Full Text: Concept Note for the Centre for Internet and Society

The full text of the Concept Note for the Centre for Internet and Society is reproduced here verbatim from the original document, as prepared by the Centre for Internet and Society in 2008.

Centre for Internet and Society

• Background
  • Growth and significance of the Internet
  • Enclosure and Push Back
  • India
• Challenges with Internet Policies
• The Centre for Internet and Society
  • Mission
  • Objectives
  • Setting a New Research Agenda
  • Potential Differences in Approach
• Internet and the Family
• IPR and Trade
• Activities
• Substantive Areas of Engagement
  • Celebrate
  • Criticise
  • Research
• Co-ordination with other Donors
• Immediate Opportunities for Policy Intervention

Background

Growth and significance of the Internet

Today, it is estimated that 13.9 percent of the world’s population, or 888,681,131 people, have some kind of regular Internet access. The majority of Internet users live in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of East Asia (South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore). World Internet usage grew by an estimated 146.2 percent from 2000 to early 2005, and the highest growth rates were in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Chinese is the second most used language on the Internet, and a country like India experienced a growth of 684 percent in Internet usage, from five million people in 2000 to 39.2 million in early 2005. It means that some thirty-nine million people in India (through labour, education, correspondence, and entertainment) employ, use, rely on a medium that enables an exceptional level of global reach. Actual figures are probably significantly higher, as most people in India and other similar societies tend to go online not from the computers that they own (since not that many people ‘own’ computers) or even computers that they might access at work, but from street-corner cyber-cafés. No other platform of communication in world history can claim that it has attracted the attention of 13.9 percent of the world’s population in the span of ten years. Ten years is a very short time in the history of culture.

Enclosure and Push Back

Every generation of Information and Community Technology (print, radio, cassette tapes, television, Internet and mobile) with democratic potential has been closely followed by technical, legal and market enclosures. Most of this has been driven by private sector and government organisations. Push back to the different forces of enclosure has traditionally come from civil society and the academic sector. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) founded in 1990 and the Berkman Centre founded in 1998 have been two key organisations in this space. EFF aims to preserve “free speech rights in the digital age”. And the Berkman Center established at Harvard Law School aims “to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.” Unfortunately EFF and the Berkman Centre remain very US and Eurocentric in their perspective and interventions and there is insufficient participation from the developing world in these debates.

India

In India, a large number of policy documents govern the Internet — Right to Information Act 2005, Patents (Amendment) Act 2005, Broadband Policy 2004, Communication Convergence Bill 2001, Information Technology Act 2000, New Telecom Policy 1999, Copyright Act 1957, Indian Wireless Act 1933, etc. However, most of these bills, policies and acts are developed to protect private sector interest. There is very little public consultation and therefore these policies do not sufficiently protect the rights of citizens and consumers. Thanks to endemic poverty, large sections of the population live in violation of some of these laws and policies. Additionally government organisations both at the national and state level also publish additional rules and guidelines further restricting the democratic potential of the Internet. For example — arbitrary blocking of websites, guidelines for cyber-cafe owners etc.

Challenges with Internet Policies

1. Conceptual Problem: Different policy makers conceptualize the Internet differently either as a space or as a medium or a technology. Therefore policy responses have depended on the characterization of it as being one of the three. Today we need a more holistic conceptualization and policy response to the Internet.
2. Kneejerk Policy Formulation: Most of the policy responses in the developing world have also been rather kneejerk responses that have been triggered by advocacy campaigns by industry lobbyists, pressure from developed countries especially during negotiations of Free Trade Agreements [FTAs], alarmist discourse and crises. There is very little focus on impact and outcome analysis of previous policies. Policy-makers need to develop a more nuanced understanding on the Internet which takes into account both public and private rights and interests.
3. Over-emphasising regulation: Currently policy making in the developing world places more emphasis on regulation rather than enabling greater adoption and use of technologies. More regulation and enforcement results in greater intervention by the state; taking away the focus of the government, police and judiciary from more important development issues and the establishment of license-rajs. In the interest of grassroot innovation and entrepreneurship there is an urgent need for dismantling unnecessary systems of regulating Internet related technologies.
4. Developing Countries Context: Developing countries like India pose specific challenges for Internet related research and policy formulation. Varying levels of literacy, human capacity and research capacity makes it difficult for in-situ research. More conservative approaches to idea of cultural and political expression.
5. Demonizing the Internet: Some governments, religious groups and conservative parties have pumped significant resources to demonize the Internet using a variety of alarmist discourses — terrorism, child pornography, addiction, stalking, public safety and online bullying. Their solution to the problem of course is to limit access to the Internet; limit user freedoms; monitor user behaviour etc. This type of policy response has had hugely negative impact on digital citizenship. The challenge before us is to ensure safety of men, women and children online without having to sacrifice the democratic potential of the Internet.
6. Outdated and static policy: The problem of archaic legislations pre-dates the internet era; the IT Act for instance replicates many of the standard restrictions present in Art. 19(2) of the constitution and the imagination of the Telegraph Act.

The Centre for Internet and Society

Mission

The Centre for Internet and Society will contribute towards realizing the democratic potential of the Internet.

Objectives

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 consumer during policy formulation that impacts digital citizenship. In other words — 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 the academic and pedagogic discussions around new technologies and internet in India, to strengthen core interdisciplinary research practices.

Setting a New Research Agenda

Along with recognising the internet as a technology, it is also necessary to look at the internet as enabling several socio-cultural and political expressions. The emergence of cyberspace, which is probably the figurehead of ICTs, has led to a complex restructuring and re-imagination of the spaces we live in, the communities we belong to, and the lifestyles that we subscribe to. Most of the social sciences studies of internet are centred either around the behaviour of the users online or draw an easy cause-and-effect relationship without being sensitive to the historical and political conditions within which the techno-narratives emerge. As digital technologies, especially the internet, inflect more domains of our lives, many techno-social subjectivities and conditions proliferate, which also need to be understood.

Within contemporary thought and research, there is very little emphasis on trying to conceptualise what it means to have these techno-social instances or how they significantly change the very concepts and references by which we understand the domains of Life, Labour, and Language. Moreover, there are particular ways in which the policies of administration and governance shape these techno-social identities. New legislation of regulation, control and governance often makes these subjectivities and instances invisible (thereby leading to severe discrimination or violence) or mis-recognises them, leading to ineffective policy making. The work that does try to engage with the polity of such technologised conditions, generally relies on Euro-American centric theory which does not explain the particular conditions of globalisation, urbanisation and technologisation in Asia. It becomes increasingly necessary to develop well grounded research on ICTs and cyberspace that:

1. Develops conceptual tools, language and vocabulary of understanding the various ways in which ICTs inflect our registers of life
2. Understand the nuances of the larger socio-political and cultural histories of technologies and their percolation in the Asian context
3. Make larger connections of governmentality, globalisation, urbanisation and the way they alter the relationship between the state and the subject
4. Provide new research that is not only grounded in empiricism and ethnography but also posits the centrality of technology to the various political and cultural concerns of our times in order to inform a more sensitive understanding of internet and cyberspace as well as intervene in the public debates around the same

Potential Differences in Approach

The following are some of the ways in which the Centre for Internet and Society will differ from similar initiatives in the developed world:

1. Focus on systemic reform instead of systemic workarounds: Non-market peer-production based projects such as Linux, Wikipedia and legal alternatives such as Free and Open Source Software [FOSS] and Creative Commons [CC] licenses are insufficient to address the current global knowledge divide. This is because these alternatives only give normative sanctity to unjust policies and practises and can end up only serving a fringe market. Reform of law and not enforcement is the need of the hour in developing countries where most of the population lives in violation of the law.
2. Focus on less policy instead of more policy: Fighting bad policy with more policy cannot be the solution for the developing world, especially since policy has very deterministic impact on practises of ordinary citizens. There seems to be a vicious cycle of policy making and marginalisation of the poor and dis-empowered. New policies → new forms of property → new forms of poverty → new types of crimes → more criminals → more enforcement. Tangible labour and intangible labour.
3. No fetishization of openness: In order to influence policy and practice on Internet — the Centre will work closely with Human Rights, Food Security, Health and Livelihoods sectors. For uncritical devotion to openness advocated by some in the FOSS and CC movement may not be suitable in all contexts — especially Food Security and Health. Communities should not be forced to share their traditional knowledge especially when serious IP inequalities exist.
4. Promoting diversity: The Centre would explore multiple accounts of identity, authorship, attribution, originality, property, commons and public domain especially through accounts of pirates, artists and archivists from the developing world. FOSS, CC and similar alternatives emphasis homogenization, expansion and internationalization of practices and policies. Many scholars and lobbyists from the developing world have fought this globalization of enclosure by prescribing sui-generis law that accounts for local differences. For example — citizens from UK, India and China have very different historical understanding of ownership and stewardship when it comes to tangible property. Even within India property is understood differently in different villages, towns, cities and states. So it is only natural that people from the developing world have a varied understanding of knowledge and other forms of intangible property.
5. Preserving fluidity and informality: The hegemony of text in the developed world has resulted in the static policies and practices that fade into irrelevance because of changes in technology. Today research organisations like IDRC recommend dynamic policies that have change built into them. However, in the developing world the poor and disadvantaged occupy the informal economy where dynamic policies are already the norm. So in many ways the developed world can learn from this.
6. Introducing alternative practices vs. protecting existing practices: From the perspective of sustainability one of the biggest benefits of the networked Information society enabled by the Internet is large scale innovative sharing of tangible and intangible property. Large scale sharing is one way to reduce the carbon footprint of the human race. In most parts of developed world, traditional practises of sharing and common spaces have disappeared therefore there is obviously a need to introduce alternatives. In the developing world however, many traditional forms of sharing are still alive. There is no need to introduce new alternative practices in these contexts. Instead the Centre will work towards studying and protecting these traditional sustainable practices of sharing and innovation from the developing world — especially those that can also be replicated in the developed world.
7. No techno-euphoria: Unlike Telecentre.org, Global Knowledge Partnership and other generic ICT4D projects, the Centre will not adopt an uncritical techno-euphoric stance. Generic ICT4D projects are also known for their silence on substantive issues. The Centre will not advocate the adoption of new technology for the sake of new technology. Instead it would remain primarily a research organisation that aims to influence Internet policies and practices that have the largest and most significant impact on the poor and the disadvantaged.

Internet and the Family

Contemporary public discourse around new Internet technologies carries with it the legacy of the forbidden, the dirty and the desired, which marked the arrival of Internet in India. There is a certain ecology of fear that technology feeds into, producing for us reinforced figures of illegality, of danger and of caution. From the underaged accessing unmoderated, un-policed pornographic material on the Web to the anonymous strangers influencing youth into dangerous situations; from identity theft to extremely violent “deaths” in simulated reality games; from “Orkut Deaths” to MMS Scandals, the Internet technologies have always been mired with moral panic, redefinition of the notions of decency, obscenity and culture in public discourse in India.

The State’s own initial reactions to the Internet have been rooted in technophobia and pathology and a strong desire to police this new space. From attempts at blocking the points of access that supply adult-oriented materials to publishing regulations against the underage use of Internet and mandating recording of identities of public users in cyber-cafes, the State has tried to monitor or thwart the proliferation of unsupervised activities online and fed into the techno-narratives of fear. The images of the Internet-pornographer, the cyber-stalker and the digital paedophile, continue to reinforce the idea of cyberspace as this hyper-space of insecurity which needs ethical monitoring of resources and actions through various regulatory bodies like the State, the State Apparatus, academic institutions and parents.

So prevalent are these narratives of techno-terror that they inform our interactions with digital technologies and spaces to create resistance and suspicion. It is necessary, for a democratization of digital technologies and the realization of the political potential of the Internet, that such narratives are deconstructed and the paranoia and anxiety that surrounds internet technologies, especially in the context of the family and the personal — the building blocks of sustained development and communities — need to be dismantled and mapped accurately.

In its outreach and its public discourse intervention, the Centre envisions itself as ethically and politically responsible research organisation dealing with questions of danger, anxiety or threat on digital spaces and helping the larger public in engaging with questions and issues without giving in to the ecology of fear. Through the creating of online resources for parents and communities, collaborating with local daily newspapers and magazines, through awareness-raising and information dissemination of necessary precautions and possibilities of Internet, the Centre hopes to achieve a more techno-friendly environment. Simultaneously, as researchers and practitioners of digital technologies, we would also like to engage with the possibilities of dangers that new users might face online and create handbooks or preparatory material that helps them in negotiating with these new spaces.

Moreover, we would like to emphasise, how, in the quickly changing social textures where families are disintegrating, dislocating and separating with the ethos of accelerated globalization, digital technologies in fact help in finding common areas of recreation, interaction, communication and community in an unprecedented manner. As we make a paradigm shift from a feudal democratic social functioning to a capital corporate consumerism, there are new ways in which Internet technologies enter our personal, private and familial spaces. Research that looks at how the family unit, which has long since been recognized as the building block of India, acquires new contours when inflected with the narratives of technology — from new and aspired economic mobilizations due to the outsourcing and back-processing industry to cultural openness and heterogenisation; from political spaces of negotiation to social integration of progressive value systems and ideals.

IPR and Trade

Dominance of nations in the world today is established through economic might and not through wars and conquests as in earlier times. Access to global knowledge is the key prerequisite for achieving a dominant position. The opening up of the world economy has led to the witnessing of a nodal shift in the quality and volume of trade which takes place across borders.

The advancement in science and technology has led to a situation where production of goods and services is increasingly a knowledge based activity and the variety and quality of innovations as well as laws and rules of sale and distribution determine success in the world market. Hence international trade as we understand it today signifies not just movement of goods and services across borders, but also increasing the movement of knowledge based goods across the world. According to a UN study, the movement of knowledge-intensive goods in total world trade has doubled between 1980 and 1994 from 12% to 24%.

Intellectual Property, like any other objects of trade, can be owned, bequeathed, sold or bought. The major features that distinguish it from other forms are its intangibility and non-exhaustion by consumption. Intellectual property pervades all sectors of economy and appropriate policies plays a fundamental role in promoting innovation, access and competitiveness. Unfortunately, right-holders in developing countries have been pushing for IPR expansion and maximalism and consequently the prices of food, medicine, text-books, technology, software and culture has risen dramatically excluding majority of the population in the developing world. In the light of this, the IP law has become of primary importance and the subject of focus and contention in international trade negotiation.

Developed countries thanks to well organised corporate lobbies and insufficient push-back from citizen’s groups zealously guard their own intellectual property and employ it instrumentally to negotiate greater access and penetration into developing world markets. Thus many bilateral and regional trade agreements focus on offering concessions and lowered tariffs (on tangible products such as agro-produce, textiles), in exchange for a commitment to expand national intellectual property laws. In addition to this, nations also enter into agreements to impose sanctions on another country or region, for failure to comply with their wishes. Developing or small countries are forced into buckling down to pressure from developed countries if they want to enter the world market. Since developing country negotiators are unaware of the real cost and implications of maximalist IPR regimes and consequent financial outflows, often these agreements are hugely detrimental to their long-term economic interest. A reverse and more positive example of such an institutional asymmetric battle is the Antigua’s victory at the WTO against the USA. USA is indeed chief amongst the countries pushing for such treaties all over the world. Another dominant player in the world market is the EU which has entered into bi-lateral agreements with several countries.

India has entered into seven bilateral agreements relating to intellectual property with Australia, Germany, Switzerland, France, UK, Japan, the European Patent Office (EPO) and USA. A common thread running through all these treaties is the expansion tightening of Indian intellectual property laws, which acts as an effective barrier to accessing knowledge. This, in turn, will limit our exposure to resources, ideas, opinions, world cultures and phenomena. And subsequently diminish our informed and active participation in world politics and trade.

It is hence of primary importance that the Centre actively monitors and tracks treaties and agreements which will hinder the intellectual, commercial, socio-cultural and scientific development of developing countries including India. Informed by this research the Centre will advocate for changes from pro-consumer and pro-citizen perspective before, during and after the signing of these bilateral and multilateral treaties. Towards this end the Centre will work with the media, civil society, consumer groups, private sector and responsible government representatives.

The Centre shall constantly review and advocate for reforms to the intellectual property laws of the country, such as suggesting amendments to the Indian Copyright Act and work towards harmonising the interests of the creators of intellectual property with those of the individual, minority or disadvantaged groups and society at large, while at the same time keeping the progress of the country in mind.

At the international level, the Centre shall also try to identify and work with a network of organizations across the globe like the IQ Sensato, South Centre, Consumers International, EIFL, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Knowledge Ecology International, which are working towards the common goal of eliminating barriers to accessing knowledge. The Centre shall advocate against technological protection measures like the DMCA and advocate and support minimum limitations and exceptions such as the proposal submitted by Chile to the WIPO Copyright Committee in December 2006, to protect the rights of the disabled, the aged, the academic sector and librarians. The Centre shall strongly support initiatives embracing a rights perspective such as the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities adopted by the General Assembly in 1993 and the World Blind Union’s global Right to Read campaign launched in April 2008.

Activities

Scholarships: Grants of Rs. 80,000 for policy and practise oriented research projects. These projects are expected to have a 6 month life cycle. Scholars are expected to produce a paper which can be submitted to a scholarly journal. Select papers will be published in the Centre’s own journal.

Distinguished Fellows: Distinguished fellowships will be offered to global and regional experts who will lend credibility to the project, are able to open doors to a plethora of contacts and will contribute substantively to research activities. To begin with the Distinguished Fellows will be Lawrence Liang, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh and Dr. Subbaiah Arunachalam.

Publications: The Centre will produce a mix of digital and hard-copy publications — blog, wiki, policy briefings, comics and a scholarly journal. Detailed and atomized versions of knowledge will be specially prepared and designed for different audiences with different attention spans.

Project Inception Grants and Hosted Research/Practise Projects: This operational modality has been designed to scale up the activities of the Centre without undermining the core-grant support from Kusuma Foundation. Persons with existing research/practise projects will be invited to spend 6 months at the centre working on a solid project proposal and applying for funding. Once funds are raised the project will be housed at the Centre and executed under the supervision and guidance of the Centre’s core team. A 10% fees will be charged for institutional development. Under the leadership of these fellows the Centre will execute or commission large scale national, regional and international research projects. Potential partners in this area are CIDA, SIDA, UN Family and IDRC.

Policy Advocacy: The Centre will monitor and contribute to Internet related policy formulation at the national and international level, working with government, private, academic, public and civil society organisations to develop and reform policies.

Curricula Development: Since the Centre is not located within the context of a reputed university or college — it will endeavour to work with many universities and colleges to develop Internet related curricula. For example — programme in Media Governance at Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Art and Public Intervention Fellowship: The Centre will host one new media artist every year. Some funds will be reserved so that the artist can undertake public media interventions that are connected with the substantive issues being explored at the Centre.

Substantive Areas of Engagement

The Centre will engage with the entire spectrum from the positive to the negative aspects of the Internet and its impact on society. It will celebrate, endorse and promote the positive aspects. It will unequivocally condemn and oppose the negative aspects. For those aspects and developments that lie between the obviously positive and negative on the spectrum — the Centre will undertake objective, evidence based research from a citizen and consumer perspective. Based on the results of this research the Centre will organise advocacy campaigns and initiate practical interventions of reform and change.

Celebrate

Free and Open Source Software: Promote the ideas and practices of Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative. Lobby to introduce vendor neutral curriculum in government funded high schools and colleges. Ensure that Government tender documents are free of product names, proprietary standards and trademarks. Ensure via policies that most if not all software developed using public money is licensed under a valid FOSS license and is archived publicly.

Open Standards: Back any global or national definition of Open Standards which is in line with the EU IDABC definition. Ensure that e-government sites and services comply to open standards thereby providing equal and perpetual access to all. Ensure accessibility of public digital infrastructure to the disabled, aged, illiterate and neo-literate populations. Promote the formulation of Government Interoperability Frameworks. Monitor events at Global and National Standards Setting Organisations especially around standards with enormous network impact. For example — SCOSTA in India, Interoperability Catalogue in China. Promote adoption of open standards by civil society networks.

Open Content and Open Access: Promote the definitions, ideas and practices of the Creative Commons, Open Access, Open Data and Open Educational Resources movements. Promoting the creation of institutional repositories and multimedia archives. Promote national and institutional policies on Open Content issues. Study the nature of adoption of Open Content licenses and the link to sustainability. Oppose the Indian equivalent of the Bayh-Dole Act that is being proposed by the Department of Biotechnology under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Anonymity: Legal research and reform to protect independent media, whistle-blowers and bloggers. Promotion of research and awareness of cryptography tools and technologies such as GPG, Martus and FreeNet. Publish guides and primers for anonymous publishing, sharing and accessing especially for civil society and human rights organisations.

Open Hardware: Promote the reverse-engineering and study of desktop, laptop and mobile hardware in the tradition of Prof. Edward Felten, Centre for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University. Promoting safety on financial transactions on the mobile phone, ATMs and electronic voting machines. Promoting awareness and participation in projects such as OpenBrick, Open Moko, OLPC XO, Simputer etc.

Network Neutrality: Represent a citizens perspective in Network Neutrality debates. Monitor band-width throttling and shaping practices employed by ISPs and web hosting companies. Promote National Internet Exchanges to reduce unnecessary traffic.

Crowd Sourcing: Monitor and understand the rise of crowd-sourcing. Projects such as reCAPTCHA, dotSub etc. Examining and analysing large scale physical and virtual political mobilization using Internet and mobile technologies — especially looking at recent events in Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and Bhutan.

Climate Change: Document and understand how developing world innovation — street innovation — jugaad — contributes to reducing the carbon footprint of Internet technologies. Supporting projects that promote more granular and intensive sharing of physical property such as Seti@Home, Freecycle.org, Zipcar.com, Couchsurfing.com, Homeexchange.com, textbookexchange.com, Carpooling India etc.

Criticise

Censorship: Support, extend and localise the work of Open Network Initiative. Understanding self-censorship by media and blogosphere. Research and promote the use of circumvention tools such as Psiphon and TOR. Track the cultural flows in presence and absence of censorship. Research and lobby for enlightened Internet censorship policy where poor policies exist.

Surveillance: Analysing and creating surveillance policies and practices of governments and ISPs. Understanding terms of use, privacy policies and data-retention policies of Application Service Providers [ASPs], Social Networking Engines, Search Engines etc. Monitoring security dimension and social impact of systems of identification, authentication, tracking including bio-metrics, RFID, GPS etc.

Hate Speech: Monitoring hate speech online. Contributing to the authoring of conduct for bloggers and other online constituencies. Supporting dialogue across religious, cultural and language divides such as India-Pakistan friendship club etc.

Sexual Exploitation: Researching the production and trafficking of exploitative content. Working on codes of conducts for adult websites and online sex workers. Researching stalking and other forms of online sexual harassment. Supporting projects such as Blank Noise.

Addiction: Investigate addiction to online shopping, pornography and gambling. Examining government funded research and interventions in this area especially in China, Korea and Vietnam.

Research

Participation Divide: Examine class, caste, religious, gender divides in participation on various Social Networking Sites, Blogosphere, Mailing Lists, Discussion Forum. Also examine aggregation and synthesis systems such as Global Voices and Wikipedia. Localise and extend the work of Dana Boyd. Ensuring that ICT4D projects retain their generative characteristic — citizens as both consumers and producers of information on the Internet. Promote replication of projects like Cybermohallah where technologies for information production and consumption are present.

Piracy: Monitor the enforcement policy, practices, players and other components of the eco-system. Prove that piracy contributes to creativity, innovation, capacity building and adoption of technology. Research piracy as a global political movement — Pirate Parties. Understand the aesthetic and cultural impact of piracy in books, music, film and software.

Intellectual Property Rights and Trade: Support the work of Knowledge Ecology International, South Centre, Electronic Frontier Foundation and IQ Sensato. Monitor and contribute the reform of Indian copyright, patent and competition law at national and international level. Analyse the IP component of multilateral and bi-lateral trade agreements and oppose maximalist developments. Map all the organisations lobbying for change in the law and their demands. Represent and support citizen and consumer rights while advocating IPR law reform. Advocate against DMCA-like provisions and expand exceptions and limitations. Support IPR alternatives such as prize funds, patent pools etc.

Family: Understand how Internet at work and home has contributed to transformation of personalities and relationships within communities and families. Document how free access to a broad range of content and services negatively and positively impacts remote and rural cultures. Advocate for best-practices and safety standards that will shield children and youth from cyber-stalkers, fraudsters, criminals, fanatics and paedophiles. Provide support to parents who wish to shield their children from harmful content on the Internet by using firewall and filters.

Information and Communication Technology for Development [ICT4D]: Promote adoption and support the implementation of Right to Information / Freedom of Information Law. Promote open data, open spectrum, public wi-fi, community radio policies in partnership with existing practitioner and research networks.

Co-ordination with other Donors

The following is a short list of donors who are working in the area of Internet policies and practices and related areas. The Centre will take advantage of strategic policy opportunities to work in close cooperation with these and other similar donors.

Hivos: Hivos is supporting the work of Sarai, ALF and Mahiti. They have a co-funding agreement with OSI-IP. With recent change in Dutch government there is much more emphasis on quantitative monitoring and evaluation — as a consequence they may reduce research and advocacy related support. However they will continue to be interested in capacity building.

International Development Research Centre (IDRC): Will commission a USD 200,000 scoping study for an IP research network. Will then spend roughly USD 2 million a year on IP. Overall size of global ICT4D portfolio is roughly USD 21 million.

Open Society Institute — Information Programme (OSI-IP): Spends approximately USD 1 million a year on IP and a total of USD 7 million a year on its Information Programme. The Centre could co-fund or collaborate on capacity building, advocacy and lobbying interventions.

Ford Foundation: Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom is one of Ford Foundation’s 3 main program areas. They give away approximately USD 580 million a year. They also fund the piracy project that Sarai and ALF are involved with.

Hewlett Foundation: Give away 900 million USD per year. Education is one of the 6 main programmes. They are the biggest donor and supporter of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.

Google Foundation: Has no explicit focus on Internet but two of the initiatives will offer opportunities for collaboration — “Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services” and “Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.”

Immediate Opportunities for Policy Intervention

The following is a short list of countries where there are immediate opportunities for policy intervention thanks to the work of UNDP, OSI, IDRC etc.

India: Dr. Arunachalam is working on reform on policy of Indian National Science Academy. The Ministry of Science and Technology is planning to introduce draft legislation for debate in the Indian parliament modelled on the United States’ 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which gave US universities and research institutes intellectual property rights over public-funded research.

Tajikistan: OSI is interested in helping the government formulate Open Standards policy.

Saudi Arabia: Draft policy has been submitted in partnership with UNDP-Saudi Arabia. The King Abdul Aziz Centre for Science and Technology will be launching a Centre for Open Technologies.

Moldova: Draft policy on FOSS and Open Standards has been submitted by UNDP-Moldova to the Government.

Malaysia: Ex-UNDP colleague is heading Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit, (MAMPU), Open Source Competency Centre.

Bangladesh: UNDP is supporting the Prime Minister’s Office with e-Governance implementation. The Chief Advisor of the current care-taker government is Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is from civil society and sympathetic to citizen’s interests.

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