-The Hindu Atleast 40 faculty members from the IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Khargapur and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have, as of Wednesday, signed the petition lambasting Free Basics — a Facebook initiative to offer free access to a few sites—as ‘misleading’and ‘flawed.’ They will be submitting the petition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday. “Facebook’s ‘free basics’ (sic) proposal is such a lethal combination, having several...
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Put FB's Free Basics service on hold, TRAI tells Reliance Communications -Pankaj Doval
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has asked Reliance Communications to stop the Free Basics service of Facebook, at least for some time. "We have asked them (Reliance Communications) to stop it and they have given us a compliance report that it has been stopped," a senior government official told TOI. Reliance Communications is Facebook's sole telecom partner in India to offer a set of basic...
More »After 60 years, SC to re-look right to privacy, courtesy Aadhaar -Krishnadas Rajagopal
-The Hindu The new Constitution Bench will sit for the first time on October 14. Over 60 years after an eight-judge Bench declared that Right to Privacy is not a fundamental right, the Supreme Court on Thursday decided to set up another Constitution Bench to re-look the question in the light of raging controversy that the Aadhaar card scheme is an invasion into citizen's privacy. In 1954, the Supreme Court Bench led by...
More »Access at the cost of Net neutrality? -Suhrith Parthasarathy
-The Hindu In the Net neutrality debate, there is a conflict between two core values: ease of access and neutrality. The ease of access promised by applications like Free Basics compromises neutrality and may later morph into a method of predatory pricingIf programs that bring access to a part of the Internet in the immediate future were to entrench themselves, it could eventually lead to telecom companies abusing their dominant positionsIn...
More »Centre for all-round use of Aadhaar card -Dhananjay Mahapatra
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre on Tuesday came to the Supreme Court along with several important organizations and made an impassioned plea for permitting voluntary use of Aadhaar cards held by 90 crore citizens to accurately identify beneficiaries for welfare schemes. They wanted modification of the SC's August 11 interim order limiting the use of Aadhaar card only for LPG subsidy and ration through public distribution system. A bench...
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