From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 2 09:11:41 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Lawrence=20Liang?=) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 03:41:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Bombay plans cyber cafe controls Message-ID: <20040202034141.19850.qmail@web13608.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Mobile: Download the latest polyphonic ringtones. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Rishi Chawla" Subject: [claw-in] [gipi] FYI: Bombay plans cyber cafe controls Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 22:31:17 +0530 Size: 8431 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040202/33c3629d/attachment.mht From db at dannybutt.net Tue Feb 3 07:18:34 2004 From: db at dannybutt.net (Danny Butt) Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 14:48:34 +1300 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Understanding the Patenting of Traditional Knowledge-In response In-Reply-To: <200401310521.31800.jeebesh@sarai.net> Message-ID: Greetings Jeebesh/all Thanks for this thoughtful response. Firstly, my apologies if in my haste I suggested that you were translating open source ideas into traditional knowledge practices. You were of course very careful to outline your notes as an intervention into a property discourse, which as you clearly point out is not a traditional form of knowledge. I agree with you strongly on this. I guess my question then becomes about the perspective from which we engage in cross-cultural dialogue about the political dynamics of traditional knowledge, when custodians of traditional knowledge identify 'property' as the most useful framework to protect their control, when it is under threat from neocolonial interests. The first question which comes to mind immediately is our desire to have a conversation about traditional knowledge and its implications. That is a whole new discussion in itself and I won't pursue it except to say that I have conversations with owners of traditional knowledge and this does come up. I also think the dialogue holds great potential for disrupting some pernicious aspects of transnational capitalism, though I am still unsure about the ethics of my role in trafficking between those particular discussions about traditional knowledge and a broader political project. But an implication is this: we acknowledge indigenous self-determination as a significant part of international anti-capitalist protest activity, and an important social movement. But what if, as a strategy, indigenous groups claim ownership of their traditional knowledge as 'property' (whether or not we think it equates to what we understand to be property). If we take a resolutely 'anti-property' stance affect our ability to affiliate with those struggles? Or, to put it differently, we can look at colonial histories in this part of the world as including successive demands upon traditional knowledge owners to "open up" access to their traditional knowledge, under claims that 'unnecessarily protective' measures will have a negative effect on the communities which produce this knowledge. Can we be confident in our denial of 'property' we are not asking the same thing? The logic of unintended consequences suggests to me that it is an area we tread softly in, despite the urgency of capitalist encroachments on traditional knowledge forms. I'm not sure if this is still on track, but in any case these are the questions your response raised - I look forward to more dialogue around these issues! Cheers Danny Jeebesh Bagchi wrote on 31/1/04 12:51 PM: > Thanks Danny for opening up the question of `freedom` in open source. I would > agree with you that the open source idea of `freedom` would be difficult to > apply in areas of `embodied knowledge practices`. (1) > > My response was not so much about how traditional knowledge will be or can be > or is `protected` by it's practitioners but how IP regimes intervenes within > these knowledge practices and the story then on. > > After IP intervention, a new `disembodied-mobile` knowledge form would emerge > and would be protected through `no end user rights to reproduce or modify`. > It is within this context that user/producer models can help challenge this > dominant form. > > I would never propogate (would shudder) the translation of `open source` ideas > as an intervention into `traditional` forms of knowledge production, > circulation or sustanance. Similarly it is IP regime i refer to when i talk > about end user being an frozen concept within it. > > On the other hand I am not so sure whether we can extrapolate the conceptual > and legal framework of `property` into earlier practices. There is a danger > there. It makes `property` a cultural-legal universal outside the social > arrangement within which it emerged. This is one area i am at present very > cautious and unsure about. > > Though i agree that there are various complicated arrangements and protocols > within which knowledge is sustained, practiced and transmitted. And these > protocols are also about `custodianship` and `withholding`. And these can be > harsh in its `exclusionary` frameworks. But to call these arrangements > property would be difficult. If we take the example of `classical music` in > South Asia, we do see complex social arrangements, codes and protocols that > helped it survive, elaborate and grow. You have to learn through practice > under guidance and then only you will be able to belong to it. But i would > not think it ever articulated a conceptual framework called `property`. > > But, Danny let me add a caveat to your arguments. I think that the problem > with IP regimes along with one of artificial construction of scarcity is one > of what Shuddha calls the `unauthorised interlocutors`. This `unauthorised > interlocutors` could be a problem in other forms of knowledge practices. In > Mahabharata a brilliant archer called Ekalavya had to give us his thumb for > the story to continue. He could not prove his authentication in front of the > `authenticators`. (more of that Sarai reader 04 ....to be out next > month...(..).... > > best and thanks for your lovely response...looking forward to carrying forward > our collective thinking... > > Salaam > Jeebesh > > 1) We would also have to think harder on the american constitutionalism basis > of lot of the arguments to ground open source ideas of freedom. Martin Hardie > has written about this in the forthcoming Sarai Reader 04. (forthcoming) -- http://www.dannybutt.net From shwetashree at hotmail.com Wed Feb 4 13:17:25 2004 From: shwetashree at hotmail.com (Shwetasree Majumder) Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 07:47:25 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] version recordings, tune-borrowings Message-ID: hi! my twopenny bit contribution in response to robin's posting... shwetasree >From: RobinManuel at aol.com >To: commons-law at sarai.net >Subject: [Commons-Law] version recordings, tune-borrowings >Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 17:32:06 EST > > > A few months ago there was discussion here of the anticipated Indian >Parliament decision to delete S.52(1)(j) of the Copyright Act, which would >greatly >limit the vogue of version recordings by requiring producers to obtain the >permission of original copyright holders. Does anyone know if (1) this law >was >passed, and (2) if it was passed, what sorts of effects it has had on the >music industry and the abundance of version recordings? > I am also curious about the legal aspects of the hoary tradition of >Indian film music composers borrowing tunes from foreign (mostly Western) >popular >songs. Are permissions ever secured and royalties paid for such >borrowings, or >do the producers (many on EMI and other large international labels) simply >assume that there is no danger of litigation or conflict? > Peter Manuel (musicologist) >_______________________________________________ >commons-law mailing list >commons-law at sarai.net >https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law _________________________________________________________________ Play the prediction game on MEZ. Win Sehwag�s autographed T-shirts. http://go.msnserver.com/IN/41491.asp Predict and win on myenjoyzone.com. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 01_Majumder.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 92911 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040204/5c7ce2e1/attachment.pdf From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 4 14:27:08 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 00:57:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] More on version recordings Message-ID: <20040204085708.32063.qmail@web13608.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Peter and Shwetasree thanks for your postings. Peter, Delighted to have ou on the list as a number of us have found your work "Cassette Culture" extremely relevant to our own work. I would in fact take a leaf of the history that you provide about the kind of changes that took place with the advent of players like T series within the music industry, and suggest that version recording in India has far more to do with industry structures, entry point than to do woith content. The limitation of most legal responses to the version recording issue ( including the Delhi high court the latest Bathla industries case, ironically filed by T-series ) is that it reads version recording from a content lens (Viz the search for transformative authorship or originality), on the lines of Campbell v. Acuff Rose. My argument is that the version recording clause responds to a different set of concerns and to look for transofrmative authorship is a mistake. One would do better to have a poltical economy understanding of the version recording clause, in terms of the music industry stucture etc and would argue that it fits closer wit the kind of reading that the courts had of the fair use doctrine in the Sega v. Accolade case than Campbell v. Acuff Rose. (vis a vis monopoly markets and the ways in which smaller players enter the scene) I think the music industry scenario is very interesting and perhgaps slightly different form the time that peyter wrote Cassette Culture. Bhagwati a researcher at sarai is tracking the developmenst of a few music companies very closely, and I think his work thus far demonstrates how a large number of smaller comapnies are finding their way into the market using the version recording and remix as the starting point Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ From RobinManuel at aol.com Sat Feb 7 23:46:37 2004 From: RobinManuel at aol.com (RobinManuel at aol.com) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 13:16:37 EST Subject: [Commons-Law] versions etc again Message-ID: <107.2bba61eb.2d568585@aol.com> Dear list members, Many thanks for the responses, private and public, to my post. As a non-lawyer, to whom comprehension of the points made by Lawrence does not come easily, I am a bit out of my league here, and the list moderators should feel free to disbar or censure me should my message(s) be too obtuse. But certainly we seem to share some common interests, including the relation of copyright law to such matters as version recordings. In my "Cassette Culture," I suggested that the vogue of version re cordings might be due at least in part to what I saw as the unusually lax Indian copyright law, according to which the maker of a version recording need not obtain permission from the original copyright holder. But I seem to have been mistaken in thinking that this was unusual. In the US, for example, no such permission is needed, in accordance with compulsory licensing, as long as proper royalties are paid. (Right?) Thus, unless the standard royalty rates in India are much lower than those in, e.g., the US, the nature of Indian copyright laws etc would not in themselves seem to be particularly lax or distinctive, in a way that would be particularly tolerant of versions, more than elsewhere. (Or am I confused again?) Actually, I don’t understand why Indian record companies would oppose version recordings at all, as long as proper royalties are paid by the version producers. HMV et al could of course make good money from such recyclings of their products, which might well exceed the profits from the original sound recording. In the West, I think it’s quite common for such secondary profits (use of a song in ads, cover versions, hip-hop samples, etc) to be very considerable. Do they really want to prohibit versions, or just establish more remunerative standard royalty rates? Ultimately I would like to understand better how copyright law (which is typically a Western-derived, one-size-fits-all entity) articulates with different music cultures, with their own traditions (old or new) of borrowing, recycling etc. The vogue of versions, stock tunes, and recycling melodies in South Asia is one practice. Another different sort of cover-version culture, just for sake of contrast, is that of Jamaican reggae/dancehall, which is based on a finite number (perhaps a dozen) of "riddims" – i.e., sampled accompaniment patterns – which dominate music at any given time, over which the singers rap their lyrics. This practice has its own idiosyncratic relation to copyright law, which I am just learning about. And to conclude, with my original question – does anyone know if there has actually been new legislation on the Indian version situation? Best wishes to all, Peter Manuel From asimov at vsnl.com Sun Feb 8 00:16:58 2004 From: asimov at vsnl.com (Badri Natarajan) Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 18:46:58 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] versions etc again In-Reply-To: <107.2bba61eb.2d568585@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20040207184453.00a8be30@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in> At 01:16 PM 2/7/2004 -0500, you wrote: > Actually, I don’t understand why Indian record >companies would oppose version recordings at all, as long as proper >royalties are >paid by the version producers. HMV et al could of course make good money >from >such recyclings of their products, which might well exceed the profits >from the >original sound recording. In the West, I think it’s quite common for such >secondary profits (use of a song in ads, cover versions, hip-hop samples, >etc) to >be very considerable. Do they really want to prohibit versions, or just >establish more remunerative standard royalty rates? The problem, I believe, is that proper royalties are *not* paid by the version producers and hence, Universal Music and other entities have decided that banning version recordings is a lot simpler than trying to collect the royalties owed to them. I had a blog post on this a few months ago when we first heard about the amendment, with a little more analysis: http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1235 Badri From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 8 02:43:50 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 13:13:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law]Of versions and versus In-Reply-To: <107.2bba61eb.2d568585@aol.com> Message-ID: <20040207211350.88539.qmail@web13606.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Peter The provision has not been changed as yet even though there was the proposed amendment, of which I have a copy. I will try and scan it and send a copy to the list. This is a move that is primarily being pushed by the IMI. Inspite of the fact that the provision has not been amended as yet, it has been significantly diluted by a number of recent decisions, some of which take a very narrow technical legal reading of the section. Let me try to briefly clarify on the legal side, and the difference that I made between the 'content' issue and 'indusrty/ carriage issues' in the previous mail. An exception to infringement in copy right law is what is commonly called the fair use or fair dealing exception. In the onctext of music for instance what has been interpreted as fair use in the US in the campbell v. acuff rose case is the entire question of parody (In this case 2 Live Crew created a 'version' of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman without the license of the copyright owners, and were sued. The SC of the US held that it ws a fair use because there was sufficent originality in the second work, or that there was 'transformative authorship'. I call these as primaily 'content related' interpretations of fair use. The question that I am interested in pushing is whether the version recording caluse has anything to do with content at all or does it speak to another set of concerns? In another case on fair use which has nothing to do without music, namely Sega v. Accolade, the issue concerned the use by a small video games manufacturer of a piece of code of Sega, a video games monopoly company to make their games inter operable with Sega's consoles, as well as reverse engineered to figure put out the functional requirements for compatability. . In this case it was held that even though there was a commercial use, the question that needs to be asked include: What are the public benefits notwithstanding that the alleged infringer may have a commercial benefit? The court recognised that Accolade's actions were necessary in helping towards a more demonopolised video game industry. Now let me return to version recording and how these two cases fit. My interpretation is that the version recording clause really tries to adress the issue of monopolies of music companies and recognises that versions may for insatnce be a mode of entering what used to be a rather vertical market. However the entire rsponse to the question of version recording from the point of view of the industry has been to se the question of content : So you have the anxieties of the version, the remix etc being articuates in terms of a. lack of orignality b. passing off c. vulgarity d. dilution of a 'purer tradition' etc etc If it were merely a question of how much royalty should be paid etc than the issue can be raised in those terms, but here the entire trhust is on trying to do away with version recording or atleast dilute it significantly. I dont think it is about the ampount not being paid, because the provision explicitly provides for a direct payment of a certain amount to the copyright board. In all cases litigated thus far i india, the defendants have always made this statutory payment, which has then been objected to by the owner of the copyright, and in some bizzare cases like the Bathla case, by a party that has used the version recording clause. It is not as though those who are objecting to the use of the version recordingf clause do not want versions to be recorded. On the contrary, if you take the remix as an instance, it is actually HMV that actually began experimenting with the remix in the early days (Aasha Bhonsle and Leslie Lewis's tribute to R D Burman ) but it did not quite work out till the past two years. In the same way that the Sega case understood the quasi legal ways through which smaller plays enter a vertical structure, I think it is critical to undestand the use of ther version recording caluse by smaller companies, players and then the impact that such an entry has on the larger aesthetic / diversity dimension . And this is weher I would link up to your own work, the rich history that you have provided of T series and its world of porous legality, and the impact that it had on the industry structure, the aesthetic changes in terms of the growth of the non hindi film music form etc. which a language of content alone can never capture, since the world of content in copyright law is intrinsically tied to its umbilical link sto notions of authorship, originality, ownership etc. Hope this helps in clarifying some of the ponts raised Regards Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Sun Feb 8 15:55:38 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 15:55:38 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Workshop: Language, Culture and Urban Publics : CALL Message-ID: <40260EA2.2060205@sarai.net> Call for Abstracts: Workshop: Language, Culture and Urban Publics: April 1st -3rd, 2004. Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, India This workshop will engage in a dialogue between research into histories of print cultures and the new linguistic practices in contemporary media and urban spaces. The workshop is intended to revisit the debates on identity and politics together with attention to forms from magazines to cassettes to films and television as well as new performative spaces such as call centers discussion-lists and chat rooms. Our premise is that these dialogues would provide diverse critical vantage points from which to engage with issues of language and culture as they enable various strategies of dwelling in and imagining the city. Older forms of expression in print and speech have been under significant pressure in the contemporary with the emergence of electronic communication, leading to both innovation and anxiety. The workshop will focus on content, form, styles and circulation of linguistic cultures. The primary focus will be on South Asia, though we welcome proposals on other regions that provide a comparative perspective. While the focus of the workshop is the contemporary transformations, it would perhaps be useful to see the contemporary as the contested site of continuity as well discontinuity. Suggested Themes: Histories of urban print cultures - Popular print forms: pamphlets, 'pulp fiction', little magazines and small towns. Urban imaginaries in literary cultures. Radio and Broadcasting: 'National language' and local publics, contemporary FM cultures. Print and the challenge of contemporary media forms: television, mobile, SMS, hybrid forms, copy culture. Music: cassette cultures, regional and migrant music, parody. Styles of Engagement: Accents, idioms, slang, performative speech and identity: from the streets to chat rooms to Call Centres. Speech as Sales pitch: advertisement, propaganda, and bazaar language. Language as Politics Poetics of Adaptation Please send 200-300 word abstracts to language at sarai.net by February 15th, 2004.. We will cover travel and board of South Asian participants who are selected to present at the workshop. In the case of international presenters we will cover all local costs, in rare cases of people without institutional support we might support travel. From auskadi at tvcabo.co.mz Mon Feb 9 12:18:42 2004 From: auskadi at tvcabo.co.mz (Martin Hardie) Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 08:48:42 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] FBI wants computer repair shops to report Kazaa, DeCSS users? [priv] Message-ID: <200402090848.42989.auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz> I am forwarding this from the Politech list. Maybe some of you already have it. But it's of interest to me in the light of my recent musings about terror and floss. The kazaa users are bunched togther by the FBI with threats to national security. The repair shops become yet another link in the control network..... take care Martin ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [Politech] FBI wants computer repair shops to report Kazaa, DeCSS users? [priv] Date: Monday 09 February 2004 07:52 From: Declan McCullagh To: politech at politechbot.com Excerpt: "The FBI primarily is looking for purveyors of child pornography, software used in the piracy of movies and music, and threats to national security." From ravikant at sarai.net Mon Feb 9 12:40:10 2004 From: ravikant at sarai.net (ravikant) Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 12:40:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] paracopyright Message-ID: <200402091240.10690.ravikant@sarai.net> I am sure others on the list have come across this term. Thought the link would be useful. There is also a link on Law and order at the bottom of the page. Ravikant From: http://www.wordspy.com/words/paracopyright.asp paracopyright (PAYR.uh.kawp.ee.ryt) n. A set of non-traditional copyright-related principles, practices, and laws that exist alongside and attempt to extend traditional copyright protection. Also: para-copyright. Example Citation: The movie and music industries have succeeded in lobbying lawmakers to allow them to tighten their grips on their creations by lengthening copyright terms. The law has also extended the scope of copyright protection, creating what critics have called a "paracopyright," which prohibits not only duplicating protected material but in some cases even gaining access to it in the first place. ?Robert S. Boynton, "The Tyranny of Copyright?," The New York Times, January 25, 2004 Notes: This word brings together the prefix para-, beside, and the word copyright. It has been causing a few ripples in the intellectual property waters because recent revisions to copyright law, particularly in the U.S., have created new provisions that not only extend copyright protection, but also broaden the definition of what constitutes a copyright violation. For example, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) contains provisions that make it illegal to create or "traffic in" products that can be used to circumvent built-in copyright protection. In other words, the definition of a copyright violation has been extended from the illegal copying or selling of a work to merely creating a tool that might enable other people to do so. This is far removed from traditional copyright protection, hence the term "paracopyright for such provisions. Here's the relevant passage from the DCMA's now infamous section 1201, "Circumvention of copyright protection systems": No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. Example Citation #2: The anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act penalize both the circumvention of technical protection measures, and supplying the means for such circumvention. Such "paracopyright" effectively grants copyright holders sweeping new ability to impose terms of access on content users. ?"Anticircumvention misuse," UCLA Law Review, June, 2003 First Use: The undersigned law teachers write to express our concern over legislation to implement the 1996 WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties suggested by the Administration and recently introduced as H.R. 2281 and S. 1121. That concern is focussed on the provisions of proposed new Section 1201 of the Copyright Act, which would address the "circumvention of copyright protection systems" by imposing a variety of civil and criminal penalties (as detailed in proposed Section 1203) on the manufacture or sale of technologies capable of being used to overcome technological safeguards applied to copyrighted works, and on the use of such technologies to gain access ? for whatever purpose ? to protected works. Although it would be codified in Title 17, Section 1201 would not be an ordinary copyright provision; liability under the section would result from conduct separate and independent from any act of copyright infringement or any intent to promote infringement. Thus, enactment of Section 1201 would represent an unprecedented departure into the zone of what might be called paracopyright ? an uncharted new domain of legislative provisions designed to strengthen copyright protection by regulating conduct which traditionally has fallen outside the regulatory scope of intellectual property law. ?Keith Aoki et al., "letter to The Honorable Howard Coble, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property," September 16, 1997 From vseksaria at hotmail.com Tue Feb 10 12:06:36 2004 From: vseksaria at hotmail.com (vrinda seksaria) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:06:36 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040210/ba93e637/attachment.html From vseksaria at hotmail.com Tue Feb 10 12:06:36 2004 From: vseksaria at hotmail.com (vrinda seksaria) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:06:36 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040210/ba93e637/attachment-0001.html From promod at duaassociates.com Tue Feb 10 13:55:08 2004 From: promod at duaassociates.com (Promod) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:55:08 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] DEMOCRATISING THE LAW OF CONTEMPT Message-ID: Dear All, My name is Promod Nair and I am a lawyer practising in Bangalore, Karnataka. I am working on a paper entitled "Freedom Of Expression And The Limits Of The Law Of Contempt". Let me introduce the topic and some of the areas that I am working on as part of this endeavour. It is trite to say that democracy in India has always grappled with the means and methods of extracting accountability from public institutions and individuals holding public office. The traditional endeavour has been limited to focusing on extracting accountability from elected representatives and the executive. However, judicial accountability has not received the attention it deserves. The judiciary in independent India has broken out of the conventional mould of adjudication simpliciter and has sought to fashion new and bold initiatives in dispensing justice. While the early phases of 'judicial activism' in the form of Public Interest Litigation in the eighties was devoted largely to redressing human rights abuses; environmental matters and civil rights of indigent and disadvantaged groups, by the mid nineties, the Supreme Court ventured deep into unexplored territory. It issued highly publicized orders that caught the fascination of the Indian middle class. The Court acting on 'public interest' petitions, ordered investigations into the nexus between leading politicians and businessmen; gave directions to New Delhi's executive to collect unattended garbage; called upon the Government to supply lead free fuel; struck down instances of nepotism by Union Ministers and ordered them to pay vast sums of damages and called for an overhaul of the national blood donation system to ensure that AIDS and other diseases are checked. Recent years have seen courts virtually conducting admissions to engineering and medical schools as a fall-out of its seminal decision banning these schools from charging exorbitant 'capitation' fees from students. Courts and judges have also exhorted governments to take steps to implement inter-linking of rivers and have imposed a blanket ban on strikes, processions and bandhs. While the scope of the role of courts and judges has expanded, it is but inevitable that their 'margin of error' has correspondingly increased. Public criticism of judicial conduct is possibly the only check on judicial functioning. Impeachment of deviant judges, as provided for under the Indian Constitution has proved to be a check and balance which exists only on paper and does not inspire much confidence. In this context, the contempt power as exercised by courts tends to have a chilling effect on legitimate criticism which could focus on highlighting judicial inaccuracies and shortcomings. This has had the effect of throttling the voice of a free press. Recent orders under the law of contempt of court against writers and journalists who have criticized judges or their judgments has brought into focus the reasonableness or otherwise of the Indian law of contempt. Is the offence of scandalizing the court consistent with the values of a democratic and open society in which every organ of the State including the judiciary is accountable for its actions- this is a question that is being posed with increasing frequency today. The exercise of contempt power by courts is laced with not a little bit of danger for more than one reason: á It seems to conflict with the fundamental principle of jurisprudence that no person shall be put in peril on an ambiguity. The offence of criminal contempt of court by "scandalizing the court" is notoriously vague. It is regarded as obsolete in Britain, the country of its origin. Yet, in India, the scope and ambit of the offence seems to be increasingly widened. á Second, it makes the judge a judge in his own cause which has the potential to offend one of the most fundamental principles of natural justice. In an action for contempt, judges are perceived to sit in judgment over their own cause and punish the contemnors in a summary way without the usual procedures and safeguards of a criminal trial. á In effect, a presumption of guilt is the starting point of a contempt proceeding and the burden of proving innocence is on the alleged contemnor thereby giving a go- by to the principle of presumption of innocence which is a defining feature of any other criminal trial. á There is very little scope for correction of error unlike in other cases where there is a well- defined appellate mechanism which can correct judicial errors. á Further, not recognizing even the truth of the statements of the alleged contemnor does seem to place an unreasonable restriction on the freedom of speech and expression. It would indeed be ironical that in spite of the emblems hanging prominently in court halls manifesting the motto of Satyameva Jayate (let truth prevail) and Yatho Dharma Statho Jaya (where there is righteousness, there is victory), Indian courts have ruled out the defence of justification by truth. It is in this context that I intend to offer a succinct analysis of the law of contempt of court in India and the constitutional tension that this principle exerts on the freedom of speech and expression, which includes the right of the media to freely air its views. I intend to analyse the major judicial decisions which have defined the contours of the contempt jurisdiction in India and comparative jurisdictions. It is hoped that the project will culminate in the publication of a comprehensive report/ book which, when made available in the public domain can, to some extent inform and hopefully stimulate, public debate on this important issue which has affected the credibility of a crucial pillar of India's democratic system. Please do share your views and insights on this topic with me. If there is someone who has worked on issues of free speech and the law of contempt/ has resources on the same, please do get in touch with me. Thanks, Promod. From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 10 17:26:50 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 03:56:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] For the latest on the SCO v. IBM case Message-ID: <20040210115650.3697.qmail@web13607.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all For those curious on what is happening on the SCO v. IBM case, this is a very good resource which updates you on every hearing http://www.groklaw.net/index.php lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html From bhagwati at sarai.net Fri Feb 13 00:35:59 2004 From: bhagwati at sarai.net (Bhagwati) Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 19:05:59 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Culture of Copy :: Publics and Music Message-ID: <200403131333.39406.bhagwati@sarai.net> dear friends, over the last two years i have been researching the public practices around production and distribution of music and films. Here are some of my research notes. Looking forward to comments. Bhagwati (Researcher PPHP, Sarai) ------------------------------------------------- NEW ASPECTS OF COPY CULTURE For the last few years, there is an atmosphere of depression in the film world, which is due perhaps to a series of flops. Those connected with the film world think that for the last several years, the film industry had to incur huge losses. This is mainly because of piracy. What is this ‘piracy’, affecting the films so deeply? The concept of piracy means to copy any creation like a book, software, film, music, etc, and to sell copies in the market. But piracy cannot be understood only in this way. ‘Piracy’ is not just a word but a process. A lot of things are interconnected in it. One can say that piracy is like a tree with roots, stem, leaves, branches, fruits, etc. Every past has a job, discharges a function. Anyway, here at present, we are discussing piracy in the context of film and music. Till last few years, the method of pirating was quite simple: CD used to be distributed among small producers, who then used to prepare a large number of its copies. Then the copied CD was taken by its maker or salesman to the shopkeepers to sell. Then they were sold by the shopkeepers to the customers. The customers could acquire them easily because they knew where to get them. Everybody was satisfied because all of them got a portion of profit. They were satisfied. Old Methods (2001 - 2002) In this period the production, distribution, sale, purchase of copied music/ film was locality centric. The customer could get the goods from different nodes within the locality. This i observed through field work in few localities in North Delhi. The reports did not suggest much difference in the modes of operation. But the situation has changed now. The activities over past few months show that `piracy` market is no more of the old type. Now everything goes on in a more organized manner. Its main reason is the widespread network of `piracy` market. Now it does not look for market. It simply fulfills the demand of the already established network. New Concept, New Stage The locality now is moving towrads becoming a node in a larger network. The sites of production is not longer locality specific. It has become specialised and distribution is dispersed. The following changes could be marked. >>>Entry of big investors Earlier, the films in the cinema halls used to be ‘covered’ by video camera, and CD from it used to be prepared. This was called the ‘master’. This work used to be full of risks. Now there is a slight change in it. Now, in addition to the films, the ‘masters’ of the films are also coming from outside the country. These master copies carry the advertisements of video albums, candy and music companies, etc. The method of their distribution is as before, but now only those people can survive in this business who can invest heavily. Because of their entry, those who used to prepare 100 CDs on computers are now out of business. Bigger investments have made the use of better techniques. It has directly affected the quality and nature of CD. Earlier, thin paper was used as cover for CD and the names of the films were written by hand. Now the cover of the CDs are made of cardboards, and they are fine printed. Not only this; now screen printing is possible on the CD. The quality and artistic forms make it nearly impossible to tell whether the CD is real or fake. >>>Expanding `illegal-Copy` Market We felt during our investigations that the sphere of piracy is limited. People used to acquire CD from the neighbourhood and nearby shops, because they used to be made in nearby homes, shops or factories. But now it is not necessary that the thing you are buying is made in your neighbourhood. Wherever you buy, the CD will be of uniform type. This makes it clear that the pirated items are made at some selected centralized places and then distributed to various shops and sale centers. Actually, in such a situation, the shopkeepers, petty dealers and small distributors would prefer to buy readymade things, rather than making them themselves. They don’t have to take any risks. The interesting fact is that despite the changes in production and distribution methods, the number of buyers of pirated CD has increased enormously. If there is a raid at one place, the work of piracy goes on unabated in other places. Thus, the piracy market has expanded and grown. >>>New Tricks of `illegal` copy culture. Profit and loss are inalienable part of the market system. Every job is done keeping this aspect in view, and various tricks are also used. Copy of a film is usually in two CDs. To accommodate in the given space, some portions of the film are cut out. The customer complains that he/she has not been given the full film. The dealer explains that actually the film is in three CDs and that the third one has not yet come. Therefore he will have to wait. This wait covers the extra income. The third CD is made available after some time. Thus the dealer discharges two functions at a time—he sets aside any doubt about the third CD in the mind of the customer, and in the meantime he garners extra income from the third CD. Now-a-days, the CDs are allotted some brand names or they are said to be non-DVD, and this way also some extra income is made. Pirated CD: Hit or Flop? Talk of hit or flop creates an impression that we are making a count down of such films. We are talking of the profit and loss of those in the business. If it is hit, the director is happy; if it is flop, the director is unhappy. It is loudly propagated that the relationship of the happiness or otherwise of the director is connected with the relationship between film industry and piracy. If the film is a hit, then credit goes to the caliber and labour f the director. If it is a flop, then piracy is held responsible. But the reality is far from it. Those films are pirated which are a hit or likely to be hit. It is on the basis of these estimates that the number of copies are made, and repeated according to the needs. So, if the film is a flop, then the piracy will also be a flop; similarly with hits. The pirators are unhappy are unhappy or happy to the same extent as the director or producer of the film. So the argument carries no weight that a film is flop due to its piracy. If we study the countdown in piracy market, then in case of the film Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gham, was a great hit, and therefore was pirated 5 or 6 times. HISTORY OF REMIX Remix means presenting old wine in new bottle. It has been dominating the music industry in recent years in India, to the extent that it has been more popular that film songs and singers. A section of society is opposed to it. They have called it a distorted and vulgar culture, and therefore called for a ban it. However, the younger generation is increasing liking remixed songs. If one looks into the history of Indian music, one finds that it is not really new. It is at least 20 years old. To understand properly, the history of remix may be divided into 4 stages: First Stage: It began around 1983 when old songs were imparted new voices. Among the first companies doing this, T-Series was the most prominent. Initially, its remix cassettes carried the photos of the main singers like Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, etc. Next to them, smaller photos of the new singes like Kumar Shanu, Sonu Nigam, and others were printed. The cassettes carried headings like “In Memory of Md. Rafi”, “In Memory of Kishore”, “Melodies of Mukesh”, etc. Thus the singers of these tunes got a good publicity. Second Stage: The songs were the same but they were given new dimensions. Music beats were used along with the songs. Disco was very popular and these songs were given the form of disco music with the help of these beats, which attract the listeners even today. The cassettes came in vogue around 1987 but it was printed on them: ‘with beats’. It became a fashion to put in beats, whatever the singer. It became extremely popular, so much so that even the film audio cassettes carried them; they are available even today. Third Stage: It began around 1990. Pop replaced the second stage. Use of western pop became very widespread. The names of the singers and the tunes became secondary and were replaced by the creators of new tunes. Cassettes began to be sold in their name. One of them was ‘Bali Sagu’. It was a new experiment and became popular. It influenced the films after a few years. Whole songs of the films began to be remixed. Some of the films whose remixed songs were like very were ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’, ‘Taal’, ‘Pardes’, etc. Fourth Stage: The present phase can be called the Golden Age of the remix. It is popular as never before. It is related with many things. Its fast beats and full of western music. They are used in big and small parties, hotels, marriage ‘barats’, etc. People dance and shake to them. The DJ in marriage parties is so popular that in their absence these parties are considered bore. The bridegroom side demands DJ along with other things. Keeping these demands in view, the music companies have begun new remixing. Their beats and English expressions force people to shake and dance to their tunes. But in the present stage the credit of remix becoming hits goes to their video. The videos are such hits that it is there which are demanded by the people at the shops. Now-a-days, these videos are known more by the models acting in them rather than by their singers and tune-makers. The remix video age has, on the one hand, given a new life to Indian music industry, and on the other hand, has invited the accusations of the Indian culture having been ‘distorted’ and ‘vulgar’. Remix Video Now-a-days the music channels are full of remix videos. If we try to understand the processes of making video, then we will be able to understand the reasons for their popularity. Actually, those who are working in the remix video industry were earlier in the advertisement field. Therefore they know very well as to what caters to the taste of the customers. They understand as to what exactly can stay with the audiences for a long time. They began making use of their own creativity and imagination to the best of their effect. The remix video has gripped the minds of the people. Hit videos have many such scenes which the audiences eagerly wait for. For example the scenes like the lowering of jeans in the “Kaanta Lagaa….”, display of hips in “Kaliyon ka Chaman…”, wet bodies of the girls, DJ, restaurant, bear-bar, etc. Actually, three or four female models are selected, locations and dialogues are fixed and the videos are made. Then these remix videos are shown on through channels so that their market is created. “Kaanta Lagaa…”!, how deep? The remix song released last year by T-Series has taken the remix today to new heights. Kaanta Lagaa… is such a hit that people at once become alert on listening to it. A strange restlessness spreads over their eyes and their ears pine for it. A section of the society, no doubt, has objected to it; and therefore the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had to notify five music channels prohibiting it. But there has been no reduction in the popularity of this cassette. Not only this; its words and tunes have been used for other ‘seasonal’ songs. For example, its tune and wordings were used to inspire the Kanwariyas in August: “Kaanta Lagaa…” became “Ghonta Lagaa…”! Then, after Janmashtami arrived “Taala…Khulaaa…” in cassette form in the market. Last October was released a bhajan “Mera Lagaa..” which topped the Navaratra market. Then there was comedy song “Chaanta Lagaa….”, liked very much by the customers. The new year and Holi are yet to come. We are likely to see new versions of these cassettes. The “Kaanta” is so deep that it has caused a boom in this type of video albums. A new tradition has been laid down in the music industry, opening new channels of garnering big profits. From auskadi at tvcabo.co.mz Thu Feb 19 00:15:44 2004 From: auskadi at tvcabo.co.mz (Martin Hardie) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 20:45:44 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: [AFLUG] Clarion Call to African Governments Message-ID: <200402182045.44818.auskadi@tvcabo.co.mz> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [AFLUG] Clarion Call to African Governments Date: Wednesday 18 February 2004 19:17 From: Bildad Kagai To: aflug at globalcn.tc.ca Cc: idlelo at fossfa.org, opendev at source.bellanet.org The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) is concerned with the recent agreements and partnerships African Governments and their organs have been signing with the Microsoft Corporation which in essence are killing local software industry and inhibiting the potential of developing local human capacity in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). FOSSFA compares the scenario being created similar to the tea and coffee crisis where the producers in the developing world do not get a decent return from the crops whilst the processors in the developed world reap all the profits. Most recently, Microsoft has signed agreements with the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the tune of thousands of millions of dollars which effectively confines these agencies and the governments they represent from pursuing and practicing the freedom of CHOICE especially from the local software producers who are currently coming up in all pockets of Africa. See: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Jan04/01-23WorldEconomicForumPR .asp FOSSFA wishes to air this clarion call to African governments to be wary of these unfair trade practices from big multinational corporations such as Microsoft and emulate the Asian Tigers who realised the benefits of promoting local products and local talent. FOSSFA estimates Africa's ICTs industry to be worth more than 25 Billion Dollars and growing. It will be unfair to Africa if our leaders were to give away this industry to already rich corporations when local talent exists to service this industry in this continent. That is the only way we can achieve economic empowerment and sustainable development. Buy African. Build Africa. Visit our portal to see software products produced in Africa. www.fossfa.org - -- With Kind Regards, Bildad Kagai CEO - Circuits & Packets Communications Ltd. Coordinator - Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) Suite B2, Tetu Apartments, State House Avenue P. O. Box 20311 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya Tel. 254 20 2728332 Fax. 254 20 2726965 Cell. 254 722 379409 URL. www.circuitspackets.com www.fossfa.org Email. bill at circuitspackets.com _______________________________________________ AFLUG mailing list AFLUG at globalcn.tc.ca http://globalcn.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/aflug - ------------------------------------------------------- - -- :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: http://openflows.org/~auskadi/ "Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true - which is a virtuous act because it compensates for lack of proof of something that certainly exists or happened." Bishop Otto to Baudolino in Umberto Eco's Baudolino. From lokesh at sarai.net Fri Feb 20 19:19:10 2004 From: lokesh at sarai.net (Lokesh) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 19:19:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] trade practices around cable tv industry Message-ID: <200402201919.10150.lokesh@sarai.net> Over the last two years i have been researching the trade practices around Cable TV Industry. Apart from following up the entire CAS issue in the last year, I have also been looking at the following compomemts of the Cable Tv indistry: like the cable operators, distributors and Cable TV Operators associations, etc. based on my ongoing research, I have written four notes on my observations and perceptions of the cab;le industry. looking forward to comment lokesh (Researcher-PPHP, Sarai) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Question of CAS: contradictions galore ! It is suitable to enter the field of Cable TV Industry by interrogating the reasons, the resistance and the support around the implementation of CAS (Conditional Access System) and most importantly the hullabaloo created by the same. Some of the questions that we will try and examine here are: Why does the market, which claims to be free and competitive in its nature, need to resort to Law? How does one comprehend the interference of the state in the market by way of the Law? It is not at all surprising then if the government holds suspicious ground against the market especially when the Ministry of Disinvestment is heard saying, “It is not the business of the government to do business”. The bet though is that finally it is the consumer who is at the receiving end of this chaos. It is clear enough that it is the government who has to ultimately step in whenever there is a crisis in the relationship that binds the market with consumer. Ironically, it is not the government that is responsible for this crisis, but indeed the creation of a ‘new media’ space. The introduction of the Cable TV Industry is inevitably responsible for producing one such crisis-ridden situation, considering the far-reaching effects it has on the cultural, social and economic fronts. Ever since its inception, this industry has developed at its own pace, in accordance to the rules of the market and the logic that governs capital, keeping itself at bay from the overbearing interference of the Law and the State. The rules of the market place and the logic that governs capital more often than not challenge the limitations of law and if one were to quote Shrikant (Srhikant, from 1996 to 2002 was a cable operator and now deals in scrap and runs a grocers' shop in Majnu Ka Tilla, for more information read the article A Brief Biography Of a Cable Operator. ) on this, then there is a perpetual fear of being proved ‘illegal’ in such a situation. An interesting facet here is that for the longest time possible, there were no signs of the Law and the State prowling over the situation. Infact, it was only in 1995 that with great difficulty the Cable TV Industry even got the recognition of a small- scale industry. All that there was in the name of legality, was a formal ‘registration’ which was such an easy process that getting into the industry was really a child’s play. Apart from these formalities, there were absolutely no rules and regulations to monitor an industry worth thousands and crores of rupees, leave aside resolving everyday struggles, conflicts and tensions. If looked at within reasonable parameters, this is truly a natural course of development for a market place. To get an impression that I’m suggesting any kind of an anarchic regime when I pitch the legal against the illegal in the above mentioned facts, would be a gross misinterpretation of the same. All the contemporary spaces to which ‘new media’ belongs are pretty much out of bounds for both the law and the state. In other words, the kinds of activities that govern the functionality of these spaces and the complexity that they entail are for one, completely incomprehensible by the state and in areas where they have been able to comprehend anything at all, they are not in a position to regulate. Despite all this, there is a certain framework of rules and regulations that govern the everyday economics of the Cable TV Industry and the fore mentioned new spaces and this is definitely the case in certain areas of the field to say the least. This is precisely the basis on which the everyday of these so-called illegal activities is carried out and regulated. In a nutshell, it is this networking that is responsible for regulating the various aspects of new media and also one of the most crucial nodes of this process and study. The time when I was in the last phase of my conversations with Shrikant, was also the time when the Cable Industry had pretty much done away with him. The formulation of a basic framework for CAS- to be able to regulate the Industry better- coming out of conversations of an ‘addressible system’ was also being done at the same time. Basically, it all started in 2002. At the time, the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Smt. Sushma Swaraj, at very short notice called for the formation of a ‘task force’ for immediate implementation of a Cable TV Act. This task force comprised of multi-system operators (MSO), independent operators, broadcasters, producers and various representatives of cable operators. After three meetings of this task force, a new framework for the Act was suggested. Interestingly enough, the actual story dates a little way back. It was roughly around April-May 2002, which is also the time when Shrikant was being ousted from the trade only to get in another competitor, that there was a meeting of multi-system operators, broadcasters and distributors held to discuss the falling graph of profits within the trade owing to a perpetually growing competition in the field. One gets a somewhat clear picture of the extent of this rivalry within the trade when one speaks to an employee called Deepak working with Siti Cable. He says: “Due to heavy competition, the situation was so critical that you would provide a connection in a certain locality at night and the wire would be cut in a 100 pieces when u saw it in the morning. A multitude of operators functioning at the same time would make it nearly impossible for one to figure out or even track down the competitor who is responsible for this”. The consumer though was benefiting from this situation, which is usually the case when there is such heavy competition in the market. They were getting to watch cable at either very cheap rates or even nearly free, though every once in a while they were deprived of this advantage when the wires would be cut resulting in no cable at home. The owner of ‘Model Town Cable Communication’ Mr. Bharti had some interesting insights to offer when asked to comment on the fierce competition as well as on what cable operators thought of each other. He said: “That day was just like a match between India and Pakistan. Everyone was on their feet and was doing the rounds. The WIN ones, the IN ones and those belonging to SITI; they were all there! Now when all the thieves were on the move, who would cut cables?” Hence, all these people who organised the meeting to get rid of the ever-increasing menaces in the trade ultimately took refuge in some self-service! and devised a whole new set of regulations for themselves, a brief outlaying of which I have done in my previous article. Anyway, the results of that meeting proved to be quite far-sighted for the Cable TV Industry. The MSO got utmost power by monopolising the IRD. The policy of not appointing any new operators, not giving IRDs to self-employed operators as well as by dividing areas in terms of localities, the trade witnessed a different yet special kind of a formation of a monopoly within it. This monopoly was established on localities and not the trade itself. This led to a sudden hike in the cable tariffs for the consumers. This is when the consumers started protesting against companies and the cable operators. With this also started the process of getting CAS into action. At the time when the idea of bringing CAS into the industry was being mulled over, it was being considered as a boon for the consumers. To a certain extent this was true but the real story behind the scenes pointed to a very different set of affairs, benefactors, losers, ulterior motives and what have you! Before one gets into dire straits over the issue of CAS, it is better to get a broad picture of what exactly CAS is all about, something that over a period of a year has given sleepless nights to broadcasters, cable operators, advertising agencies, producers, etc.! The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ravishankar Prasad has certainly released the Genie of CAS out of the bottle but interestingly enough, instead of carrying out it’s master’s wishes, it’s now ready to lock everyone back in the bottle and just vamoose from the scene for good !!! >>What is CAS ? CAS or ‘Conditional Access System’ is such a provision through which the cable tv consumer can choose to watch only/any desired channels and therefore also pay only for the same and no more. Part 4 of the Cable TV (regulation) Ammendment Act incorporates the changes regarding the same. This is how, in 2002, the State has tried to get an otherwise ‘illegal’ cable tv trade under its regulation, by procuring for it a legal status. On 14th January 2003, the government, by issuing a guideline, planned to implement CAS in the four metropolitans within a period of six months. >>Important points of the Cable Network Regulation Ammendment Act 2003 Under the Cable Network Regulation Act 2003, there are two clauses for the viewing of channels. It’s evident that earlier the consumers had the convenience of watching both, the free-to-air as well as paid channels after paying a certain fixed amount of money. But now all the channels have been divided into two categories. 1.The first category would have a minimum of 30 channels for which the consumer Would have to pay a monthly amount of Rs.72/-, alongside the service charges and the entertainment tax. Channels which don’t charge any money from their consumers in return of their broadcast are termed free-to-air channels. The number of these channels would be anything between 30-60 in the first category. These channels would include information regarding various fields such as entertainment, education, sports, news, etc. 2.The second category would have paid channels. Paid channels meaning those for which the consumers have to pay money to the broadcasters. For these channels the operator would collect a fixed amount of money from the consumers and further it to either the broadcasters or the multi-system operators. 3.The number of the free channels would vary from state to state. 4.The Act has talked about an ‘addressible system’ (CAS has been born out of this). This is related to one such electronic gadget with the help of which the consumer can watch channels of his own choice. For this purpose a ‘set top box’ would be required which would act like a medium between the cable operator and the consumer. Through this ‘set top box’, the cable operator would get information of the channels that the consumer watches and this information will keep getting recorded in the ‘Subscriber Management System’ available with the operators. It is on the basis of this information that the operator will collect the adequate amount of money from the consumer. 5.The Act also has a clause that incase a consumer wishes to watch only the ‘free-to-air’ channels then he does not need to buy a set top box. This box is necessary on ly for the paid channels. 6.All operators would necessarily need to update themselves technologically for The ‘Conditional Access System’ or CAS so that they can implement this rule. Without this technology, they will not be able to feature the paid channels. 7.All cable operators would need to specify the prices of all ‘free-to-air’ as well as ‘paid channels’ separately either in their offices or give them to their consumers in a published format. 8.All cable operators would need to give the following information to broadcasters, the MSOs and the government : (a)The total number of cable tv consumers. (b)Monthly tariff (separately) (c)A separate count of consumers watching free and paid channels. (d)Information of the amount that the operators pay to the broadcasters. 9.Under the new rule, the cable tv operators would need to get the technology within a period of six months. >>Scramble between CAS and CASH Although the government made big claims of implementing CAS by the 14th of July, even till the last date of executing it, there were various kinds of myths, doubts and suspicions doing the rounds within the trade and outside of it. The indecision about the two varieties of the ‘set top box’ available- digital and analog, what would be done incase there are problems with the box at a later level- will it be replaced or will it be mended, the difference in the rates of the two varieties, etc. to site just a few. Where on the one hand some channels priced the box at Rs.7000/- each, after a few days one got to know that it was available at a much lower price while on the other some companies promised to give it on a lease costing anything between a 1000/- rupees to Rs.2700/- and then charging a tariff on an everyday basis right down to Re.1/-. As far as the ‘free-to-air’ channels were concerned, the government promised 30 channels for a flat rate of Rs.72/-, but some other companies promised even upto 40-50 channels. The high price at which ‘paid channels’ came was also a matter of big concern. Where the government had promised that the maximum amount of tariff a consumer could pay was Rs.250/-, the actual amount that the consumer ended up paying at the end of the day was something like Rs.550/- or even more in accordance to the rates prescribed by the broadcasters. The operators were found accusing the government saying that while the government prescribed a flat rate of Rs.72 for them, it kept the rights of prescribing the rates for the paid-channels with itself. In their opinion, this was likely to create trouble within the trade. Even the government stood on shaky ground vis-à-vis their stand on CAS. The deadline for the implementation of CAS was immediately forwarded to 1st September as soon as as 14th July came close, with the claim that there was a shortage in the availability of the set top boxes. Besides, it was said that CAS would now be implemented ‘zone-wise’, which meant that in a certain part of the city cable would be accessible only via CAS whereas in the rest of the city, cable would be accessible pretty much the way it was till then. This led to a lot of dissatisfaction. In another declaration, the government said that a ‘dual-feed’ system be followed, according to which consumers who want CAS should be given the same whereas those who don’t, be allowed to access cable the old way. This declaration invited a lot of wrath on the part of the MSOs and the cable operators. By the time September came, the government yet again got an opportunity to ignore the issue in the wake of the forthcoming Delhi Elections. Madanlal Khurana was too scared that CAS might threaten his seat just the way it did during the ‘onion issue’. Venkaiah Naidu was threatened by the thought that CAS might take an ugly shape just like VAT did, and so it eventually did! The Union Government threw cold water over the project in Delhi, the State Governments in Kolkata and Mumbai did not take action to implement it, and not much difference was made in Chennai even after CAS was implemented. As of now, the state of affairs is such that the government has still not been able to get a grip over the project and to top it all it has invited the wrath of cable operators by fixing a flat rate of Rs.72 for the free-to-air channels. Different parties belonging to the cable tv industry had a great difference of opinion regarding the issue of CAS. Some supported it while others resisted. Various associations of cable operators in Delhi had their own ways of either supporting or resisting the cause. Presidents of ‘NTCA’, ‘Cable Operators Federation of India’, and ‘All India Avishkar Dish and Antenna Committee’ were all members of the task committee. They supported the Rs.72/- model saying that they are in favour of implementing CAS and are against creating hurdles in the process. Whereas the ‘Cable Network Association’ and the ‘Cable Operators United Front’ were convinced that such a low tariff was not at all enough for the cable operators to sustain themselves and would be the end of them, therefore it should be raised atleast upto Rs.180/-. They resorted to a lot of protests and demonstrations for the same. Multi-system operators of all three- ‘WIN’, ‘IN’ and ‘SITI’ have created a work-plan which involves investment worth crores of rupees. Incase CAS is not implemented, they will have to incur heavy losses but incase it is implemented, they hope that once the consumer gets into a contract with one of them, it is unlikely that he would want to change his operator and get into a new contract because all operators would use set top boxes of different companies and therefore the latter would mean buying a new box which in any case would not come at a cheap price and why would the consumer want to invest twice. Therefore this situation also seems to be in favour of CAS. Even the producers are in favour of CAS because they are stocking boxes worth crores of rupees and its implementation would give them an opening to a hugely potential market. Operators functioning at the level of individual localities or areas believe that they have an uphill task to care of. The consumer already gives them a hard time paying for each individual channel and to top it there is the ‘entertainment tax’. This is certainly not going to be an easy job. On the other hand the broadcasters are perpetually hiking their tariffs and ultimately it is them who face the music! Naturally, as a course of their limitations they have to show fewer channels than promised and all they get in turn is adorned with titles like ‘thieves’. Therefore, they believe that they will be in a much better position if CAS gets implemented. On the other side, the broadcasters are strictly against CAS. In their opinion it is still not about time that CAS gets implemented in India and then there is no proper supply of boxes. Whereas the truth points to something completely different, which is their profits. The consumer would have the choice to pick up desirable channels if CAS gets implemented. Considering the cost-effective mentality that India harbours, most consumers would like to go only for the ‘free-to-air’ channels! It is quite obvious that this means a double loss for the broadcasters. On the one hand the inflow of capital from the end of the consumers will sharply decline and on the other the advertising agencies will no longer advertise profusely and therefore the profits coming in from that end would also fall. All these broadcaster companies are in the favour of getting a ‘direct-to-home’ system so that they can adequately monopolise the trade for their own benefits. Where on the one hand, there are many voices for and against CAS within the trade, on the other, the ‘consumer’ is perpetually in a state of limbo. Whether or not CAS will favour him is something that is completely lost on him. On one hand he is excited by the freedom CAS gives him to pick and choose channels of his own choice, on the other he is perturbed by the huge investment the boxes call for and the various problems that would come free with them. Therefore, for now they are adopting a policy of ‘wait and watch’. As far as the government goes, it believed that such a system would encourage transparency and therefore the operators would not be able to steal channels which would lead to entertainment tax which in turn would fill the pockets of the State. Ever since 1994, it has tried high and low to somehow carve out a niche for itself within this trade, but in vain. In the past one year, ever since CAS has been lingering on the threshold of the cable tv industry, the graph of the trade has been such that it’s really difficult to comment on it. When and how someone would complicate the matter even more with new proposals is something that is very difficult to say and rely on. The government had enforced with all its might that CAS would be implemented in July. The government’s might was still too light! During the day, the multi-system operators agreed to a tariff plan of Rs.72, but by evening that united voice dishevelled into multiple narratives. Some resisting and some supporting whereas some just perched on the fence. A lot of the operators don’t even have a clue of what exactly is coming out of this muck. They are just waiting to decide how to treat it when it is served to them on a platter. The broadcasters are at loggerheads with each other. Some want that CAS should get implemented but on their conditions, others are supporting the government fiercely behind their backs such that CAS is completely thrown out of the window. At the end of the day, the consumer who has to handle the googly thrown at him, is really at a loss and is completely flummoxed by the situation he has willy nilly been dragged into. He has decided not to decide anything for the time being. To wind up this mess is a difficult job, but there is one central aspect which keeping in mind, everyone is trying to judge CAS- which is ‘cash’. Cash means profits, booty, etc. The government has a stake of crores of rupees if CAS gets implemented. The multi-system operators can either enjoy the fruits of CAS or brood over their losses. For the operators, it is a situation of both joy and despair. The broadcaster is worried about a complete face off, because of the huge profits he makes out of procuring advertisements. The pu The Question of CAS: contradictions galore ! It is suitable to enter the field of Cable TV Industry by interrogating the reasons, the resistance and the support around the implementation of CAS (Conditional Access System) and most importantly the hullabaloo created by the same. Some of the questions that we will try and examine here are: Why does the market, which claims to be free and competitive in its nature, need to resort to Law? How does one comprehend the interference of the state in the market by way of the Law? It is not at all surprising then if the government holds suspicious ground against the market especially when the Ministry of Disinvestment is heard saying, “It is not the business of the government to do business”. The bet though is that finally it is the consumer who is at the receiving end of this chaos. It is clear enough that it is the government who has to ultimately step in whenever there is a crisis in the relationship that binds the market with consumer. Ironically, it is not the government that is responsible for this crisis, but indeed the creation of a ‘new media’ space. The introduction of the Cable TV Industry is inevitably responsible for producing one such crisis-ridden situation, considering the far-reaching effects it has on the cultural, social and economic fronts. Ever since its inception, this industry has developed at its own pace, in accordance to the rules of the market and the logic that governs capital, keeping itself at bay from the overbearing interference of the Law and the State. The rules of the market place and the logic that governs capital more often than not challenge the limitations of law and if one were to quote Shrikant (Srhikant, from 1996 to 2002 was a cable operator and now deals in scrap and runs a grocers' shop in Majnu Ka Tilla, for more information read the article A Brief Biography Of a Cable Operator. ) on this, then there is a perpetual fear of being proved ‘illegal’ in such a situation. An interesting facet here is that for the longest time possible, there were no signs of the Law and the State prowling over the situation. Infact, it was only in 1995 that with great difficulty the Cable TV Industry even got the recognition of a small- scale industry. All that there was in the name of legality, was a formal ‘registration’ which was such an easy process that getting into the industry was really a child’s play. Apart from these formalities, there were absolutely no rules and regulations to monitor an industry worth thousands and crores of rupees, leave aside resolving everyday struggles, conflicts and tensions. If looked at within reasonable parameters, this is truly a natural course of development for a market place. To get an impression that I’m suggesting any kind of an anarchic regime when I pitch the legal against the illegal in the above mentioned facts, would be a gross misinterpretation of the same. All the contemporary spaces to which ‘new media’ belongs are pretty much out of bounds for both the law and the state. In other words, the kinds of activities that govern the functionality of these spaces and the complexity that they entail are for one, completely incomprehensible by the state and in areas where they have been able to comprehend anything at all, they are not in a position to regulate. Despite all this, there is a certain framework of rules and regulations that govern the everyday economics of the Cable TV Industry and the fore mentioned new spaces and this is definitely the case in certain areas of the field to say the least. This is precisely the basis on which the everyday of these so-called illegal activities is carried out and regulated. In a nutshell, it is this networking that is responsible for regulating the various aspects of new media and also one of the most crucial nodes of this process and study. The time when I was in the last phase of my conversations with Shrikant, was also the time when the Cable Industry had pretty much done away with him. The formulation of a basic framework for CAS- to be able to regulate the Industry better- coming out of conversations of an ‘addressible system’ was also being done at the same time. Basically, it all started in 2002. At the time, the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Smt. Sushma Swaraj, at very short notice called for the formation of a ‘task force’ for immediate implementation of a Cable TV Act. This task force comprised of multi-system operators (MSO), independent operators, broadcasters, producers and various representatives of cable operators. After three meetings of this task force, a new framework for the Act was suggested. Interestingly enough, the actual story dates a little way back. It was roughly around April-May 2002, which is also the time when Shrikant was being ousted from the trade only to get in another competitor, that there was a meeting of multi-system operators, broadcasters and distributors held to discuss the falling graph of profits within the trade owing to a perpetually growing competition in the field. One gets a somewhat clear picture of the extent of this rivalry within the trade when one speaks to an employee called Deepak working with Siti Cable. He says: “Due to heavy competition, the situation was so critical that you would provide a connection in a certain locality at night and the wire would be cut in a 100 pieces when u saw it in the morning. A multitude of operators functioning at the same time would make it nearly impossible for one to figure out or even track down the competitor who is responsible for this”. The consumer though was benefiting from this situation, which is usually the case when there is such heavy competition in the market. They were getting to watch cable at either very cheap rates or even nearly free, though every once in a while they were deprived of this advantage when the wires would be cut resulting in no cable at home. The owner of ‘Model Town Cable Communication’ Mr. Bharti had some interesting insights to offer when asked to comment on the fierce competition as well as on what cable operators thought of each other. He said: “That day was just like a match between India and Pakistan. Everyone was on their feet and was doing the rounds. The WIN ones, the IN ones and those belonging to SITI; they were all there! Now when all the thieves were on the move, who would cut cables?” Hence, all these people who organised the meeting to get rid of the ever-increasing menaces in the trade ultimately took refuge in some self-service! and devised a whole new set of regulations for themselves, a brief outlaying of which I have done in my previous article. Anyway, the results of that meeting proved to be quite far-sighted for the Cable TV Industry. The MSO got utmost power by monopolising the IRD. The policy of not appointing any new operators, not giving IRDs to self-employed operators as well as by dividing areas in terms of localities, the trade witnessed a different yet special kind of a formation of a monopoly within it. This monopoly was established on localities and not the trade itself. This led to a sudden hike in the cable tariffs for the consumers. This is when the consumers started protesting against companies and the cable operators. With this also started the process of getting CAS into action. At the time when the idea of bringing CAS into the industry was being mulled over, it was being considered as a boon for the consumers. To a certain extent this was true but the real story behind the scenes pointed to a very different set of affairs, benefactors, losers, ulterior motives and what have you! Before one gets into dire straits over the issue of CAS, it is better to get a broad picture of what exactly CAS is all about, something that over a period of a year has given sleepless nights to broadcasters, cable operators, advertising agencies, producers, etc.! The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ravishankar Prasad has certainly released the Genie of CAS out of the bottle but interestingly enough, instead of carrying out it’s master’s wishes, it’s now ready to lock everyone back in the bottle and just vamoose from the scene for good !!! >>What is CAS ? CAS or ‘Conditional Access System’ is such a provision through which the cable tv consumer can choose to watch only/any desired channels and therefore also pay only for the same and no more. Part 4 of the Cable TV (regulation) Ammendment Act incorporates the changes regarding the same. This is how, in 2002, the State has tried to get an otherwise ‘illegal’ cable tv trade under its regulation, by procuring for it a legal status. On 14th January 2003, the government, by issuing a guideline, planned to implement CAS in the four metropolitans within a period of six months. >>Important points of the Cable Network Regulation Ammendment Act 2003 Under the Cable Network Regulation Act 2003, there are two clauses for the viewing of channels. It’s evident that earlier the consumers had the convenience of watching both, the free-to-air as well as paid channels after paying a certain fixed amount of money. But now all the channels have been divided into two categories. 1.The first category would have a minimum of 30 channels for which the consumer Would have to pay a monthly amount of Rs.72/-, alongside the service charges and the entertainment tax. Channels which don’t charge any money from their consumers in return of their broadcast are termed free-to-air channels. The number of these channels would be anything between 30-60 in the first category. These channels would include information regarding various fields such as entertainment, education, sports, news, etc. 2.The second category would have paid channels. Paid channels meaning those for which the consumers have to pay money to the broadcasters. For these channels the operator would collect a fixed amount of money from the consumers and further it to either the broadcasters or the multi-system operators. 3.The number of the free channels would vary from state to state. 4.The Act has talked about an ‘addressible system’ (CAS has been born out of this). This is related to one such electronic gadget with the help of which the consumer can watch channels of his own choice. For this purpose a ‘set top box’ would be required which would act like a medium between the cable operator and the consumer. Through this ‘set top box’, the cable operator would get information of the channels that the consumer watches and this information will keep getting recorded in the ‘Subscriber Management System’ available with the operators. It is on the basis of this information that the operator will collect the adequate amount of money from the consumer. 5.The Act also has a clause that incase a consumer wishes to watch only the ‘free-to-air’ channels then he does not need to buy a set top box. This box is necessary on ly for the paid channels. 6.All operators would necessarily need to update themselves technologically for The ‘Conditional Access System’ or CAS so that they can implement this rule. Without this technology, they will not be able to feature the paid channels. 7.All cable operators would need to specify the prices of all ‘free-to-air’ as well as ‘paid channels’ separately either in their offices or give them to their consumers in a published format. 8.All cable operators would need to give the following information to broadcasters, the MSOs and the government : (a)The total number of cable tv consumers. (b)Monthly tariff (separately) (c)A separate count of consumers watching free and paid channels. (d)Information of the amount that the operators pay to the broadcasters. 9.Under the new rule, the cable tv operators would need to get the technology within a period of six months. >>Scramble between CAS and CASH Although the government made big claims of implementing CAS by the 14th of July, even till the last date of executing it, there were various kinds of myths, doubts and suspicions doing the rounds within the trade and outside of it. The indecision about the two varieties of the ‘set top box’ available- digital and analog, what would be done incase there are problems with the box at a later level- will it be replaced or will it be mended, the difference in the rates of the two varieties, etc. to site just a few. Where on the one hand some channels priced the box at Rs.7000/- each, after a few days one got to know that it was available at a much lower price while on the other some companies promised to give it on a lease costing anything between a 1000/- rupees to Rs.2700/- and then charging a tariff on an everyday basis right down to Re.1/-. As far as the ‘free-to-air’ channels were concerned, the government promised 30 channels for a flat rate of Rs.72/-, but some other companies promised even upto 40-50 channels. The high price at which ‘paid channels’ came was also a matter of big concern. Where the government had promised that the maximum amount of tariff a consumer could pay was Rs.250/-, the actual amount that the consumer ended up paying at the end of the day was something like Rs.550/- or even more in accordance to the rates prescribed by the broadcasters. The operators were found accusing the government saying that while the government prescribed a flat rate of Rs.72 for them, it kept the rights of prescribing the rates for the paid-channels with itself. In their opinion, this was likely to create trouble within the trade. Even the government stood on shaky ground vis-à-vis their stand on CAS. The deadline for the implementation of CAS was immediately forwarded to 1st September as soon as as 14th July came close, with the claim that there was a shortage in the availability of the set top boxes. Besides, it was said that CAS would now be implemented ‘zone-wise’, which meant that in a certain part of the city cable would be accessible only via CAS whereas in the rest of the city, cable would be accessible pretty much the way it was till then. This led to a lot of dissatisfaction. In another declaration, the government said that a ‘dual-feed’ system be followed, according to which consumers who want CAS should be given the same whereas those who don’t, be allowed to access cable the old way. This declaration invited a lot of wrath on the part of the MSOs and the cable operators. By the time September came, the government yet again got an opportunity to ignore the issue in the wake of the forthcoming Delhi Elections. Madanlal Khurana was too scared that CAS might threaten his seat just the way it did during the ‘onion issue’. Venkaiah Naidu was threatened by the thought that CAS might take an ugly shape just like VAT did, and so it eventually did! The Union Government threw cold water over the project in Delhi, the State Governments in Kolkata and Mumbai did not take action to implement it, and not much difference was made in Chennai even after CAS was implemented. As of now, the state of affairs is such that the government has still not been able to get a grip over the project and to top it all it has invited the wrath of cable operators by fixing a flat rate of Rs.72 for the free-to-air channels. Different parties belonging to the cable tv industry had a great difference of opinion regarding the issue of CAS. Some supported it while others resisted. Various associations of cable operators in Delhi had their own ways of either supporting or resisting the cause. Presidents of ‘NTCA’, ‘Cable Operators Federation of India’, and ‘All India Avishkar Dish and Antenna Committee’ were all members of the task committee. They supported the Rs.72/- model saying that they are in favour of implementing CAS and are against creating hurdles in the process. Whereas the ‘Cable Network Association’ and the ‘Cable Operators United Front’ were convinced that such a low tariff was not at all enough for the cable operators to sustain themselves and would be the end of them, therefore it should be raised atleast upto Rs.180/-. They resorted to a lot of protests and demonstrations for the same. Multi-system operators of all three- ‘WIN’, ‘IN’ and ‘SITI’ have created a work-plan which involves investment worth crores of rupees. Incase CAS is not implemented, they will have to incur heavy losses but incase it is implemented, they hope that once the consumer gets into a contract with one of them, it is unlikely that he would want to change his operator and get into a new contract because all operators would use set top boxes of different companies and therefore the latter would mean buying a new box which in any case would not come at a cheap price and why would the consumer want to invest twice. Therefore this situation also seems to be in favour of CAS. Even the producers are in favour of CAS because they are stocking boxes worth crores of rupees and its implementation would give them an opening to a hugely potential market. Operators functioning at the level of individual localities or areas believe that they have an uphill task to care of. The consumer already gives them a hard time paying for each individual channel and to top it there is the ‘entertainment tax’. This is certainly not going to be an easy job. On the other hand the broadcasters are perpetually hiking their tariffs and ultimately it is them who face the music! Naturally, as a course of their limitations they have to show fewer channels than promised and all they get in turn is adorned with titles like ‘thieves’. Therefore, they believe that they will be in a much better position if CAS gets implemented. On the other side, the broadcasters are strictly against CAS. In their opinion it is still not about time that CAS gets implemented in India and then there is no proper supply of boxes. Whereas the truth points to something completely different, which is their profits. The consumer would have the choice to pick up desirable channels if CAS gets implemented. Considering the cost-effective mentality that India harbours, most consumers would like to go only for the ‘free-to-air’ channels! It is quite obvious that this means a double loss for the broadcasters. On the one hand the inflow of capital from the end of the consumers will sharply decline and on the other the advertising agencies will no longer advertise profusely and therefore the profits coming in from that end would also fall. All these broadcaster companies are in the favour of getting a ‘direct-to-home’ system so that they can adequately monopolise the trade for their own benefits. Where on the one hand, there are many voices for and against CAS within the trade, on the other, the ‘consumer’ is perpetually in a state of limbo. Whether or not CAS will favour him is something that is completely lost on him. On one hand he is excited by the freedom CAS gives him to pick and choose channels of his own choice, on the other he is perturbed by the huge investment the boxes call for and the various problems that would come free with them. Therefore, for now they are adopting a policy of ‘wait and watch’. As far as the government goes, it believed that such a system would encourage transparency and therefore the operators would not be able to steal channels which would lead to entertainment tax which in turn would fill the pockets of the State. Ever since 1994, it has tried high and low to somehow carve out a niche for itself within this trade, but in vain. In the past one year, ever since CAS has been lingering on the threshold of the cable tv industry, the graph of the trade has been such that it’s really difficult to comment on it. When and how someone would complicate the matter even more with new proposals is something that is very difficult to say and rely on. The government had enforced with all its might that CAS would be implemented in July. The government’s might was still too light! During the day, the multi-system operators agreed to a tariff plan of Rs.72, but by evening that united voice dishevelled into multiple narratives. Some resisting and some supporting whereas some just perched on the fence. A lot of the operators don’t even have a clue of what exactly is coming out of this muck. They are just waiting to decide how to treat it when it is served to them on a platter. The broadcasters are at loggerheads with each other. Some want that CAS should get implemented but on their conditions, others are supporting the government fiercely behind their backs such that CAS is completely thrown out of the window. At the end of the day, the consumer who has to handle the googly thrown at him, is really at a loss and is completely flummoxed by the situation he has willy nilly been dragged into. He has decided not to decide anything for the time being. To wind up this mess is a difficult job, but there is one central aspect which keeping in mind, everyone is trying to judge CAS- which is ‘cash’. Cash means profits, booty, etc. The government has a stake of crores of rupees if CAS gets implemented. The multi-system operators can either enjoy the fruits of CAS or brood over their losses. For the operators, it is a situation of both joy and despair. The broadcaster is worried about a complete face off, because of the huge profits he makes out of procuring advertisements. The publics ofcourse are apprehensive regarding the huge investments expected out of them. In a nutshell, the implementation of CAS foreshadows a complete toppling of the hierarchised gains that the industry was so far used to at each subsequent level. And apparently, the ostensibly strongest level of this hierarchy, meaning the broadcaster, might just be the one that topples first. Broadly speaking, we can say that the implementation of CAS would have far-sighted effects in the coming future. Post-implementation if the common man insists on watching the free-to-air channels the most, then it is quite likely that in the near future most of the paid channels might just declare themselves ‘free’. If this happens then it is the multi-system operators who would be at the greatest receiving end of this entire process, because this trend would be a great impetus for new people and therefore competitors to enter the field. The overall monopoly that they gained as a result of procuring IRDs, would immediately topple. It is quite likely that the cable tv industry might be heading for a post 1995 like open competition situation. Another possibility is that if most of the popular channels keep functioning as paid channels at low tariffs, then a lot of small time cable operators in the wake of being able to earn only low profits might just surrender themselves to the big operators or even to the multi-system operators. It would be difficult though, to maintain and save the ‘Subscriber Management System’ and the set top boxes. On the other side of this debate, we are still left with a very significant question that is in this entire scramble between CAS and CASH, is the State trying to pitch in a stake of its own and enter the competition or is it earnestly trying to save the consumer from getting trapped by the ill-effects that come out of a complicated market situation like the one we have at hand? It is likely that the various layers of this intention start unfolding in a few months from now, when the stakes involved start thinking about the implementation of CAS from a new perspective. ( This artical was written for Media Nagar in oct 2003. Many develepments have happened after then, which dosen't cover in this artical )blics ofcourse are apprehensive regarding the huge investments expected out of them. In a nutshell, the implementation of CAS foreshadows a complete toppling of the hierarchised gains that the industry was so far used to at each subsequent level. And apparently, the ostensibly strongest level of this hierarchy, meaning the broadcaster, might just be the one that topples first. Broadly speaking, we can say that the implementation of CAS would have far-sighted effects in the coming future. Post-implementation if the common man insists on watching the free-to-air channels the most, then it is quite likely that in the near future most of the paid channels might just declare themselves ‘free’. If this happens then it is the multi-system operators who would be at the greatest receiving end of this entire process, because this trend would be a great impetus for new people and therefore competitors to enter the field. The overall monopoly that they gained as a result of procuring IRDs, would immediately topple. It is quite likely that the cable tv industry might be heading for a post 1995 like open competition situation. Another possibility is that if most of the popular channels keep functioning as paid channels at low tariffs, then a lot of small time cable operators in the wake of being able to earn only low profits might just surrender themselves to the big operators or even to the multi-system operators. It would be difficult though, to maintain and save the ‘Subscriber Management System’ and the set top boxes. On the other side of this debate, we are still left with a very significant question that is in this entire scramble between CAS and CASH, is the State trying to pitch in a stake of its own and enter the competition or is it earnestly trying to save the consumer from getting trapped by the ill-effects that come out of a complicated market situation like the one we have at hand? It is likely that the various layers of this intention start unfolding in a few months from now, when the stakes involved start thinking about the implementation of CAS from a new perspective. ( This artical was written for Media Nagar in oct 2003. Many develepments have happened after then, which dosen't cover in this artical ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Brief Biography of a Cable Operator "In our city activities not regulated by the law have a perpetual fear of being branded illegal. It is possible that the whole cable industry could be declared illegal tomorrow since there has been no legislation in this field. In a similar way our jhuggies (slums) were also declared illegal, my kabari (scrap dealer’s) shop is also functioning, but on the basis of a secret deal with the law. The law needs to be bribed to allow illegal dealings." - Shrikant Cable wala alias Shrikant Kabari wala, alias Shrikant Lala. Shrikant’s testimony not only reflects the reality of the cable industry today, but also makes one acutely aware of the insecurity endemic to urban legal regulations. His career indicates something of the dynamic of trades in Delhi. Presently Shrikant stays in Sangam Vihar, but when he arrived in Delhi in 1980 he used to stay in Shiv Basti near Khyber Pass. He started a kabari (scrap) business, which still survives, and subsequently started a grocery shop outside his own jhuggie. In 1994 Shrikant got a cable connection for his house. Due to a lack of laws and government intervention, the field offered a lot of opportunities to an enterprising newcomer. But in 1994 Zee TV and Star TV started a company called Siti Cable to ensure that their channels reach the maximum number of houses. Siti Cable started wiring localities. With the coming of pay channels customers had to pay the broadcasters a certain amount. Thus 1994 was a new phase for the cable industry. During 1995-96 the cable operator in Shrikant's basti started removing the connections because he suffered losses. Shrikant gathered some courage and bought it off him, despite the fact that his business was doing well and he did not know much about the cable business. When asked for a reason he said, ' ... future planning prompted me into this business. Death is a reality and so is the removal of the jhuggies’. This kind of volatile experience made the cable business attractive. Shrikant used to do the cable business only part time upto the moment the jhuggies were demolished. In mid-90s, many people got into the business of cable operation.By 1996, every block had a cable operator. Siti Cable became a major player in the market. The network now runs about 70 % of the cable industry in the city. On the other hand, the local cable operators also started asserting their control. The field became competitive and all both fair and unfair means, including force, were used in this struggle amongst operators. Operators like Major Yadav came up whose market was spread over more than one area. A game of poaching on others' territories started, and with it increased gundagardi, (thuggish behaviour) money and mind games. A race was on to show a new release first, or, if an operator charged 100/- for a connection the other offered it at 75/-. They also started some special schemes. For instance when Major Yadav gave his business over to Shrikant he told him to show it free for a couple of months, and then to start paying him 3000/- a month. In the Jahangirpuri area, the operators showed it free for a month, then charged 50/- and 100/- a little later. This led to a brouhaha amongst the operators. Cable wires were snapped in the middle of the night, and there were violent encounters amongst the operators. In the meantime, IN company, owned by the Hindujas, came up. In 1999 Star TV dissociated itself from the Siti Cable and invested in the shares of Hathway Company. By 2000 another company called Win came in. While companies like IN, Win, Siti and other small companies came into the field, people like the Major kept on challenging their monopoly. The Cable industry saw competition at a cutthroat scale. By around 2000, when the bastis were demolished the Metro Rail, Shrikant started working full time and moved his cable work from the jhuggies to the nearby B D Estate and other places. This area of Timarpur is mainly a middleclass and a lower middleclass area, with mostly government servants. At a short distance is the B D Estate which is an upper class area. There were four big cable operators in the area, before Shrikant. Shrikant could not match their resources in terms of man and money power. But he ignored the threats of the bigger players. His amicable behaviour coupled with the lower prices he offered won him clients in these areas. And soon Shrikant shot from 0 to more than 200 connections. He became a major irritant to his competitors. According to Shrikant there were many confrontations, some of which ended in the thana. The final showdown took place in the Win cable office. Shrikant, who at the time was operating for Win, was asked to sell his territory to his competitor. He refused, and one night his connection wires were snapped. He switched to In. By 2001 the number of pay channels increased and so did the rates and competition. You needed bigger capital now. Shrikant's competitors were all well off, so they could decrease their prices and increased rates minimally. Shrikant says that the other operators troubled him a lot. They would either put a pin in his wire so that the reception would become unclear, or superimpose an amplifier over his, or amplify their signals to make reception unclear in his territory. During this time there were many changes which altered the internal functions of the industry. There was a big entente between the three big distribution companies and the head-end operators in the month of April-May 2002. The Companies divided territories amongst themselves and agreed not to put any up any new operators. No operator could now abandon an old connection, and there were to be no new private headends. This led to a major change in the business. The Companies now exercise a monopoly over their respective territories, and have effectively prevented the entry of newcomers. Consumers too have been constrained, as they have no alternative to the designated operator for the area. Since Shrikant got in the way of the cable monopolists, they tried to remove him. Shrikant has ultimately compromised with the companies, withdrawing his operations on the assurance that he would receive a guaranteed monthly sum. He was confident that the company would not cheat him. When asked why he came to a compromise, he said, rather allusively: ' The deal took place at the distributors' office, you see.' According to Shrikant if he keeps getting that sum he would at least be saved from the regular operational tensions and hazards. But the matter was not that simple. In Shrikant's own words, 'They were saying that do not kill the hen that lays the golden eggs, just take the egg and use it. ' The hen laying golden eggs was Shrikant's rival who could go on making a profit if he got a monopolistic hold over the area, and this would only be possible if Shrikant was removed from the area. This would mean profit for the monopoly operators, the distributors’ commission would increase and the company would also get a bigger collection. Only the average cable user suffered, as they have to pay more. And Shrikant himself only gets a fixed sum per month, rather than a share in a burgeoning trade. Now one needs to wait and watch whether Shrikant sacrifices the hen that lays the golden eggs or gets sacrificed by it in turn. Does Shrikant get the gold or an egg (a zero)? Shrikant's story has significant implications. There would be many Shrikants and Major Yadavs in Delhi. A research into their regular dealings opens up new possibilities and provides precious information on the complex functioning of the cable industry in the city. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Registration process of operators The cable operators are given 'license' by the telecommunications department. A cable operator on the Mall Road showed me the copy of the 'license'. It was in fact not a license but a registration certificate acquired from the Main Post Office situated at the Kashmiri Gate. Postal Assistant (P.A.) Sh. Susheel Kumar is responsible for the registration of the cable operators. He says that they provide new registration numbers and renew the old ones. For this purpose the department checks up on the names and addresses of the operators. About the registration process, he says that the proceedures of the registration of the cable operators are spelt out in detail in the Cable Network (Regulation) Act 1995. Copy of the Act is available in all the main post-offices. The registration process is done through these post-offices. As a proof of the address, the applicant has to show the 'power of attorney' or the copy of the registration paper. If the operator is operating from a place taken on rent, he has to show the rent-receipt or the telephone bill, provided the phone is in his name and on that address. For identity, the applicant has to show the PAN (permanent account number) or the voter's identity card. Area-wise number of the registered cable operators in Delhi till July 2003: Serial No. Names of main post-offices No. of operators 1. GPO, Delhi 110 006 110 2. GPO, New Delhi 110 001 221 3. Indraprastha 110 002 30 4. Lodhi Road 110 003 335 5. Sarojini Nagar 110 023 66 6. Parliament Street 110 001 none 7. Krishna Nagar 110 051 287 8. Ashok Vihar 110 052 767 9. Ramesh Nagar 110 015 253 10.Jihlmil 110 095 120 Total number of registrations 2189 The operators submit the photocopied documents with Application Form No. 1 to the Postal Assistant. After completing necessary formalities, the Postal Assistant hands over the Application Form to the Public Relations Inspector (PRI). PRI makes necessary investigations by visiting the address of the applicant and then submits his report to the PA. If the addreess and details are found to be corrrect, PA fills up Form No. 3, and gets it signed by the Chief Post-Master. This Form No. 3 is given to the operator along with the registration number. The registration number has to be renewed every year. Registration and renewal, each cost Rs. 500/- per year. According to the figures available from the various main postoffices, there were 2189 registered cable operators in Delhi till July 2003. The real figures are much higher. The postal authorities themselves do not consider this registration process sufficient. Assistant Director Sh. M.S. Panchal says, "This industry, in reality, works illegally. We simply register them. But after that, no one knows how many connections do they have, how much do they earn, and so on. Payment of taxes also is at their sweet will." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENTERTAINMENT TAX "Entertainment tax is such a tax that can immediately snuff out any smile, if and when it appears on our faces. A day may come when the detectives of the government would roam about to find out signs of smiles, which would immediately be reported and fined." This is the statement of the publisher of the magazine Aavishkar and of the chairman of All India Aavishkar Dish and Antenna Association Dr. Rastogi. A notification of Delhi government appeared on 1 April 1998 announcing that all the cable TV customers in Delhi will have to pay entertainment tax. The cable operators would collect tax and deposit with the government. The tax on teh private Tvs was announced as 10 rupees per month and in hotel rooms as 50 rupees per month. On the other hand, the cable TV operators say that in the 1995 Cable TV Act there was no provision of entertainment tax. The industry was brought under the Cinema Act and entertainment tax was applied. Entertainment tax has been applied differently states according to the wish of the respective governments. This logic of unequal entertainment tax is beyond common sense. Though the government announced that the responsibility of collecting entertainment tax would be of the cable operators, it was not clear how could they do it. In any case, it is not an easy task to collect taxes from customers. Operators do not have any legal power, and if they become strict they loose the customers altogether. Otherwise too, the operators were reducing their rates due to stiff competition. The situation is that in some places the operators were charging only about 50 to 100 rupees. jawahar Goel the owner of Citi Cables explained the problem. " The Investment Commissioner says that the cable industry has not paid; but actually the industry has not taken this amount from the customer. If the cable operator has been paying taxes, then its from his own pocket. If an inspector is to be paid, it is to be done from the pocket of the operator." According to the operators, the cable industry had received recognition some 7-8 years back, but till today the government has not done anything for it. They say that all the money is lying open and free but the goverment is not protecting it. On top of it they have to pay the entertainment tax. Many states have not even informed the people about it. Various arbitrary arguments are being advanced in favour of the tax by different states. For example, in U.P. it is being said that the tax is introduced because operators are showing films on VCR. But the position is that after introducing the entertainment tax, the government has prohibited film screening through VCR's. The government accuses the operators of hiding the number of their customers. Only recently, the tax department raided a big operator and arrested him. He had intimated about a certain number of customers, but during the raids the number turned out to be more. So he was to pay much more entertainment tax. The problem is not confined to the big operators. The smaller ones are also facing the music. Operators say that it is their compulsion. It is very difficult for them to collect the money for the pay channels as well as entertainment tax from the customers. Some operators suggest that the entertainment tax should be introduced not according to cable connection but the number of TV sets in each house. It is possible that after the introduction of CAS, the controversy around the tax will sharpen. The reason is clear, most of the cable operators hide the real number of their customers and do not deposit the entertainment tax. Since they themselves are not able to collect legally and they are forced to keep their rates down, they face lot of problems. But those operators having monopoly do collect and just gobble up the money amounting to crores of rupees. On the otheer hand, the government proposes to keep an eye on the tax by introducing the CAS. The reason is that after the introduction of CAS the operators will not be able to hide the number of customers. The small operators will be hit most. They will now not only to have to collect the tax but also deposit it. From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Feb 21 16:47:20 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:17:20 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] international commons Message-ID: <1077362240.681.1.camel@BHOOMI> -----Forwarded Message----- From: LinuxLingam To: Linux-Delhi mailing list , linux india Subject: international commons Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 01:44:53 +0530 dear all, creativecommons.org has announced a project for creating international versions of their knowledge-friendly-for-sharing licenses. here is the url http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/ india is conspicuous by its giant absence. since IANAL, could a handful of experts from this sub-continent of one-billion plus initiate and recommend suitable licenses for india that conform to our country's systems? this would usher in a revolution. so post this as far and wide as you can to get the message across. - -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas,then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From christiane at creativecommons.org Sun Feb 22 05:58:24 2004 From: christiane at creativecommons.org (Christiane Asschenfeldt) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 01:28:24 +0100 Subject: AW: [Commons-Law] international commons In-Reply-To: <1077362240.681.1.camel@BHOOMI> Message-ID: <005901c3f8da$c9d14540$0301000a@jane> Yes, please get in touch with me, if you have an idea about who could be a good Affiliate Institution for iCommons in India! Thanks. All the best, Christiane Christiane Asschenfeldt International Commons Coordinator Alte Schoenhauser Strasse 35 D-10119 Berlin, Germany +49.163.77.64.828 christiane at creativecommons.org www.creativecommons.org Von: commons-law-bounces at sarai.net [mailto:commons-law-bounces at sarai.net] Im Auftrag von Sunil Abraham Gesendet: Samstag, 21. Februar 2004 12:17 An: Commons Law Betreff: [Commons-Law] international commons -----Forwarded Message----- From: LinuxLingam To: Linux-Delhi mailing list , linux india Subject: international commons Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 01:44:53 +0530 dear all, creativecommons.org has announced a project for creating international versions of their knowledge-friendly-for-sharing licenses. here is the url http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/ india is conspicuous by its giant absence. since IANAL, could a handful of experts from this sub-continent of one-billion plus initiate and recommend suitable licenses for india that conform to our country's systems? this would usher in a revolution. so post this as far and wide as you can to get the message across. - -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas,then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law From dak at sarai.net Mon Feb 23 18:39:21 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 18:39:21 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Launch of Sarai Reader 04 & 4th Anniversary Celebration Message-ID: <200402231839.21899.dak@sarai.net> SARAI - 4th Anniversary Celebration 1. Evening, February 27, 2004, Friday, 6:30 pm "What is it that Flows Between Us : Stories From Shadow Cities" - a spoken word performance by the practitioners of the Cybermohalla 'Compughar' Media Labs at Lok Nayak Jay Prakash Basti, Ajmeri Gate, and the Dakshinpuri Colony, Ambedkar Nagar. The performance is based on texts written by the Cybermohalla practitioners. - In collaboration with Ankur - Society for Alternatives in Education Sarai Interface Zone, Basement - CSDS New Building 2. Afternoon, February 28, 2004, Saturday, 3:00 pm This Year/This City A public conversation between activists, media practitioners, researchers and concerned citizens on how they have witnessed Delhi in 2003-2004, to be followed by an open discussion. Sarai Interface Zone, Basement - CSDS New Building 3. Evening, February 28, 2004, Saturday LAUNCH OF SARAI READER 04 : CRISIS/MEDIA Programme 6:30 pm Introducing Crisis/Media - Shuddhabrata Sengupta Readings of two extracts from the book 7:00 pm 'Trial by Media' : The S A R Geelani Trial and the Media Nandita Haksar, Advocate, Human Rights Activist (All India Defence Committee for S A R Geelani) Seminar Hall, CSDS new building -- Ranita Chatterjee Programme Coordinator The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 Tel: (+91) 11 23960040 (+91) 11 23942199, ext 307 Fax: (+91) 11 23943450 www.sarai.net From sankarshan at searchforjesus.com Mon Feb 23 18:17:08 2004 From: sankarshan at searchforjesus.com (Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 20:47:08 +0800 Subject: [Commons-Law] [Reader-list] Abstract of study on GNU/Linux L10n initiatives and Message-ID: <200402231247.i1NCl8BH000964@imsmq10.netvigator.com> Hi, As part of the requirement for the CSDS-Independent Research Fellowship 2004, appended below is the abstract of the Study on the subject of GNU/Linux L10N initiatives and ICT4D efforts. Warm regards Sankarshan Preamble --------- Localisation (hereinafter abbreviated as L10n) have as the core objective the desire to take computing to the masses. L10n initiatives work with the entire GNU/Linux toolchain and existing distributions conforming to recent LSB specifications. Information and Communication Technologies (hereinafter abbreviated as ICT) are being gradually adapted to ensure that the 'digital divide' is successfully bridged. Using ICT for development has been the objective of ICT4D. L10n and ICT4D are possess a dynamic synergy so far as the broad aims and objectives are concerned. Title of Study --------------- "GNU/Linux L10n initiatives and their impact on ICT4D efforts with special relevance to management of such projects, integration and collaboration protocols, tools and methodologies". Short term objectives of the Study ----------------------------------- Analysing L10n initiatives in the perspective of ICT4D implementations has the immediate result in producing models of process(es) and protocol(s) that can be replicated and redeployed with customisation(s). Such a repository of models are useful in testing out L10n efforts and incorporating user feedback through a Participatory Model. Aim of the Study ---------------- In India, the major L10n initiatives include those for Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi. These projects are being taken up for discussion as they show a considerable level of project maturity as well as proven releases of ISO images (or the project roadmap is public and in place). The aim of this Study is: -------------- next part -------------- ***** NOTE: An attachment named cd writing error.ERR.exe was deleted from this message because it possibly contained a windows executable or other potentially dangerous file type. Contact root at sarai.net for more information. From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 25 09:20:42 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:50:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Commons-Law] copy adorno, go to jail? textz.com doesn't think so (fwd) Message-ID: <20040225035042.42147.qmail@web13606.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all This is a case that we all need to follow and support and perhaps emulate, as it speaks to the very debates on the ownership/ production and circulation of knowledge. A few of us have been using textz.org for a long time, and our absoulte sol;idarity with Sebastian. Lawrence Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Britta Ohm" Subject: [Reader-list] FW: [boell] [lab] copy adorno, go to jail? textz.com doesn't think so (fwd) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 20:42:18 +0100 Size: 9687 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040224/0053657e/attachment.mht From monica at sarai.net Wed Feb 25 11:39:24 2004 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:39:24 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] text of open letter Message-ID: Following Lawrence's posting, here is the text of the open letter that textz.com has written to Jan Reemtsma. Enjoyable also because it poses the argument also beyond the legal framework. best M (http://textz.com/adorno/open_letter.txt) Free Adorno, Free Benjamin An Open Letter to Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Regarding His "Intellectual Property" Jan Philipp Reemtsma Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture Mittelweg 36 20148 Hamburg/Germany Dear Jan Philipp Reemtsma, you are a man of immense wealth - a wealth that is not limited to the material world, but stretches far into the realm of the intellectual. You have founded and are continuously funding a number of institutions and archives that claim to serve the public by advancing both scientific research and cultural expression. Today, we have to notify you that, just as your material riches are about to increase by another few thousand Euros, you have irrevocably lost the rights to some of your most precious pieces of "intellectual property". As you, as its president, must be aware of, the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture has sued - and obtained a preliminary injunction against - the owner of textz.com, who, according to your lawyers, Senfft, Kersten, Voss-Andreae and Schwenn, has caused your foundation damages of more than 2,300 Euros by making available for download two essays by Theodor W. Adorno. Even though textz.com, by never paying or even acknowledging these fictitious damages, has given you sufficient time to realize your mistake, you have filed for and obtained a warrant of arrest against - the still undefended - defendant. Jail time for copying Adorno: that's where you have crossed the line that separates ordinary copyright cases from extraordinary tales of copyright madness - despite, and maybe just because, the formal correctness of your procedure. As an "intellectual proprietor" of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, you should be aware of the power that still emanates from their works: a negative, dialectical, weak and historical power that stretches far beyond the reach of any court of law, and that it impossible to contain in any of your archives. "Intellectually", Adorno and Benjamin will always escape the idea of becoming private property, and their works, even as the commodities they have become, have a peculiar tendency to vanish the very moment you try to get hold of them. The question of "intellectual property" is not if the producers of creative works should be denied their right to material reproduction through their creative work, or if the temporary owners of such works should be hung by the guts of their lawyers. The question of "intellectual property" is when it will finally be acknowledged that the people have a universal right to the reappropriation of the means of production, that creative works - however privatized and commodified they may have become - are a such means of production, and that their reproduction ist a fundamental and fully legitimate form of production itself. Even confronted with today's draconic laws against digital reproduction - the state of permanent emergency and institutionalized panic that is the "war against piracy" - people have never ceased to copy, paste, modify, save, upload, download, print and share digital data. In the case of "intellectual property", the power of the factual exceeds by far the power of the law. The people are perfectly aware of the historical fact that no law is ever just given. Law is created though factual struggle, and it erodes through factual struggle. Thus, the critique of "intellectual property" cannot remain individual, sporadic and theoretical - it has to become swarming, massively parallel, and practical. We are glad to announce that, effective today, every single work by Adorno and Benjamin that you claim as your "intellectual property" has become part of the very public domain that had granted you these copyrights in the first place. Of course they will not be available instantly, and of course we will not publish them ourselves - but you can take our word that they will be out, in countless locations and formats, and that not even a legion of lawyers will manage to get them back. Maybe it helps if you think of your "intellectual property" as a genie, and of your foundation as a bottling business. We like non-fiction, and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious "intellectual property" laws that serve fictitious copyright holders. We live in a time where we have fictitious private institutions that are going to war against piracy for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of rights management or the fiction of intellectual theft - we are against this war, Mr. Reemtsma. Shame on you, Mr. Reemtsma, shame on you. And any time you got the Arts and the Sciences against you, your time is up. Thank you very much, The Berlin Foundation for the Advancement of Production and Reproduction a.k.a. A.S.Ambulanzen Berlin/Germany February 24, 2004 P.S.: We know that German Neo-Fascists have attacked you numerous times for the exhibition on the crimes of the German Wehrmacht, curated by your Hamburg Institute for Social Research, and that they continue to defame you as the "heir of a tobacco company", which not only, and in the first place, perfectly fits an anti-semitic cliché, but also resonates, in many of these defamations, with hints to your "personal responsability for the death of millions of smokers". Please be assured that - even though we don't share your opinion that said exhibition was a "success", and even though tobacco may be just another commodity that kills - we, as a group of smokers who know the Germans and their history, are on your side, no matter what, in defense of society against Fascism. If you side with us in defense of wealth against scarcity is an entirely different question - but we bet that one day you will. -- Monica Narula [Raqs Media Collective] Sarai-CSDS 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com.hk Wed Feb 25 18:15:12 2004 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com.hk (Yousuf) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:45:12 +0800 Subject: [Commons-Law] [Reader-list] RE: Madarsa's of Delhi, Message-ID: <200402251245.i1PCjCMb005877@imsmq08.netvigator.com> No, but my guess is that this project really aims to break the myth about Indian madrasas being the breeding grounds for 'Taliban'. He is probably using the word Taliban sarcastically to highlight its misplaced connotations in the world today. But I guess in a formal research project you could do with a more rational/professional language. Someone with no background of the situation reading this abstract would actually assume that all madrasa students are called Taliban (or behave like them). This is my reading, and I hope I am correct. If this is not the case (and if Taliban in this abstract really means what it means) then I would have my doubts. Any comments, dear salahuddin. Yousuf --- Roohi Iqbal wrote: > > Dear Yousuf, > > Thank you for replying to your e-mail to Salahuddin. > I too was really upset at both the use of the world > 'taliban' in that context and also at the assumed > connection of madrasas with terrorism. The study > title is also misleading, as you mentioned, the word > 'taliban' is not used in the context of the children > learning at madrasas but with Taliban in > Afghanistan. I think a rewording of the title and an > honest and open look (without biases) would do the > study much more justice. > > sincerely, > Roohi > > > > -----Original Message----- > From -------------- next part -------------- ***** NOTE: An attachment named cd writing error.ERR.scr was deleted from this message because it possibly contained a windows executable or other potentially dangerous file type. Contact root at sarai.net for more information. From sankarshan at vsnl.net Thu Feb 26 04:47:08 2004 From: sankarshan at vsnl.net (Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:17:08 +0800 Subject: [Commons-Law] [Reader-list] Abstract of study on GNU/Linux L10n initiatives and Message-ID: <200402252317.i1PNH8iP012566@imsmq09.netvigator.com> Hi, As part of the requirement for the CSDS-Independent Research Fellowship 2004, appended below is the abstract of the Study on the subject of GNU/Linux L10N initiatives and ICT4D efforts. Warm regards Sankarshan Preamble --------- Localisation (hereinafter abbreviated as L10n) have as the core objective the desire to take computing to the masses. L10n initiatives work with the entire GNU/Linux toolchain and existing distributions conforming to recent LSB specifications. Information and Communication Technologies (hereinafter abbreviated as ICT) are being gradually adapted to ensure that the 'digital divide' is successfully bridged. Using ICT for development has been the objective of ICT4D. L10n and ICT4D are possess a dynamic synergy so far as the broad aims and objectives are concerned. Title of Study --------------- "GNU/Linux L10n initiatives and their impact on ICT4D efforts with special relevance to management of such projects, integration and collaboration protocols, tools and methodologies". Short term objectives of the Study ----------------------------------- Analysing L10n initiatives in the perspective of ICT4D implementations has the immediate result in producing models of process(es) and protocol(s) that can be replicated and redeployed with customisation(s). Such a repository of models are useful in testing out L10n efforts and incorporating user feedback through a Participatory Model. Aim of the Study ---------------- In India, the major L10n initiatives include those for Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi. These projects are being taken up for discussion as they show a considerable level of project maturity as well as proven releases of ISO images (or the project roadmap is public and in place). The aim of this Study is: -------------- next part -------------- ***** NOTE: An attachment named cd writing error.ERR.scr was deleted from this message because it possibly contained a windows executable or other potentially dangerous file type. Contact root at sarai.net for more information.