As per MediaNama report, Flipkart has joined Airtel Zero platform, and this is some bad news for advocates of Net Neutrality principle in India. Basically, Flipkart and Airtel (and some other unnamed ecommerce portals and online services) have taken steps which can ruin the basic principles based on which Internet was formed, and an Open…
The internet’s success in fostering innovation, access to knowledge and freedom of speech is in large part due to the principle of net neutrality — the idea that internet service providers give their customers equal access to all lawful websites and services on the internet, without giving priority to any website over another. Due to…
On December 25, 2014, Airtel, the country’s largest mobile operator with over 200 million active subscribers, dropped a bombshell: it wanted to charge customers extra for using services like Skype, Viber and Google Hangouts even though they had already paid for Internet access. If customers wanted to use a service that used Internet data to…
The Indian telecom regulator has proposed 20 questions for your views on two basic topics: should there be licensing of Internet services, and should there be non-discrimination of Internet access via telecom operators. Download the complicated, 118 page long paper here. This consultation has two possible implications: First, if there is licensing of Internet services,…
India’s Supreme Court court has struck down a law that made posting “offensive” comments on the internet a crime punishable by a jail term of up to three years. But, for the free speech campaigners, there is more work to do, writes technology writer Prasanto K Roy. Section 66A, inserted in 2009 into India’s Information…
The Supreme Court today ruled on a series of cases challenging the IT Act, including Section 66A (3 years in prison for offensive statements online), Section 79 and its rules (forcing intermediaries to take down online content) and Section 69 (blocking of online content). How they ruled: Section 66A The bench, consisting of Justices Chelameswar…
Section 66A of the Information Technology Act is unconstitutional in its entirety, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday striking down a “draconian” provision that had led to the arrests of many people for posting content deemed to be “allegedly objectionable” on the Internet.
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The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to explain the arrest of a class 12 boy for allegedly posting an “objectionable” comment about ruling Samajwadi Party leader and Minister Azam Khan on Facebook.
A Bench led by Justice J. Chelameswar gave the State four weeks to respond.
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All the central ministries and departments will have to put in public domain the source code of software and applications developed by them, primarily for e-governance projects, to avoid duplication and cut costs. “The Government of India aims to make public the source code of various software applications/ components/ products as it may consider suitable…
Prof. Akhtarul Wasey is the Commissioner of Linguistic Minorities (CLM), Government of India. This office is a Constitutional authority and Prof. Wasey was appointed to it by the President of India recently. Before he was appointed to the office of CLM, he was the head of the Department of Islamic Studies and the Director of…