Internet Democracy Project

At the recently concluded ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Busan, India proposed a controversial new resolution that sought to contribute to realising a more secure information society. But while some criticisms of the draft resolution were justified, much of the discussion at the ITU Plenipot overlooked the considerable merit that India’s proposed new resolution has when considered against the backdrop of the larger politics of global Internet governance. For its attempt to find solutions to long-standing concerns of developing countries while at the same time recognising the value of existing internet governance institutions, India’s proposal deserves a second reading, argues Anja Kovacs.   More

In the eyes of many observers, India is one of a handful of countries that are in a position to swing the outcome of the internet governance debates. It is of importance, therefore, to understand in greater depth the stances that the Government of India is likely to take in the many important Internet governance meetings and events that will take place in the remainder of 2014 and in 2015, and how they can be engaged constructively. This short paper outlines and examines these positions, taking as its starting point India’s participation in NETmundial – Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, which took place in São Paulo, Brazil, on 23 and 24 April 2014. It was first published in Kaspar, Lea (ed.) (2014). NETmundial: Reflections from Brazil, India and Kenya. London: Global Partners.    More

Debates about ​‘enhanced cooperation’ are, at their heart, debates about how Internet-related public policy is made, and what role different stakeholders can play in developing those policies. The outcomes that will emerge from several processes that are currently attempting to address these questions will likely shape how future Internet challenges are framed and how they can be addressed, including whether civil society will be in the room or not. In an effort to understand the concerns about the current Internet governance régime and the proposed solutions that are on the table, this paper brings into a conversation Grace Githaiga from Kenya, Joana Varon Ferraz from Brazil and Anja Kovacs from India with Lea Kaspar from the UK, to analyse the concept of enhanced cooperation and arguments around it. The paper then goes on to suggest a way towards formalising a distributed model of Internet governance.   More

While progress has been made in some areas over the past decade, there are still numerous Internet-related public policy issues that require to be addressed at the global level and that do not have adequate processes involving all stakeholders in place. Many have proposed that all these issues should be made the responsibility of one global body, be it new or existing. The Internet Democracy Project, however, believes that this is not the right way forward. Instead, we propose a decentralised model that builds on various existing processes but is not restricted to it and that ensures all stakeholders are integrally involved. Let us explain.    More

From sexual harassment to rape threats to gender-based hate speech, women face disproportionate levels of abuse online. This briefing paper by Richa Kaul Padte and Anja Kovacs asks: how and to what extent can the law in India help? And what amendments could be made to the law to improve support for women in their fight against online abuse? We investigate. (A shorter version of this paper has been published in EPW (Economic and Political Weekly), 29 June 2013).   More

This discussion paper – co-authored by Anja Kovacs from the Internet Democracy Project and Dixie Hawtin from Global Partners and Associates – was written on invitation for the Stockholm Internet Forum. The paper examines the main challenges that the cyber security arena currently poses for the promotion and protection of human rights – including a lack of definitional clarity; a consequent pervasive but often illegitimate sense of crisis; and costly yet frequently ineffective solutions. It then investigates what a human rights approach to cyber security entails, taking as its starting point a positive, rather than negative, approach to security that supports not only the right to privacy but, crucially, also the right to freedom of expression.    More

Over the past two years or so, news reports of people getting arrested for Facebook posts or tweets have managed to stir a public debate about laws governing the Internet in India. With the arrests of Ambikesh Mahapatra, Aseem Trivedi and Shaheen Dhada, the issue of criminalisation of online speech and expression has caught mainstream attention. But the shape and details of this phenomenon remain surprisingly underexamined. On which occasions does the application of criminal law stir controversies? Who are the actors involved in such cases? This study seeks to make a beginning to expanding our understanding of these under-researched issues in the Indian context, by examining in depth seven famous Indian cases in which criminal law has controversially been drawn on in an attempt to stifle free speech on the Internet.   More

THIS REPORT WAS CO-AUTHORED BY DR. ANJA KOVACS, RICHA KAUL PADTE AND SHOBHA SV. Giving rise to new ways to exercise the right to freedom of expression, to the potential of fluid identities and to new ways to interact for those with limited offline opportunities, the democratisation of societies through the Internet is a phenomenon many have celebrated. But in reality, the hierarchies of the real world are all too often not effaced in the virtual world; instead, they are reborn and reconstructed in such a way that new mediums become the sites for old discriminations. Despite the Internet’s empowering potential, the gender-based hierarchies, violences, and manifestations of discrimination that women (or people who do not define their genders as singularly male) must face on a daily basis are also paralleled online, in India as elsewhere. This paper seeks to explore the different forms of verbal abuse that women who are publicly vocal on online platforms in India face; the non-legal and legal strategies that they use to deal with such abuse; and the relationship of both with offline contexts that have shaped women’s experiences for centuries. As we will see, whatever cyberspace’s purported characteristics, women’s bodies and sexuality, and the negotiation of the public and the private deeply affect their virtual existence as much as it does their offline being. To read the full report, please click on the download button.    More

Rishab Bailey participated for the Internet Democracy Project in the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), as part of the Indian delegation. What follows are seven comments and observations by Rishab on what happened at the WCIT and on ITU processes more generally, based on attending the World Conference. For background information on the ITU, the WCIT, the ITRs, and their importance for Internet governance, read Rishab’s earlier FAQ on the WCIT and the ITRs, which complements this report.   More

With both online censorship and surveillance dramatically on the rise worldwide, it is increasingly clear that we are witnessing a hollowing out not only of the empowering potential of the internet but also of democracy as a political system. To reverse these intertwined trends, they urgently require sustained and systematic attention. Feminists are uniquely placed to weigh in on these debates thanks to their rich insight in and long and intimate engagement with theories and practices of democracy. Feminists’ contributions to internet governance are essential if we are to prevent the empowering potential of the internet – which is real – from largely evaporating in mistaken policy choices over the next decade. This report was originally published in ​‘Critically Absent: Women’s Rights in Internet Governance‘ by the Association for Progressive Communications, South Africa, 2012.    More