Skip to content

Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

A student-run group at NALSAR University of Law

Menu
  • Home
  • Newsletter Archives
  • Blog Series
  • Editors’ Picks
  • Write for us!
  • About Us
Menu

Public.Resource.Org and others petition Bureau of Indian Standards for Open Access

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Kartik Chawla

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

Public.Resource.Org along with other civil liberties advocates in India and Abroad has filed a petition with the Bureau of Indian Standards asking it to make its standards publicly available for free online. The petition is an commendable and crucial step forward for the right to information. The supporters of the petition include Carl Malamud, the founder of Public.Resources.Org, the petitioning organisation, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, the Father of the Internet, Sri Sam Pitroda, one of the pioneers of communications innovation in India, Swaraj Paul Barooah (KnowGAP, SpicyIP), Dr. Sushant Sinha (IndianKanoon), Dr. Dhrubayyoti Sen (IIT-Kharagpur), Dr. T.I. Eldho, IIT-Bombay, and Mr. Srinivas Kodali, Centre for Excellence in Urban Transport, IIT-Madras.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the Indian Standards body, tasked with the preparation and implementation of standards, operation of certification schemes for products and systems, organisation and management of testing laboratories, and creating consumer awareness and maintaining a close relationship with international standards bodies. Under this ambit, it sets the bar for the standards used by a total of fourteen sectors.[1]

These documents are crucial to the functioning of various economic sectors of the Indian and International industry, and have far-reaching consequences.  BIS’s 14 Division Councils and over 650 Technical Councils have so far developed over 19,000 standards. Being official government documents, these standards should ideally be available in the public domain. But the Bureau has refused to release them into the public domain. These documents are sold by BIS here, giving options for purchasing hard copies, leasing on DVD, or downloading soft copies, most of the prices being well into lakhs of rupees. Furthermore, the BIS has claimed copyright over these documents, and stated that anyone making them public would infringe on its copyright.

The petition asks for the BIS to release these standards into the public domain, making them accessible to anyone who might want to access them. The petition argues that these standards are fundamentally crucial to the functioning of arguably every production sector and field of practice in India.  They cite the importance of these standards to fields such as Technology, Medicine, Trade, Law, arguing that they contain information that would be extremely valuable in boosting productivity and educating the workers in the respective sectors.

As we all know, access to information is one of the pillars of democracy, and in this case, to the future of innovation as well. All students of law have used IndianKanoon at some point of time and appreciated the access it provides, not to mention the multitude of other resources that students across sectors use on a regular basis such as blogs like SpicyIP. The TechLawForum itself has recognised the value of such resources, creating the Commons, a collection of creative commons and public domain resources. As a staunch advocate for the right to information, I personally commend the petition, and hope it bears some fruit.

The full petition is available here, and further documents are available here. SpicyIP’s much more detailed coverage of the petition is available here.

Image courtesy of Jeremy Geelan, taken at W3C20, taken from http://yadadarcyyada.com/.  (Tim Berners-Lee is on the left, Vint Cerf on the right, and the joke is about the difference between the web and the internet.)
Image courtesy of Jeremy Geelan, taken at W3C20, taken from http://yadadarcyyada.com/.
(Tim Berners-Lee is on the left, Vint Cerf on the right, and the joke is about the difference between the web and the internet.)

(Sidenote: Swaraj also notes in the SpicyIP post “One of the coolest line you’ll see in a petition” – Vint Cerf’s”When we were creating the Internet…”. You really can’t beat that bio, for him or for Tim Lee.)


[1] 1) Chemicals; 2) Food and Agriculture; 3) Civil; 4) Electrical; 5) Electronics & Telecommunications and Information Technology; 6) Mechanical Engineering; 7) Management & Systems; 8) Metallurgical Engineering; 9) Petroleum; 10) Coal & Related Products; 11) Medical and Hospital Planning; 12) Textile; 13) Transport Engineering and Production and General Engineering; and 14) Water Resources.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe

Recent Posts

  • Chronicles of AI: Blurred Lines of Legality and Artists’ Right To Sue in Prospect of AI Copyright Infringement
  • Dali v. Dall-E: The Emerging Trend of AI-generated Art
  • BBC Documentary Ban: Yet Another Example of the Government’s Abuse of its Emergency Powers
  • A Game Not Played Well: A Critical Analysis of The Draft Amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021
  • The Conundrum over the legal status of search engines in India: Whether they are Significant Social Media Intermediaries under IT Rules, 2021? (Part II)
  • The Conundrum over the legal status of search engines in India: Whether they are Significant Social Media Intermediaries under IT Rules, 2021? (Part I)
  • Lawtomation: ChatGPT and the Legal Industry (Part II)
  • Lawtomation: ChatGPT and the Legal Industry (Part I)
  • “Free Speech is not Free Reach”: A Foray into Shadow-Banning
  • The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill: A Move Towards an Orwellian State?

Categories

  • 101s
  • 3D Printing
  • Aadhar
  • Account Aggregators
  • Antitrust
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Bitcoins
  • Blockchain
  • Blog Series
  • Bots
  • Broadcasting
  • Censorship
  • Collaboration with r – TLP
  • Convergence
  • Copyright
  • Criminal Law
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Data Protection
  • Digital Piracy
  • E-Commerce
  • Editors' Picks
  • Evidence
  • Feminist Perspectives
  • Finance
  • Freedom of Speech
  • GDPR
  • Insurance
  • Intellectual Property
  • Intermediary Liability
  • Internet Broadcasting
  • Internet Freedoms
  • Internet Governance
  • Internet Jurisdiction
  • Internet of Things
  • Internet Security
  • Internet Shutdowns
  • Labour
  • Licensing
  • Media Law
  • Medical Research
  • Network Neutrality
  • Newsletter
  • Online Gaming
  • Open Access
  • Open Source
  • Others
  • OTT
  • Personal Data Protection Bill
  • Press Notes
  • Privacy
  • Recent News
  • Regulation
  • Right to be Forgotten
  • Right to Privacy
  • Right to Privacy
  • Social Media
  • Surveillance
  • Taxation
  • Technology
  • TLF Ed Board Test 2018-2019
  • TLF Editorial Board Test 2016
  • TLF Editorial Board Test 2019-2020
  • TLF Editorial Board Test 2020-2021
  • TLF Editorial Board Test 2021-2022
  • TLF Explainers
  • TLF Updates
  • Uncategorized
  • Virtual Reality

Tags

AI Amazon Antitrust Artificial Intelligence Chilling Effect Comparative Competition Copyright copyright act Criminal Law Cryptocurrency data data protection Data Retention e-commerce European Union Facebook facial recognition financial information Freedom of Speech Google India Intellectual Property Intermediaries Intermediary Liability internet Internet Regulation Internet Rights IPR Media Law News Newsletter OTT Privacy RBI Regulation Right to Privacy Social Media Surveillance technology The Future of Tech TRAI Twitter Uber WhatsApp

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
best online casino in india
© 2023 Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme