The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) invited counter comments on their consultation paper No. 8/2015 on differential pricing of data services. The Internet Democracy Project submitted counter comments to TRAI, outlining where we disagree with various submissions made in favour of differential pricing. More
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) invited comments on their consultation paper No. 8/2015 on differential pricing of data services. The Internet Democracy Project submitted comments to TRAI, outlining why differential pricing of data services in the Indian mobile telephony market further jeopardises the goal of wider access to a free, open and secure internet, and runs against consumer welfare and competition. More
On 5th October, a coalition of organizations and individuals, including the Internet Democracy Project, petitioned Facebook to bring attention to the harm that is being caused by its Authentic Identity policy. Along with pointing out a non-exhaustive list of groups affected by the policy, the petition made some concrete recommendations for changes. The petition also demanded that Facebook’s justification for the policy (that it discourages bad behavior) be backed by real data. In this post, we examine what the promised changes are, and whether they satisfactorily address the problems with the ‘real name’ policy. More
In September 2015, the first U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue was held, to advance some shared priorities in the areas of security, defense and commerce. This came shortly after the India‑U.S. Cyber Dialogue in August 2015, where both countries identified opportunities for collaborating on capacity building for cybersecurity, combatting cybercrime and enhancing information sharing to counter terrorism. These events got a lot of attention for their attempts to mount cooperation between the two States. However, bilateral engagement between India and U.S on these matters is not new. Want to know more? Read on for a brief history. More
A Committee of the Department of Telecommunications released a report on net neutrality in May 2015. It included recommendations on the technical, regulatory and public policy concerns. The following report is Internet Democracy Project’s comments on the views expressed in the committee’s report. More