Google’s Commercial Dominance – the Problem of a ‘Free’ Economy

Posted on by Kartik Chawla

(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/oHcd72)

Just yesterday, the internet became abuzz with the news that the European Parliament (‘EP’) is pressurising the European Union (‘EU’) to break Google Search away from the rest of its services (such as Android, et al).  We’ve covered Google’s antitrust woes with the EU on the TLF earlier. According to this Techdirt article here, the EP hasn’t really given any reasons for breaking up Google other than the fact that ‘it’s very big and very European’. (Of course, its powers to even take such actions are themselves quite suspect.)

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Facebook’s Acquisitions: A Before and After Comparison of Privacy

Posted on by Jitesh Anand

For Facebook, it has never been about the profit, but the users. The social network has spent more than $22 billion on acquisitions, which includes $19 billion on WhatsApp exclusively! That is 2000 times the annual revenue of WhatsApp! Other popular acquisitions include Instagram ($1 billion), Oculus ($ 2 billion) and Atlas ($100 million). With recent psychological experiments conducted by Facebook on its unsuspecting users coming to surface, it becomes imperative to understand how our information is being collected, stored or used. In this blog post, I have tried to analyze the privacy policies (before and after) of three of Facebook’s major acquisitions – Instagram, Moves and WhatsApp.

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Machine Learning: An Explanation

Posted on by Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

Have you ever wondered how the spam in your mailbox is automatically detected? And what about speech recognition or handwriting recognition? These are quite challenging problems. But luckily they have one thing in common – that is data, and a good deal of it.

Machine learning aims at creating systems that learn from data using various computer science and mathematical techniques. To put it differently, machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that improve  automatically through collected information of experience, i.e., data.

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Announcement: New Guest Editor, giving us the perspective of an Engineer!

Posted on by Kartik Chawla

It is my great pleasure to announce our new Guest Editor, Sahebjot Singh. Sahebjot is currently a computer science major at the Manipal Institute of Technology, and is an avid programmer and web developer, who also enjoys dabbling in physics. He has worked earlier at a few startups, including Fracktal Works, a 3D Printing startup, and WLS Global, a Web Consultancy service, and is currently working on a few separate projects of his own. He’s also a Counter Strike dilettante, and a connoisseur, if you can call it that, of mangas and animes.

Saheb will be bringing to the TechLawForum@NALSAR the perspective of an engineering student on issues related to technology and law, both, and would also be writing a series of 101s on technological topics. His first post on Machine learning is available here.

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Techlawtopia – on the intersection of Technology, Law, and Society

Posted on by Kartik Chawla

Amlan Mohanty, an NLSIU-grad currently working at Trilegal and an all round Technology Law scholar (read: stud), has launched a new project – Techlawtopia. Techlawtopia is a non-profit website exploring the intersection of technology, law and society, and has blog posts, legal resources, and primers (which, personally, I found extremely interesting) on technology law-related topics.

The website already looks quite interesting, and I’m sure it’ll only get more so. Do check it out!

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Battling Goliath: An Analysis of the National Privacy Principles (Part I: Principles One to Four)

Posted on by Kartik Chawla

(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/igPaVp)

This is the first in a two-part post on the National Privacy Principles(NPPs). This post provides with a bit of background, and then deals with Principles One through Four, while the next will deal with Principles Five through Nine. Footnotes are especially important. Disclaimers: The first post is a bit on the longer side. Feedback, comments, recommendations, are welcome. The second part is available here.

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Battling Goliath: An Analysis of the National Privacy Principles (Part II: Principles Five to Nine)

Posted on by Kartik Chawla

(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/igPaVp)

This is the second in a two-part post on the National Privacy Principles. This post deals with Principles Five through Nine. Footnotes are especially important.
Disclaimers: I have taken a bit of artistic license with these two posts, so do allow for that. Feedback, comments, recommendations, are welcome.

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Privacy on Facebook: An Absolute Prerequisite

Posted on by Jitesh Anand

[Image Source: http://flic.kr/p/86Q3gF]

Social networking websites have taken the Internet by storm in today’s organic society. One such website, Facebook, with over a billion users has often been referred to as the ‘third largest country’ of the world. The rise of Facebook to soaring heights can be credited to first, the intensive monitoring of its users which enables the company to provide them tailor made services, targeted advertising and second, of course to Metcalfe’s Law, which in common parlance means that the more users there are on a social networking site, the more attractive it will be to people who are contemplating joining. In this blog post, I have tried to analyze Facebook’s privacy policies along the lines of the National Privacy Principles. These principles have been comprehensively dealt with by Justice A.P. Shah in his ‘Report on Privacy’, published by the Planning Commission of India. They also closely tie to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Privacy Principles and European Union’s Data Protection Directives.

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