Governments are censoring digital content on the ground that it infringes intellectual property rights or offends people. Can they be stopped? It’s a bit of Iraq and Afghanistan out there on the Internet. Just like the invasion of Iraq was lies, deceit and regime change as George W Bush chased illusory weapons of mass destruction in that hapless country, on the Internet, too, there is an element of fabrication and duplicity...
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Risk in the call by R Ramachandran
A World Health Organisation agency evaluates electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones for carcinogenicity. THERE has been a dramatic increase in the use of the mobile phone worldwide since its introduction in the mid-1980s. According to the estimate of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), currently there are about five billion mobile phone subscribers globally. In the past decade or so, there has been growing concern about the possibility of adverse health effects,...
More »IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China by R Krishna
The Centre for Internet & Societies (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, recently filed an RTI query with the Department of Information Technology (DIT), asking for a list of websites blocked by the Indian government under the IT Act. The department handed them a list of 11 websites. It was just one department’s list, but this was the first time such a list was being made public. “The information given was not...
More »India sliding down in Internet freedom - Freedom Institute by Prashant Duggal
Washington-based Freedom Institute has expressed concern over the decreasing freedom of expression on the Internet in India. The Institute, which put India in the company of states like China, Egypt and Iran which saw a deterioration of freedom of expression on the Internet since the 2009 report, highlighted the tightening of surveillance and prosecution of online posts. India’s freedom index declined from 34 in 2009 to 36 in 2011, reflecting the...
More »Panchayat banks to speed up MGNREGA workers' pay by KA Gupta
Though efforts have been initiated to allure labourers towards MGNREGA schemes, a latest issue at hand is the payment of wages on time. "If an officer takes interest in the execution of schemes of the centrally- sponsored Act, there will be no problem in payment of wages," said MGNREGA national inquiry committee member Wilfred Lakra, prasing the BDOs of Dumri and Ghaghra Shishir Kumar Singh and Manoj Kumar respectively for taking...
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