Every once in a while, there is the high optics drama about a woman celebrity or public persona who has been trolled, and then, predictably, the dust settles. But make no mistake. This is but the proverbial tip of an iceberg that is ballooning.
The internet-mediated world presents a contradiction of a magnitude and complexity that…
In this article published in the Economic & Political Weekly (12 January 2019), Amrita Vasudevan revisits current debates on the liability of internet intermediaries in India, in the context of violence against women online.
Read the paper here.
This discussion paper argues that the omnipresence of the digital demands a re-evaluation of legal-institutional response to violence against women. The networked logic of the Internet, and social media platforms that overrun it bank upon virality, effectively rendering ineffectual notions of ‘consent’. The paper attempts to posit a feminist…
Anita Gurumurthy was invited to participate in the Conference for Promotion of Policing Standards (COPPS) 2018 hosted by the Bureau of Police Research and Development and the Indian Police Foundation at BPR&D Conference Hall, New Delhi in May. The conference focused on the future of policing in the digital age. Anita made a presentation on…
The criminal legal system is built on a hierarchy of offences. This is evident from the punishment accorded to different crimes which range from the death penalty to a fine. Brutality of an act is one way in which offences are arranged. For instance, the National Crimes Records Bureau has created category of offences titled ‘violent crimes’…
Drawing from IT for Change’s work, this submission provides an overview of legislative and judicial developments in India with respect to online violence against women. It offers an analysis of the government’s…
Unmasking the web
“#MeToo” – the spontaneous and unstructured campaign, exposed the underbelly of sexual harassment. This campaign would not have had the results it did were it not for the Internet. However, this very same domain with its limitless reach becomes one of the most vicious weapons in perpetrating violence. Sexual harassment…
It’s the end of an era for online activism. We have lost our safe, small, intimate spaces of digital publishing to corporate giants, state-run troll armies, and idiotic online commentary. We must recognize that the politics and policing of this space have shifted under our fingertips and that we must re-strategize how we are going to play the…
This position paper looks at the issue of intermediary filtering in the context of two Supreme Court cases. The first was a petition filed by activist Sabu Matthew George in 2008, asking for a ban on advertisements on search engines related to pre-natal sex determination. The second case was a suo-moto PIL taken up by the Court in 2015, in…
A discussion paper on strengthening existing legal-institutional response mechanisms in connection with technology-mediated violence against women, led to a pre-consultation meeting organized in Bangalore in January 2017. The objective of this pre-consultation organized by IT for Change was to debate the key strategic directions for forging an…