Internet Governance/Advocacy

2021

Anita Gurumurthy was a part of the IGF 2021 Main Session: Digital Cooperation- Quo vadis? on December 8, 2021 where she gave a statement on the role IGF can play in digital cooperation.

Read it here.

This session was for assessing Internet governance approaches and mechanisms and…

2021
Why legalizing crypto assets is dangerous

The Indian Government appears convinced that cryptocurrency is a dangerous proposition. Cryptocurrency enables relatively invisible transactions, with serious implications for crime, terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. Another worry is that…

2021

Just Net Coalition, along with more than 170 civil society groups addressed an Open Letter to the UN Secretary General urging him to shelve plans for a High Level Multistakeholder Body which, if set up, can be expected to become the default apex global digital governance and policy body. This…

2021

The draft Digital Markets Act envisages the obligations of data sharing by large gatekeeper platforms along with ex-ante oversight by the regulator of such platforms, in the EU. This regulation is framed as a part of the Digital Services Act Package, being discussed by the EU to regulate the…

2021

The new Intermediary Guidelines (IL Guidelines), require messaging platforms that have over 50 lakh registered users (such as WhatsApp) “enable the identification of the first originator of the information”.

The challenge from WhatsApp is that this impinges on an individual’s…

2021

IT for Change responded to the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare public consultation white paper for the India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA). The key points of our submission are summarized below.

The full submission may be found here.

IDEA will prevent…
2021

IT for Change responded to the call from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs for public consultation on the proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020.

Read the full submission here.

In light of the growing recognition of the dominance of certain platforms in…

2021

Karnataka’s Open Data Policy opens up a Pandora’s box of concerns for public interest and citizen rights

Last week, the Government of Karnataka (GoK) notified its Open Data Policy (ODP) to open up government-held personal and non-personal datasets for “innovation, co-creation and research”.…
2021

IT for Change's research series on Intelligence Infrastructures interrogates essential digital infrastructures that underpin the economy, society, and governance, putting the spotlight on the need for democratic control of these building blocks of tomorrow. Policies must straddle a people-…

2020

Recently, governments in France and Australia have introduced measure to make news aggregators such as Google pay for re-use of news. The move will benefit news publishers struggling to navigate the platform-mediated digital era. While the competition regulator in France has effectively pushed…

2020

The tourism industry across the world is staring at bleak prospects in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In India, the sector is staring at a potential loss of Rs 1.25 trillion over the next two quarters while 38 million jobs stand in grave danger in the coming months.

In 2019, we…

2020

The advent of a digital society is fundamentally transforming our social and economic relationships. The nature of the dominant model of digital society means that global digital corporations – based in the US, and some in China – are dictating the terms and shaping the global socio-economic…

2020

This report was produced as part of the research project ‘Policy frameworks for digital platforms - Moving from openness to inclusion’.The report provides evidence from the Nigerian context to complement the global debate on designing appropriate regulatory frameworks for platforms that ensure…

2020

The Data Governance Network (DGN) was established by the IDFC Institute in 2019 to bring together some of India's leading policy think-tanks. It identifies policy gaps in data governance and seeks to bridge them through policy interventions, research and advocacy. IT for Change was selected to…

2020

This policy brief reviews current trends in the regulation of data collection and analysis with a focus on platforms. In particular, it interrogates emerging regulatory frameworks that shape, constrain, or advance citizens’ control over personal (and related) data. In doing so, it points to…