Internet governance

2018

A global Internet with unrestrained global flow of data has been held up as the ideal. However, while there is great value in it, there are also other, often competing, imperatives of ensuring rule of law over the internet and data, and using local and national data for encouraging domestic digital industry and for policy making and governance…

2018

This document puts forth a research framework for ‘Policy Frameworks for Digital Platforms - Moving from Openness to Inclusion’. It outlines and clarifies the key concepts invoked in this project and offers a broad meta research framework for the project. This framework has been constructed ground-up from a synthesis of the research proposals…

2017

The Just Net Coalition (JNC) has sent an open letter to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, voicing its objection to World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) official recommendation of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). The use of EME, developed by W3C, poses a risk to billions of people's security and privacy, and restricts their access to…

2017

In our response to the timely consultation paper by TRAI on  Privacy, Security and Ownership of the Data in the Telecom Sector we advocate for a broad spectrum of safeguarded data including 'collective/social data' in light of its commercial value. The paper recognizes that consent based ownership frameworks are inadequate for various reasons…

2017
Summary

At MC 11, the United States, Japan and European Union are actively pushing for a liberalised e-commerce regime that will reinforce the rules for trade set by the global North. Key to this dominant discourse is the persuasive rhetoric on free cross-border data flows as a means for smaller players to…

2017

In the light of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing recommendations on Net Neutrality, this article by Anita Gurumuthy discusses the significance of TRAI recommendations.  TRAI’ s stand presents a contrast to US government’s decision to roll back net neutrality. When Internet access is already not equal, revoking net…

2017

Platforms are to the network age what the factory was to the industrial revolution. From popular imagination to research activity, there is a palpable sense of a new turn in economic reorganization, implicating productivity, growth, jobs and skills in the future economy. The dominant mood is about innovation and opportunity. However, there is a…

2017

The nine-judge bench of India’s Supreme Court has just ruled that “privacy is intrinsic to freedom of life and personal liberty” guaranteed in Article 21 of the Constitution of India and qualifies as “a primal natural right”. In this article, Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami reflect on how this judgement is only a beginning. The de facto…

2017

In April 2017, IT for Change with support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada participated in a multi-country research study to map the key issues/concerns for the rights and inclusion agenda, stemming from pervasive platformization, in three key domains – economy, knowledge and governance. Through a detailed analysis of…

2017

Between 2015-2017, IT for Change actively engaged in a series of consultations convened by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on regulation of Over-the-Top services, differential pricing of data, and core principles of net neutrality in the Indian context.
In these responses, IT for Change develops a unique set of…