platform regulation

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…

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…

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Platformization is a key facet of the global economy today. Platforms, as understood through informational capitalism, are not just online market places – they are market makers. As “a set of digital frameworks for social and marketplace interactions” (Kenny & Zysman, 2016), platforms replace…

As part of the Just Net Coalition, IT for Change helped develop draft input text on the human rights obligations of digital TNCs, for an international legally binding instrument on Transnational Corporations. This will be submitted to the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises…

IT for Change submitted comments to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on the Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality. We urge the development of "Core Principles of Net Neutrality" based on human rights, equity and social justice.

The Internet must be claimed as a level playing field that…

By allowing content providers to subsidize access to their sites, using the logic of Internet exceptionalism, India’s telecom provider is weakening its previous stance on net neutrality. Read more in Parminder Jeet Singh's piece for The Hindu.

The Internet has now become an enabler of rights and an essential precondition for full participation in the information society. However, issues of corporate and state surveillance, and the enormous influence that corporate policies have on the way our fundamental rights are exercised, exhorts us to embark on an urgent…

Parminder Jeet Singh discusses how the digital has triggered a transformation where digital companies are taking over traditional sectors and established a monopoly in those sectors, one that is powerful enough to challenge traditional state controls. Read his article in The Hindu here.

Following TRAI's historic ruling that prohibits the discriminatory tariffs for data services, Parminder Jeet Singh, in this op-ed in the Deccan Herald, discusses how TRAI has asserted its regulatory control over the Internet by ensuring data services are not discriminated based on content and are provided as a regulated public utility. 

Following Face book’s aggressive campaign to gain public support for Free Basics, Parminder Jeet Singh in this article in The Hindu argues how while the campaign utterly failed in its intended purpose, its unintended consequences may have done a lot of good to India in shaping a new level of consciousness around digital rights in India.