For long, Internet activists considered the Internet as being beyond law, politics and governments. J.P. Barlow made the famous Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in 1996. It was fine when this phenomenon was just shaping up and challenging established institutions. But with the Internet and data becoming central to new social and…
Parminder Jeet Singh
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…
The paper, developed for the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, examines, the nature of digital economy in a developing country context, focussing the study partly on Bengaluru, often called the Silicon Valley of the South. It distinguishes digital industry from the earlier software industry and then the Internet industry. The paper defines…
On 20th July, 2013, Parminder Jeet Singh drafted a position paper reflecting on the current nature of e-governance schemes upon sampling and studying recent developments in the area, where he posits that the increasing role of ICTs in governance is resulting in a de facto…
The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has spawned similar initiatives in many countries and regions. However there has been concerns whether some of them merely legitimate corporate lobbying, making it more respectable and institutionalised now. In this context, it is important that IGF like institutions are carefully nurtured, from within the…
IT for Change deliberates on the outcomes of the International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in this op-ed for The Hindu. We consider the refusal of the US and its allies to sign the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) to be a historic turning point in…
Dear Google; Yes, the world indeed needs an open Internet, for which reason it is rather awful to note that you, meaning, Google;
1) Sold the entire net neutrality campaign down the drain in the US, by first assuming its leadership and then entering into a self-serving agreement with Verizon, whereby the main means of accessing the…
We see four sets of issues that are most important in terms of the forthcoming ITU meeting, World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT), which will revisit the International Telecommunication Regulations. These are as follows:
1. State control over Internet routing system
This is perhaps the single most…
This is a response to Vinton G. Cerf's article on 'Internet Access is Not a Human Right'
Two (very different) kinds of people have opposed terming access to the Internet as a human right. One category is of technology/ Internet-enthusiasts who otherwise argue so much about how the Internet has…
This is a response to an article by Osama Manzar. Read the original article here.
If we did suppose Facebook to be a nation, as Manzar suggests, it would be the only nation that is ruled by a few individuals, in their private interest, and still is not called undemocratic. There are no calls for its 'public and democratic governance' and…