A student-run group at NALSAR University of Law
Ed. Note: This post by Kaustub Bhati is a part of the TLF Editorial Board Test 2016.
Have you ever seen a Paralympic athlete run and wondered how is he doing that? The answer to that query is assistive technology. Assistive Technology is basically an umbrella term, used for any software or hardware designed to help a user get past the area of their disabilities. It encompasses any device which helps assist, adapt and rehabilitate a disabled person.
Ed. Note: This post by Ashwin Murthy is a part of the TLF Editorial Board Test 2016.
Net neutrality in its most basic understanding is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the Government regulating the Internet must treat all data of the Internet the same. In a situation however where these bodies can increase the productivity of the provision of Internet to the consumer by discriminating between different sites and their data packets, the question arises as to whether this too would be against the principle of net neutrality and thus should be rendered unviable. Perhaps the clearest example of the same would be slowing down certain sites in exchange for speeding up other sites, a process known as throttling and fast-laning. Each site is essentially a collection of data packets (packets of information transmitted via Internet). By distributing data packets of different sites at different speeds, a level of optimisation can be reached that cannot be provided by distributing the data packets of each site at the same speed. Thus more data intensive sites could be given priority over less consuming sites – multimedia sites over text-based sites is the simplest form of distinction to understand. This could be extended even further, where ISPs divide which sites to speed up, thus allowing the consumer to choose which is most beneficial for their personal use. In the Indian context, this could be understood in the example where Airtel would ‘speed up’ all multimedia sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, etc.) and ‘slow down’ all other sites while BSNL would do the same with news sites (The Hindu, Times of India, Al Jazeera, etc.) and so on.
Ed. Note: This post by Ashwin Murthy is a part of the TLF Editorial Board Test 2016.
Digital media has become the norm of the modern world and in the field no website is as dominant as YouTube. YouTube, currently a Google subsidiary, controls the market when it comes to video sharing, outpacing the other video-sharing providers by millions of views and users. YouTube presently has more than a billion users and has even allowed the growth of a new career in YouTube personalities, the most famous being PewDiePie. As a natural product of being a video sharing service, multiple videos use content that is copyright protected.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Benjamin Vanlalvena, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
A background of the issue
Ed. Note.: This post, by Benjamin Vanlalvena, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
How are disabled persons affected by Copyright Law?
Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
In the world of technology dominated by a power struggle in terms of presence and absence in data circles, Reliance Jio has probably made the biggest tech news of the year with its revolutionary schemes. By adopting a loss-leader strategy of immediate loss and ultimate dominance, Reliance Jio has promised its subscribers stellar features like free voice calls, extremely cheap data packages, abolition of national roaming charges and striking down extra rates on national holidays on shifting to its network. This is set to significantly affect competition by taking India’s data scenario from a data scarcity to data abundance mode.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Sayan Bhattacharya, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
Search engines which are quintessential to our internet experience are mechanisms of indexing and crawling through data to provide us with a list of links which are most relevant to both our present and past searches. Figuratively, its functions range from directing users to seats in a movie hall to being the very seat in the movie hall.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
The right to be forgotten is the right of an individual to request search engines to take down certain results relating to the individual, such as links to personal information if that information is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue. For example, if a person’s name is searched on Google and certain information appears relating to that person, the person can request Google to remove that information from the search results. This has its largest application in crime and non-consensual pornography (revenge porn or the distribution of sexually explicit material depicting a person without their consent). If X committed a petty crime and a person searching X’s name finds this petty crime, it leads to an obvious negative impact to X, in terms of job prospects as well as general social stigmatisation. X can ask the providers of the search engine to remove this result, claiming his right to be forgotten. The right is not necessarily an absolute right – in its current stage of discussion it merely applies to information that is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue and not any and all information relating to the person. Further there lies a distinction between the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten – the right to privacy is of information not available to the public while the right to be forgotten is removal of information already available publicly.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
For centuries rights have slowly come into existence and prominence, from the right to property to the right to vote and the right against exploitation. In the increasingly digital world of interconnection, the latest right to gain immense popularity is the right to privacy. This right entails the right to be let alone and more importantly the right to protect one’s own information – informational privacy. Thus armed with the right to privacy, one can limit what information others have access to and may use, and thus what information corporations might have or what is up on the Internet. This right to privacy comes in direct contact with applications downloaded on phones, which often ask for permissions to various information on the phone – a device which already possesses a great deal of information of the owner, including the location of the user, their phone number, their emails, their chat conversations and their photos. Applications often ask, either explicitly or in their terms and conditions, for permissions to access varying degrees of the information on the phone, sometimes in a rather unexpected fashion (such as a flashlight app asking for permissions to location), and more recently these apps have been singled out for their questionable privacy settings.
Ed. Note.: This post, by Vishal Rakhecha, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.
Self-driving cars have for long been a thing of sci-fi, but now with companies like Uber, Google, Tesla, Mercedes, Audi and so many more conducting research in this field they don’t seem as unrealistic. Self- driving cars are vehicles which do not require human supervision, with autonomy of varying degrees. Such technology is already present -to a limited extent – in the form of cruise control, parking assist, etc. The creation of such technology would inevitably require a sound system of rules and regulations. These laws among other things must be capable of setting a set of standards for the companies, securing the physical safety and protecting the privacy of the end user. Presently Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 are the only rules related to automobiles. These laws are inadequate in terms of their application to autonomous cars. This article deals with the changes in the law which may be required to deal with challenges which this new technology may present. These modifications will be essential to ensure the protection of all stakeholders when these contraptions do come on Indian streets. This article will deal with regulations of self-driving cars of level 3 and 4.