Concept Note for the Centre for Internet and Society

The Concept Note for Centre for Internet and Society is a founding document prepared in July 2008 that outlines the rationale, mission, objectives, thematic focus areas, and planned activities of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), an Indian research and advocacy organisation. It sets out a framework for independent, citizen-centred research on Internet policy in India and the developing world. CIS was registered as a Society on 4 July 2008 by seven founding members signing the Memorandum of Association. The domain cis-india.org was registered on 16 June 2008, eighteen days before the formal Society registration.

Contents

1. Background
2. Challenges with Internet Policy
3. Mission and Objectives
4. Research Agenda
5. Differences from Western Counterparts
6. Thematic Focus Areas
7. Planned Activities
8. Substantive Areas of Engagement
9. Donor Coordination
10. Immediate Policy Opportunities
11. Full Text

Background

By the mid-2000s, an estimated 13.9 percent of the world’s population, approximately 888 million people, had some form of regular Internet access. World Internet usage grew by 146.2 percent between 2000 and early 2005, with the highest growth rates in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. India alone recorded a 684 percent increase in Internet usage during this period, rising from five million users in 2000 to 39.2 million in early 2005. Most of this usage occurred not through personal computers but through street-corner cyber-cafés, which means actual figures were likely considerably higher.

Every generation of information and communication technology, from print and radio to cassette tapes, television, and the Internet, with democratic potential has historically been followed by technical, legal, and market enclosures driven primarily by private sector and government actors. The two principal organisations resisting these enclosures globally were the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, founded 1990) and the Berkman Centre at Harvard Law School (founded 1998). The concept note identifies both as remaining largely US- and Eurocentric, leaving the developing world without adequate representation in these debates.

In India, Internet governance at the time was shaped by instruments such as the Information Technology Act 2000, the Broadband Policy 2004, the Patents (Amendment) Act 2005, and the Right to Information Act 2005. The concept note observes that most of these were developed to protect private sector interests, with little public consultation and insufficient protection for citizens and consumers. Arbitrary website blocking and guidelines for cyber-café owners were cited as examples of state overreach that further restricted the democratic potential of the Internet.

Challenges with Internet Policy

The concept note identifies six structural challenges facing Internet policy in India and the developing world:

1. Conceptual inconsistency: Policy makers conceptualise the Internet differently, either as a space, a medium, or a technology, producing fragmented and contradictory policy responses where a more holistic framework is needed.
2. Kneejerk policy formulation: Most policy responses in the developing world are reactive, triggered by industry lobbying, pressure from developed countries during Free Trade Agreement negotiations, or alarmist public discourse, with little emphasis on impact or outcome analysis.
3. Over-emphasis on regulation: Policy making tends to prioritise restriction and enforcement over enabling greater adoption and use of technologies, creating licence-rajs that stifle grassroots innovation and entrepreneurship.
4. Developing country context: Varying levels of literacy, human capacity, and research infrastructure make in-situ research difficult, and more conservative approaches to cultural and political expression further complicate policy formulation.
5. Demonisation of the Internet: Governments, religious groups, and conservative parties have deployed alarmist discourses around terrorism, child pornography, addiction, and online bullying to justify restricting access and user freedoms, with significant negative consequences for digital citizenship.
6. Outdated and static legislation: Archaic laws pre-dating the Internet era, including provisions of the IT Act that replicate restrictions from Article 19(2) of the Constitution and the imagination of the Telegraph Act, remain in force.

Mission and Objectives

The Centre for Internet and Society was established with the mission to contribute towards realising the democratic potential of the Internet. Its four stated objectives are:

1. To become the default reference point for decision-makers and policy-makers from government, corporate, academic, and civil society organisations involved in Internet-related policies and practices.
2. To represent the interests of citizens and consumers during policy formulation that impacts digital citizenship, specifically the right to openness, the right to privacy, and the right to network.
3. To execute and commission high-quality independent research projects that can inform public debate on Internet-related practices and policy formulation.
4. To intervene in academic and pedagogic discussions around new technologies and the Internet in India, strengthening core interdisciplinary research practices.

Research Agenda

The concept note proposes a research agenda that treats the Internet not merely as a technology but as a medium enabling socio-cultural and political expression. It critiques existing social science studies of the Internet as either behaviourist in orientation or dependent on Euro-American theoretical frameworks that fail to account for the specific conditions of globalisation, urbanisation, and technologisation in Asia.

Four research priorities are identified:

• Developing conceptual tools, language, and vocabulary for understanding how ICTs shape registers of everyday life
• Understanding the socio-political and cultural histories of technologies and their reception in the Asian context
• Examining connections between governmentality, globalisation, urbanisation, and the changing relationship between the state and the subject
• Producing empirically and ethnographically grounded research that places technology at the centre of present-day political and cultural concerns

Differences from Western Counterparts

The concept note sets out seven ways in which CIS would differ from comparable organisations in the developed world:

1. Systemic reform over systemic workarounds: Alternatives such as FOSS and Creative Commons licences are seen as insufficient on their own; reform of law, not merely its enforcement, is the priority.
2. Less policy, not more: The document warns of a vicious cycle in which new policies generate new forms of property, new forms of poverty, new crimes, and more enforcement. Fighting bad policy with more policy is not a solution for the developing world.
3. No fetishisation of openness: Uncritical devotion to openness is not appropriate in all contexts, particularly food security and health, where communities should not be compelled to share traditional knowledge in conditions of significant IP inequality.
4. Promoting diversity: CIS would explore multiple accounts of identity, authorship, attribution, and property from the developing world, countering the homogenising tendencies of FOSS and Creative Commons movements.
5. Preserving fluidity and informality: The informal economy of the developing world already operates with dynamic, fluid norms. Developed-world organisations have much to learn from these practices rather than impose static alternatives.
6. Protecting existing sharing practices: Rather than introducing new sharing alternatives, as is necessary in the developed world where traditional commons have largely disappeared, CIS would study and protect the traditional sharing practices that remain alive in the developing world.
7. No techno-euphoria: Unlike generic ICT4D projects, CIS would not uncritically advocate for the adoption of new technology. It would remain a research organisation focused on Internet policies with the largest impact on the poor and disadvantaged.

Thematic Focus Areas

Internet and the Family

The concept note addresses what it describes as an “ecology of fear” surrounding Internet technologies in Indian public discourse, shaped by narratives of pornography, cyber-stalking, identity theft, and online predation. From arbitrary website blocking to mandatory registration of cyber-café users, the Indian state’s responses were rooted in technophobia rather than evidence. CIS proposed to deconstruct these techno-terror narratives, produce online resources for parents and communities, collaborate with local media, and publish preparatory material to help new users navigate digital spaces without giving in to moral panic.

The concept note also draws attention to a less-discussed dimension: the ways in which Internet technologies, in a period of accelerated globalisation and family dislocation, provide new spaces for recreation, communication, and community. Research into how the family unit acquires new contours when inflected with technology, from economic aspirations linked to the outsourcing industry to cultural openness and progressive value systems, was identified as a substantive priority.

Intellectual Property Rights and Trade

The concept note argues that access to global knowledge is the key prerequisite for economic and cultural development in the contemporary world. IPR maximalism, driven by well-organised corporate lobbies in developed countries, was identified as a major barrier to knowledge access, with the prices of food, medicine, textbooks, technology, software, and culture rising dramatically as a result. India had at the time entered into bilateral IP agreements with seven parties: Australia, Germany, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Patent Office. Each of these agreements tended toward the tightening of Indian IP laws.

CIS committed to monitoring bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with IP components, advocating for pro-citizen and pro-consumer reforms, opposing DMCA-like provisions, and supporting copyright exceptions and limitations that protect the disabled, the aged, the academic sector, and librarians. International partners identified for collaboration included the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knowledge Ecology International, the South Centre, Consumers International, and EIFL.

Planned Activities

Substantive Areas of Engagement

CIS organised its substantive work across three categories reflecting its normative stance toward Internet developments.

Celebrate

Issues and movements that CIS committed to actively promote included: Free and Open Source Software; open standards aligned with the EU IDABC definition; open content and open access covering Creative Commons, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources; legal protections for anonymity, including bloggers and whistle-blowers; open hardware; network neutrality; crowd-sourcing; and developing-world innovation described as jugaad or street innovation, as a contribution to reducing the carbon footprint of Internet technologies.

Criticise

Issues that CIS would unequivocally oppose included Internet censorship, government and ISP surveillance, hate speech, sexual exploitation and trafficking of exploitative content online, and addiction to online services. Research was planned in collaboration with the Open Network Initiative on censorship and with civil society organisations such as Blank Noise on sexual harassment.

Research

Issues requiring objective, evidence-based research from a citizen and consumer perspective included: the participation divide across class, caste, religion, and gender on social networking sites and the blogosphere; piracy as a form of creativity, capacity building, and political movement; IPR and trade; the impact of the Internet on family structures; and ICT for development, including open spectrum, public wi-fi, and community radio policies.

Donor Coordination

The concept note identifies several donors active in Internet policy and related fields with whom CIS intended to coordinate:

• Hivos: Supporting Sarai, ALF, and Mahiti; co-funding agreement with OSI-IP; shifting emphasis toward capacity building following changes in the Dutch government
• International Development Research Centre (IDRC): Commissioning a USD 200,000 scoping study for an IP research network; approximately USD 2 million per year on IP; total global ICT4D portfolio of approximately USD 21 million
• Open Society Institute – Information Programme (OSI-IP): Approximately USD 1 million per year on IP; USD 7 million per year on the Information Programme overall
• Ford Foundation: Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom as one of three main programme areas; approximately USD 580 million per year in grants
• Hewlett Foundation: Education as one of six main programmes; approximately USD 900 million per year in grants

Immediate Policy Opportunities

The concept note identifies several countries and contexts offering immediate opportunities for policy intervention, including India, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Moldova, Malaysia, and Bangladesh, noting specific pending legislation or policy processes in each jurisdiction where CIS’s research and advocacy could have meaningful impact.

Full Text

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