Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for June 2017. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

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Highlights

CIS made a submission on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that has come into force this year. In the submission assessed the impact of GST on persons with disabilities. Indian Patent Office updated the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions. Anubha Sinha throws light on the updated guidelines in a blog post. She has clarified that the updated Guidelines take no concrete position to help clarify the ambiguity around patentability of software inventions in India. A strategic symposium on Marathi Wikipedia and its sister projects was conducted in April 2017. Subodh Kulkarni has shared the developments in a report. Compiled a compendium on cyber security from the Indian context. The document is a comprehensive source compiling all the cyber-security related regulations, policies, guidelines, notifications, executive orders, court rulings, etc. CIS commented on the renewal of the .NET Registry Agreement. CIS expressed its strong opposition to the proposed renewal. The comments were prepared by Vidushi Marda with inputs from Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash. Harsh Gupta discussed "FAT ML (Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning) for Lawyers and Lawmakers" at the CIS office in Delhi on June 29, 2017. Shyam Ponappa in an article in the Business Standard opined that broadband in India needs reforms for local manufacturing and for infrastructure expansion and utilisation

CIS in the news:

• Aadhaar: Ushering in a Commercialized Era of Surveillance in India (Jyoti Panday; Electronics Frontier Foundation; June 1, 2017).
• Privacy is culture specific, MNCs hit by Aadhaar, says TRAI chief (Pranav Mukul; Indian Express; June 1, 2017).
• Centre brings in new safeguards following cases of Aadhaar data leaks on government websites (Nidhi Sharma; Economic Times; June 2, 2017).
• New rules for govt agencies to ensure security of personal data (Komal Gupta; Livemint; June 2, 2017).
• Explore money apps but watch your data (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 8, 2017).
• New law to unlock data economy (Yuthika Bhargava; Hindu; June 9, 2017).
• Placements at NUJS: Class of 2017 Scores 100% (Simran Sahni; Livelaw; June 10, 2017).
• Why did Nandan Nilekani praise a Twitter troll? (Kiran Jonnalgadda; Indian Express; June 10, 2017).
• Are biometrics hack-proof? (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 11, 2017).
• GoldenEye ransomware attack hit operations at Pipavav Port, JNPT (Jyotika Sood and Utpal Bhaskar; Livemint; June 28, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

• Digital Native: In digiville attention is Currency (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 11, 2017).
• Digital Native: On mute, the Voice of the People (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 24, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

• GST - A Barrier to Human Rights for Persons with Disabilities (Nirmita Narasimhan; June 24, 2017).

Participation in Events

• WSIS Forum 2017 (Co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, in close collaboration with all UN agencies; Geneva; June 12 - 16, 2017). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker.
• Digital Accessibility (Organized by National Informatics Centre; Bengaluru; June 17, 2017). Rakesh Paladugula, a web accessibility trainer and Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation to scientists about digital accessibility.

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright

Participation in Event

• Fixing Copyright for Education (SCCR34 Side Event) (Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; June 7, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

►Pervasive Technologies

Participation in Event

• Preliminary Findings: Working Requirements for Complex Products under the Indian Patent System (Organized by O.P. Jindal University; New Delhi; June 10 - 11, 2017). Prof. Jorge Contreras gave a talk on a forthcoming paper.

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

• Train The Trainer 2017 (Manasa Rao; June 5, 2017).
• Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).
• Wiki Loves Mayabazaar (Pavan Santhosh; June 7, 2017).
• Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).
• Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).

Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of June.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate: