The Bombay High court recently passed a John Doe order laying down a set of safeguards to minimise over-blocking. The Delhi High Court on the other hand ordered blocking of 73 websites for showing “substantial” pirated content. This blog post traces the history of John Doe orders in India, their imp...
Technology, Media & Telecommunications
By Kritika Bharadwaj The Central Government notified certain sections of the Aadhaar(Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016(‘the Act’)last month. As of now, only the sections setting out the establishment, powers and functions of the Unique Identificatio...
By Gangesh Varma** The ‘control-of-the-Internet’ rhetoric never lost its appeal. The domestic politics in United States, particularly the opposition from Republican Senators , is not a new obstacle to the IANA Transition. The Republican Party Platform for 2016 captures the key policy positions of th...
by sflc_admin | August 3, 2016 SFLC.in organized a roundtable discussion on 28th July, 2016 in New Delhi to initiate a focused and collaborative dialogue around the increasingly important issues of online harassment and hate speech. This roundtable was intended as the first in a series of discussion...
by sflc_admin | August 2, 2016 The digital India initiative, coupled with the Government’s plan to boost emergence of start-ups in India points directly to an economy supported by the digital infrastructure. A swift shift to the information based economy requires a rapid alteration in the modus oper...
by sflc_admin | August 1, 2016 On June 10, 2016, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) floated a Consultation Paper on Cloud Computing and invited comments from the industry and other stakeholders on the following broad issues: regulatory framework for cloud computing; security over the cl...
By Lily Xiao and Victoria Christie [1] for the Dirty Picture Project. For more details on this project, write to Aarti at var _em0_0="aarti*b",_em0_1="havana$",_em0_2="nludelh",_em0_3="i*ac*in";document.write(" "+window.__liDecEmail(_em0_0,_em0_1,_em0_2,_em0_3)+" ") aartibhavananludelhiacin Upon its...
by sflc_admin | July 23, 2016 The advances made possible by the advent of the Internet have impacted the notion of free speech in a great many ways. Online intermediary platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Google enable individuals to be active publishers of information in addition to passive rec...
In the weeks leading up to the finalisation of the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 1 Report, we traced the evolution of each recommendation. While things have been quiet on the drafting front, there has been a lot of activity towards completing and implementing Work Stream 1 recommendations, to clea...
BALAJI MOTION PICTURES LTD AND ANR. V. BHARAT SANCHAR NIGAM LTD. AND ANR. An analysis of the recent order of the Bombay High Court relating to “ John Doe” or “Ashok Kumar” orders and the changing trends in granting the same. INTRODUCTIONS In India, Intellectual Property Right is become the most prom...
by sflc_admin | July 15, 2016 SFLC.in, Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom (DAKF) and InfoPark Ernakulam Public Library Branch are jointly organising a discussion session to gather inputs from various stakeholders for the upcoming IT Policy of the Kerala State Government.The participants inclu...
At the time of posting, mobile internet services continue to remain suspended in parts of Jammu & Kashmir for the sixth consecutive day. The shutdown was enforced in response to the tense law and order situation prevailing in the Kashmir valley following the death of Burhan Wani, a top commande...
By Lily Xiao On 7 June 2016, ongoing discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama culminated in the US-India Cyber Relationship Framework , expected to be signed within 60 days. As part of a deepening strategic partnership between the US and India, the Framework establ...
by sflc_admin | July 5, 2016 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 30, 2016 published a Pre-Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality, inviting stakeholder comments on 6 broad questions including the core principles of net neutrality, permissible traffic management techniques that may b...
by sflc_admin | July 5, 2016 The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution on 1st July, 2016, condemning network disruptions and measures resorted by states to curb online access and/or dissemination of information. Moreover, this resolution affirmed that rights in the online sphere, e...
by sflc_admin | July 1, 2016 On 19 May, 2016 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India floated a Consultation Paper on Free Data, inviting stakeholder comments on the need for a Telecom Service Provider agnostic platform to provide free Internet to the under-privileged, the need to regulate such pla...
by sflc_admin | June 29, 2016 The Indian Supreme Court on 29th June, 2016 refused to entertain a petition that sought a ban on WhatsApp and other similar applications that use strong end to end encryption technologies to safeguard the communications on their services. The petition stated that employ...
Today, a division bench of the Supreme Court of India comprising of the Chief Justice Thakur and Justice Khanwalkar examined a public interest litigation petition seeking a ban on Whatsapp and analogous messenger apps. The petition, filed by Mr. Sudhir Yadav, states that the complete end-to-end encr...
The upcoming 56th ICANN meeting shall be held in Helsinki, Finland from 27-30th June 2016. This is the first ‘Meeting B’ as per the new meeting strategy , which means a shorter, 4-day meeting focusing solely on policy work and outreach, and no public forum or public board meeting. A full schedule of...