduced in formats exclusively for the use of the blind. This limits the reproduction to one or two options and newer technologies cannot be used. It also leaves out people with other disabilities like the dyslexic who also have print impairments. Technology is enabling, but law is disabling. We want to create awareness of the issue through the campaign." Registration for the campaign begins at 8 am at the college. The CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Bookbole will take the campaign to other cities in the country. Link to the article in TOI For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/2018right-to-read2019-campaign-launched-fighting-against-copyright-regulations-1
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · nishant
The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, was an institutional partner to India's first Global Conference on Hinglish - Chutnefying English, organised by Dr. Rita Kothari at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. A photographic report for the event is now available here. In January of 2009, Dr. Rita Kothari, at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, organised the first global conference called “ Chutneyfying English ”, calling in various stakeholders from different walks of life – academics, scholars, researchers, actors, cultural producers, authors and consumers to critically examine the growing phenomenon of Hinglish and how it intersects with our globalised lives. The two day conference brought together a series of presentations, ranging from academic papers to lively round table discussions to panels that looked at the different manifestations of Hinglish and the political and aesthetic potential of this particular form. Scholars like Rita Kothari , Harish Trivedi, Nishant Shah , Daya Thussu, Shanon Finch and Rupert Snell were complemented by cultural producers like Nandita Das , R. Raj Rao, and Shuchi Kothari . Literary stakeholders like Urvashi Bhutalia , Bachi Karkaria , and Tej Bhatia rubbed shoulders with more mainstream practitioners like Prasoon Joshi, Mahesh Bhatt and Cyrus Broacha. The Centre for Internet and Society was an institutional partner for the event, and supported the panel on New Media, which saw four paper presentations and a discussion moderated by Nishant Shah, Director Research at the CIS. The panel explored diverse presentations from Mattangi Krishnamurthy, Pramod Nair and Supriya Gokarn, who looked at the diverse ways in which the rise of Internet and digital technologies is not only changing the ways in which people express themselves, but they are also leading to complex ways in which new conditions of identity, consumption and politics are manifesting themselves. Nishant Shah responded to the panel by positing the idea of Hinglish as a paradigm, rather than a set of characteristics, which goes beyond the questions of language and actually resides in the aesthetic conditions of the internet technologies. A photographic documentation of the event with an introduction by Dr. Rita Kothari, the chief organiser and curator for the conference is now available for a free download here For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/Hinglish
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · praskrishna
An article by Karen Leigh & Surabhi Agarwal in livemint on June 30, 2010. The government has moved to create a legal basis for its ambitious project to provide all residents with numeric identity cards and guarantee the safety of demographic and biometric data being collected for it. The draft National Identification Authority of India Act, 2010, was put up for public debate on Tuesday, and is likely to be introduced when Parliament convenes for its monsoon session. The Act provides for the creation of the National Identity Authority of India to oversee the implementation of the Aadhaar project, but its jurisdiction will not extend to Jammu and Kashmir. “This Bill will give the authority a legislative framework to function,” said R.S. Sharma, director general of the Unique Identification Authority ofIndia (UIDAI), the nodal agency currently overseeing Aadhaar. Sharma said the Bill contains provisions that will make sure that sensitive data is protected and there are no hacking attempts. It lays down that “the authority shall ensure the security and confidentiality of identity information of individuals”. UIDAI is collecting fingerprints and eye scans of all residents, along with other information, for Aadhaar. The Bill “will also make sure that data related to a citizen’s caste or religion is not collected or chronicled”, Sharma added. The Bill lays down that impersonation using Aadhaar data can lead to a three-year jail term and a fine of Rs10,000. Unauthorized collection or dissemination of identity information will also invite a three-year jail term, or a Rs1 lakh fine, or both. The heftiest penalty of Rs1 crore along with three years’ imprisonment has been specified for unauthorized access to the central database, which will contain all individual details collected for Aadhaar. Although the Bill lays down that no information stored in the database shall be revealed by UIDAI officials, it allows disclosure of personal information in a case of national security. Information can be disclosed on the direction of an officer of joint secretary level or above in the Union government, with the approval of the minister in charge. But civil rights activists say the safety measures in the Bill are not enough. “It doesn’t have any of the safeguards and provisions necessary to protect the rights of citizens. It’s only protecting the interests of the UIDAI,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society and a critic of the Aadhaar project. “They have criminalized an imaginary crime—if the technology were infallible, which is what they claim biometrics is, then you can’t create ghost identities. They’re saying that ghost identities will still be there; that the technology is, in fact, not foolproof.” Rahul Matthan, founding partner of law firm Trilegal, said the Bill will give a legal basis to UIDAI for collecting data and allotting identities. “Provisions in the Act on data protection are limited as it can’t be a substitute for an over-arching data protection legislation in the country, which will deal with all kinds of citizen data,” he said. The Union government is mulling over a separate privacy Bill to safeguard individual data privacy, as reported by Mint on 21 June. The move is aimed at deflecting worries over the safety of the immense amount of data it proposes to collect about its citizens for various programmes, including Aadhaar. Read the original article in livemint . For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-in-monsoon-session
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · radha
An article in The Hindu, 29th September, on the 'Right to Read' campaign, launched on 26th Sept, in Loyola College, Chennai CHENNAI: About 100 National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers from various colleges in the State kick-started a ‘right to read’ campaign at Loyola College recently. The aim of the campaign is to make books accessible to persons with disabilities. The speakers, who included the visually challenged, persons with low vision and dyslexia, said the Copyright Act did not allow persons with print impairments to convert reading matter using assistive technologies to accessible formats. Dipendra Manocha, executive committee member of World Blind Union, said: “We need organisations, individuals and volunteers to contribute and create accessible books.” Nirmitha Narasimhan, programme manager of the Centre for Internet and Society felt access to information would ensure a better contribution by the visually challenged to society. “It is not that we are insensitive. The suggestion for amendments to the Copyright Act has not yet been incorporated,” she said. Writer Sreekumar Varma, who inaugurated the campaign, recalled his experience as a scribe during his days as a lecturer. C.P. Chandrasekar, treasurer, National Association for the Blind, and Loyola College Principal Albert Muthumalai spoke. Link to the article in The Hindu For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/2018right-to-read2019-campaign-launched-the-hindu
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · praskrishna
This post is also available in: French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) The Center for Internet and Society is a non-profit based in Bangalore, India, created by Sunil Abraham, founder of Mahiti. The aim is to understand and shape the internet and its relation with society and politics using research, intervention and collaboration. The internet is often demonized or mythified and generally misunderstood. It is a good initiative to try to understand it through methodical research and to produce a pedagogical framework that allows us to see as it is. The CIS is collaborating with researchers in other fields. In fact, studying the internet implies to study its interactions with politics, society, economy… Maybe it is a good way of understanding not only the internet, but also the general current social change of which internet is a symptom. Interactivity, communities, networking, collaboration, collective knowledge, increase of connections, ability to speak out and be heard as an individual… are many changes that our society are living and of which internet is the symptom. Internet is neither good nor bad. It is just a new tool that has a potential in helping development, increase transparency and social change. The internet is neutral, it is the way we use it which is bad, good, or silly, like any other innovation (see our article on innovation). It is our duty to be conscious of this and to try to push forward the internet in the right direction. Link to the original article video For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/Internet-not-good-not-bad
🇮🇳 · Centre for Internet and Society · praskrishna
CIS feels that the UID project is forced on the citizens. The Centre for Internet and Society on Wednesday said the UID project — Aadhaar — is being forced on the citizens. Speaking to reporters, the centre’s executive director Sunil Abraham said: “The 16-digit UID number will be mentioned on the driver’s license, PAN card, ration card and voter’s identity card with other important data. It is not transparent. Since the UID database is available online, hackers can easily obtain vital information.’’ Read the article in the Times of India For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/UID-is-forced