Tag Archives: government

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on state censorship in India

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Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s brilliant article brings out the troubling state of our country today.

Everyone utters the platitude that they respect freedom, but they then use the qualifier that no freedom is absolute in the most mendacious way.
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In fact, the claim made by politicians that this kind of content (i.e. Twitter, Orkut, Facebook) will lead to violence is insulting doubly over. First, it is just a plain lie to justify censorship. Second, what is offensive is that politicians continue to treat Indian citizens as if we were colonial subjects. They infantilise us. They say to us, “you are unable to control your passions, so we have to protect you by censoring”. The truth is the opposite: they want to construct our passions in such a way that they can use that as a pretext to censor.
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Holding them (i.e. social networking sites) pre-emptively responsible for offensive speech is like requiring a profit-making road operator liable for every crime committed on the road because they did not pre-screen every car and driver and
let potential murderers drive. But the issue is not technology. Given the Indian state’s record, it is but natural that any whiff of regulatory control is seen as threatening. A measure of this is the fact that a platitude like “no freedom is absolute” sounds more like a threat when the state utters it.

Link to article

Indian Open Standards policy finalized, with a major victory for the FOSS community

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Amazing work by all the people involved!

Venkatesh Hariharan reported on the Linux Delhi mailing list today:

The open standards policy has been finalized and it incorporates many of the suggestions made by the FOSS community in India. In the previous draft dated 25/11/2009, our major objection was to section 4.1.2 of the policy which said,

“4.1.2 The essential patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should preferably be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard. However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider public interest, then RF on Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered.”

Our comment on this section reads:

The usage of terms like “preferably” in a section titled, “Mandatory Characteristics” weakens the section and could even render it meaningless. Mandatory characteristics should be laid out clearly and unambiguously. The term “essential patent claims,” is meaningless because a standard cannot be implemented partially. Therefore, the ENTIRE standard should be royalty-free and not just the “essential” parts of it. In other words, ALL patent claims necessary to implement the standard should be royalty-free. Also, RF on FRAND/RAND is self-contradictory. If a Standard is Royalty Free (RF) then it cannot be RAND. Therefore, the wording of this section should be changed to “ALL patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard.”

As you can see from the extract below, the points mentioned above have been incorporated In the recently finalized policy. This section now reads:

4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the Standard.

Overall, I’d say this is a major victory for the Indian FOSS community and more than three years of hard work have paid off. The file can be downloaded from here or from here. (click on the links on the top left hand side).