Centre for Internet and Society

"While appreciating the need for stopping "Software Piracy", the attention of the Government should however be drawn to long term strategies to make Piracy un economical to both the "Pirate" and the "Consumer". The industry has seen a dramatic reduction of pirated copies of Windows since its prices were brought down. The continuation of piracy in other software is to a large extent a result of unreasonable pricing by manufactures. Prices are being determined by them based on their costs and profit requirements rather than the utility value of the software. For example, how many home users can justify the need to buy a Office 2000 paying say around Rs 20,000 which is the cost of the entire hardware system they have bought?. Most offices would find it uneconomical to buy software at such costs. "

"All of these licenses also suffer from the additional mis-feature of arbitrary retroactivity: "The City may at any time and from time to time add, delete, or change the datasets or these Terms of Use. Notice of changes may be posted on the home page for these datasets or this page. Any change is effective immediately upon posting, unless otherwise stated" These two clauses mean that there is no stability for someone using this data. If, something they do or say (data related or not) is not liked by the city whose data they are using, they can lose access. Or if the city finds that many data users are doing things they do not like, they can change the terms of reference to impact data previously obtained by users."

Information generated and collected by public sector entities represents a veritable minefield; it might make a much greater contribution to EU economies and societies, if current legal barriers to access and re-use were removed. The LAPSI (Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information) project intends to build a network apt to become the main European point of reference for high-level policy discussions and strategic action on all legal issues related to the access and the re-use of the PSI namely in the digital environment. The debate is to be organized around four focal points: (1) implementation and deployment issues; (2) design of the incentives for public bodies and private players, both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors, to make available and, respectively, to re-use public data; (3) special consideration of infra- and supra-national levels of access and re-use policies and practices, intended to enlist the dynamic forces of regulatory competition and to bring out the full potential of cross-border, EU-wide services; and crucially (4) strategic vision and occasions for out-of-the box thinking for the next steps ahead in policy making.

"The six classes of works are: (1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances: (i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students; (ii) Documentary filmmaking; (iii) Noncommercial videos (2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset. (3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network. (4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if: (i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and (ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation

The World Bank announced this week (April 2010) a new open data initiative, which provides free and open access to the Bank's health and development data, including 2,000 social, economic, financial, institutional, and environmental indicators. The World Development Indicators, the Bank's most popular statistical resource, consist of over 900 indicators for 200 countries alone, including many that go back to 1960. The Bank has also opened up access to the Global Development Finance, Africa Development Indicators, Global Economic Monitor, and indicators from the Doing Business Report.

"Since then downloads have come to dominate the top 40. About 98% of all single sales are now from downloads, with about 100,000 needed every week to get to the top spot."

"On 4th June 2010 the UK government released A whole load of useful data about much the governemt has been spending on various things we parse this data for you " This website provides it in easily parseable csv format.

Expenditure and procurement information.

Accessing the Internet through sms.

National Income 1.0 Gross Domestic Product 1.1 State Domestic Product 1.2 Input- Output Table Agriculture * Land utilisation statistics * Area under principal crops * Production of principal crops * Average yield of principal crops * Availability of food grains * Net and gross area irrigated Transport * Railways- General statistics * Total road length by surface, Number of registered motor vehicles * Civil Aviation- Domestic services-International services * Shipping Industry * Production of selected items of major manufacturing industries * Index number of industrial production (Base:1993-94=100) * Annual survey of industries: Employment and value added -Statewise :Factory sector - 2003-04 & 2004-05 * Performance of Small Scale Industries Sector Energy * Primary source of energy (production) * Electricity: Generated and sold * Rural electrification in India Communication * Posts Telegraphs and Telephones Employment * Employment in public and private sector * Employment in Railways, Insurance * Factory employment * employment in banking,plantation Poverty & Employment Tourism * Number of foreign tourists to India by country of nationality * Prices * Index number of wholesale prices (By major groups and sub-groups) (Base: 1993-94=100) * Index number of consumer prices - Industrial workers (Base: 1982=100) * Index number of consumer prices - Agricultural labourers (Base: 1986-87=100) * Index number of consumer prices - Urban non-manual employees (Base: 1984-85=100) Social Statistics Balance of Payments * Overall balance of payments - Current account. * Overall balance of payments - Capital account. * Financing of payment deficits by plan periods * Foreign exchange reserves * External assistance - authorization and utilization classified by source Public Finance * Overall budgetary posit

"The country's existing information framework is scattered, with each state establishing its own data centre for automating land records, transport and municipal applications, among others. The PII plans to host all software applications on a cloud (internet), increasing efficiency and speed as well as slashing costs. "Government schemes costing about Rs 130,000 crore annually exist in silos. There is no single delivery point for citizens," said a presentation highlighting the PII's need. "The PII will consolidate about 100 schemes of India, spread across 75 departments and 35 states into a single information infrastructure." Mr Pitroda said duplicity in data will thus be removed. "Each department in the country wants to make its own software, even if it does exactly the same thing," he said. "

"Where then do solutions lie? Not in seeing any particular tool, movement, struggle or law as the magic wand. That only takes us to the same mindset which has resulted in our democratic institutions becoming perverted versions of what they were meant to be. Democracy in the last 50 years has been manipulated so that democratic participation has been reduced to a vote once every five years. Asserting one's right to participate in decision-making in an everyday sense, rather than once every five years, carries with it the responsibility of using that space. The dispossessed are always prepared to seize any new space. Indian democracy will only reflect the peoples' voice if it changes its emphasis from the present representative character to a genuine participation of the people themselves. And here lies the burden on all of us. The battle is for more than a right to ask, more than a right to monitor; indeed it is an important first step in an assertion to be heard and to call the bluff of a democratic system. By the people? Of the people? For the people?"

"In fact, more than combating corruption, the RTI campaign can serve as an effective tool to control the arbitrary use of power, and combat the failure of regulatory mechanisms in maintaining the rule of law. In all arenas - whether in economic policy or human rights - the need to make the matter public can act as a constraint on misgovernance. In this framework, the right to information is both a basic principle and a tool to enhance the political participation of ordinary citizens, where ethics and accountability work both ways - for the government to inform and people themselves to be more ethical in public life. By reinserting public ethics into our political discourse, it reinforces a position that no real alternative politics is possible without firmly establishing public ethics."

* Datum Conversion Package * Tool to generate Metadata as per NSDI standards in 'XML' format * Tool to load Metadata Records from XML file into PostGreSQl Database * NNRMS Viewer