[Reader-list] Regulation of the Internet by the Indian State (Sarai I-Fellowship) - Update on Posts

[Raman Chima]

Dear all,

Apologies for the long leave of absence from the Reader List- I've
been stuck with lots of things, which made it difficult to post as
regularly as I ought to have.  I have, however, continued with my
research all through, and I've been posting my progress via
individual entries on my work blog at
http://stateoftheweb.blogspot.com. It is currently at eight entries
under various post headings. I've currently put up the entries grouped
under post 4 (i.e. entries 4.1. and 4.2) and will be have the entries
under post 5 up in two days or so. This email is to summarize the
various entries that I've posted right now, specifically those grouped
under posts 4 and 5.

With the entries under posts 4 and 5, you see a shape emerging as to
the form of regulation by which the Indian State has chosen to control
speech and expression on the Internet in the national context. In our
now bordered Internet, where the founding libertarian belief that the
Internet was beyond the power of the nation state to regulate has lost
credence, the Indian State has been steadily and quietly expanding its
structure of regulation. Flowing from vague legislative authority in
the form of the Information Technology Act passed by Parliament in
2000, executive agencies have sought to ensure that Internet
regulation takes place not only with respect to online content,
subject to opaque control in the form of website blocking requests
decided by agencies such as CERT-In; but also control over the
infrastructure of the network itself. This network information
infrastructure (NII; a term coined by Giampiero Giacomello) is
dominated at every stage by the Indian State, which had from the
outset sought to regulate ISPs as well as cybercafes. We see
regulation happening at the central level, with notifications
empowering agencies such as CERT-In to coordinate and sanction direct
acts of censorship by issuing website blocking instructions to ISPs,
and the creation of ISP license agreements which not only call for
compliance with such broad censorship powers, but which also call for
frighteningly invasive forms of communication monitoring and
interception at the level of the ISP complexes themselves.

What is most notable about all of this perhaps is not as much the
potentially Orwellian powers that the Indian State has granted itself,
but rather the near abysmal public awareness and protest against the
same. The Indian State is in fact particularly vulnerable to public
outrage based on claims of violation of our rights to free speech and
expression, as typified by its response to the widely recognized
public outrage against the blog blocking incident of July 2006. As a
result of this, the Indian State seems to be determined to avoid any
public inquiry into its regulatory framework vis-a-vis speech and
expression on the Internet, which can be seen in my observations from
my interview with Dr. Gulshan Rai of CERT. The executive was stung by
the outrage triggered in the blog blocking incident into being more
careful and circumspect, but it still considers the continuance, and
arguably also an expansion, of its regulatory framework (based on
extremely flimsy legal authority) necessary and without opposition.

The Centre is only one part of the matter, with there state
governments also taking up the mantle of having to regulate matters
which touch upon speech and expression on the Internet in India, most
notably with regards the framework in which cybercafes operate. In
their vitally important role of being cheap publicly available
providers of access to the Internet, cybercafes have been
systematically brought withing the ambit of local jurisdiction by the
police acting on behalf of state governments. In certain cases, as in
Karnataka, this is given some clarity in the form of a government
order, dubiously authorized supposedly under the provisions of the
Information Technology Act, putting in place a structure by which the
state monitors usage of such fora, with details having to be
maintained in registers of "prescribed formats".

These are all broad observations based on my more specific and
comprehensive entries posted at http://stateoftheweb.blogspot.com . I
do hope that whoever is interested does go through my current and past
entries there. Feel free to comment. I'll be posting several more
entries as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Raman.