Computer Gupshup

Social networking may be gaining traction across India, but the growing army of users riveted on microblogging websites such as Facebook and Twitter would do well to focus beyond privacy settings.

A humorous status message or an impromptu Tweet could get a person arrested, fired, or even divorced by recent changes in the country's IT laws, a development that seems to have gone unnoticed by most users bitten by the social networking bug.

Amendments to India's IT Act, notified last October, make status messages and Tweets admissible as electronic evidence and the onus of the posts on these accounts now rests solely on users, say cyber lawyers.

"Messages on a social networking can be used as electronic evidence under the IT Act," says lawyer Pavan Duggal, adding that posting a tweet or a status message online amounts to publishing in the public domain.

India has a teeming social networking population of about 35 million. Orkut dominates the spectrum with 15.5 million users, followed by Facebook at 10.3 million users, LinkedIn at 2.2 million users and Twitter at 1.4 million users, according to online audience measurement site Vizisense.

Source: Economic Times Inappropriate messages on social sites could get you arrested, fired, or even divorced

Competition from countries that have a greater cultural affinity with the US is fast upstaging India in outsourced voice services, compelling call centres to diversify into non-voice areas and give up their efforts to change the accents of Indians. Some centres have started moving up to higher-end voice based services that requires technical knowledge and problem-solving capabilities (a space where India still has an advantage), while some others are moving to service domestic call requirements.

In voice, many customers prefer the Philippines, a country that has been a US naval base and is hence culturally far closer to the US than India has been. India has already lost tens of thousands of jobs to this Pacific Ocean nation.

In 2007, India had over 3 lakh call agents, the Philippines had barely half that number
Today, India and the Philippines both have 3.5 lakh workers each in voice BPO South Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Australia and Ireland emerging as other major voice destinations Indian call centres moving into non-voice areas or higher-end voice-based services

Telemarketing clearly on decline

India had over 3 lakh call agents in 2007 when the Philippines had just half of that. Today, India and the Philippines have an equal strength of 3.5 lakh people in voice BPO.

Source: Times Of India India's voice BPO segment falling silent

So in villages that don't receive any FM radio stations, people have begun calling a number that has a recording of Bollywood tunes and listening to it on their headsets.

This primitive cellular "radio" service was used by close to 20 million Indians last year, phone company executives estimate.

"I call it the poor man's iTunes," says Mahesh Prasad, president of Reliance Communications Ltd., one of India's largest cellular companies. "A villager waiting for a bus has nothing to do. When he wants to kill some time, this is the only entertainment media available."

The cricket fan without a television or radio can dial up and listen to the latest match live on his phone. Bharti Airtel Ltd., India's largest cell company by subscribers, has a special service that calls hundreds of thousands of farmers every day with recorded messages of weather reports and advice about crops.

Tata Teleservices has a service which lets farmers use their cellphones to control the pumps that water their crops.

Source: Live Mint Cellphone entertainment takes off in rural India

Following an expose by TOI on November 5 that SMS tariffs are 50 to 100 times higher than what it costs service providers, a top Trai official said, ``We are going to issue a consultation paper to review telecom tariffs within 20 days to a month.''

Consumers can expect substantial relief in SMS tariffs latest by March. The official said the move would have come sooner had the regulator not had its hands full with a consultation process on 2G spectrum.

The now inevitable tumbling of SMS rates has important implications for data usage. At present, SMS forms less than 5% of total revenue for mobile operators.

The widespread proliferation of texting is expected to spin off into far higher levels of internet usage. Experts confirm that a crash in SMS tariffs could be the first step to generating demand-side pressure for wireless broadband access.

The cost of an SMS is a fraction of a paisa. This is because an average SMS consists of 1KB data, which takes a fraction of a second for transportation and termination. This revelation by TOI knocked the bottom out of claims that India has among the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.

Trai has so far refused to regulate rates under the belief that competitive markets were at work and tariffs reflect costs. However, in the SMS arena, competition has clearly failed to move prices closer to costs. The practice of pricing SMSs high has been prevalent for several years while Trai has chosen to look the other way. This, despite the facts stating otherwise in Trai's own cost data from its IUC regulation of August 2006.

Besides monitoring and interception, the amended Act also deals with the appointment of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, which deals with computer security and situations arising from cyber attacks.

“A rapid increase in the use of computer and internet has given rise to new forms of crimes like sending offensive emails and multimedia messages, child pornography, cyberterrorism, publishing sexually explicit materials in electronic form, video voyeurism, e-commerce frauds like cheating by personation etc. So, penal provisions were required to be included in the Information Technology Act, 2000,” the government said in a statement today.

When floated for public feedback this May, the draft amendments (particularly Section 69A) had stirred up a hornets’ nest. Critics argued that the amendments gave the government blanket power to block news portals and other sites for ‘offensive’ content and could be abused.

The government, under Section 69A of the amended IT Act, can “block public access of any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource” in the interest of sovereignty or integrity of India; defence of India; security of the state; friendly relations with foreign states; public order; and to prevent incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to the above.

Source: Business-standard Amended IT Act comes into effect

In its second term, the UPA government has concretised Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's proposal to build Rajiv Gandhi Bharat Nirman Seva Kendra at every panchayat -- the lowest level elected local body in a three-tier system.

This will mean that villagers do not have to travel long distances to government offices for for petty jobs and will be able to skip the red-tape.

The Rs 28,000-crore (Rs 280 billion) scheme is the third biggest rural development scheme after National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (Rs 39,100 crore) and National Rural Livelihood Mission (Rs 10,000 crore). The kendra (centre) will be set up in a two-room building to be constructed in each of the 265,000 panchayats.

The state governments will provide the land,while the Centre will fund the infrastructure.

Once the kendras start functioning, the villagers would be able to check their National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme bank accounts, pay premium for health insurance scheme for below poverty line families and can get many other services through these centres.

Source: Hindustan TimesWeb widens to include grassroots

Last month, Deepak Kumar (name changed on request), a visually-impaired businessman, logged on to check out for some information on the newly-created Rajya Sabha website.

Given the government's assurance this February that at least 50 important government websites would be made disabled-friendly and accessible, he should have faced no problems. However, there were accessibility problems galore.

For instance, there were inappropriate alternate texts, no means to control the moving content, missing form labels, and code (XHTML) that did not match the world wide web consortium (W3C) specifications -- all in violation of guidelines provided by the Indian government itself.

Moreover, links leading to external websites existed but users were not informed about the same in advance, thus creating more problems for disabled people. The very title for the homepage of the website "Rajya Sabha -- Parliament of India" failed to describe that it is the homepage.

The world over, as new websites are created, countries like the US, the UK, Canada and Australia have enacted legislation to make it mandatory for creators of web pages to follow the minimum standards for accessibility adopted by

Source: Business-standardIndian websites flout guidelines for the disabled

A web-based tool like Google Earth, Bhuvan promises to give better 3-D satellite imagery of India than is currently being offered by the US-based software giant plus a host of India-specific features like weather information and even administrative boundaries of all states and districts.

The application can be downloaded from http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/

The tool would offer pictures of the globe, just like Google Earth, and navigable in the same way but currently has the best resolutions over the Indian sub-continent. It allows users to fly from space to street level, grab, spin and zoom down to any place.

It also provides tools for measuring, drawing, saving, printing and visualizing thematic information. The resolutions currently on offer are good enough to view a vehicle moving on a road quite clearly.

Bhuvan currently only offers images taken between one and three years ago even over India. It combines satellite imagery from various sensors onboard IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites and transposes them on a 3-D globe. As it keeps updating its database with more recent and higher resolution images, Bhuvan eventually promises to offer real-time data and images.

Source: The Indian Express Launching Bhuvan: ISRO's answer to Google Earth, zoom into states, districts

• Cyber police is watching Government can monitor, intercept or even block any online content including e-mail that it thinks is offensive or could threaten national security. Could lead to misuse.

• Personal data up for grabs Government agencies can now demand users' personal data from internet service providers. Could lead to privacy issues and litigation.

• Beware of e-mail/MMS/SMS jokes Exchange of messages/data that are "offensive, annoying or cause inconvenience" over any computing device will be treated as an offence. Open to interpretation.

• Intermediaries are better off Service providers will not be held responsible for offensive content put up by websites, but will have to respond to state orders to block/ remove content within two hours. Could lead to technology issues.

Pretty soon, millions of Indian users will find that it's no longer easy to put up just about anything on the internet without bothering about it. A photograph, a joke or an innocent, honest comment on a contentious issue could prove to be troublesome depending on how a government agency interprets it.

Drafted under the broad umbrella of cyber security, the rules give teeth to a new law passed by the government late last year.

It changes the system of penalties for cyber offences and makes it easy for government agencies to seek any information, including users' personal data. This sudden extremism over Net activities stems from the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year, where internet and mobile technology was allegedly used to plan and execute the operation. India's action here is not isolated and follows a pattern among countries like US and China, who are targeting terror aided by the internet.

Source: www.outlookindia.com IT: CYBER LAWS, What Was The Password?

In response to this need for a proper law for electronic commerce, and the larger canvas of Fundamental Rights from the encroachment of cyberspace, in 2006 an Amendment Bill was introduced in the Parliament to provide for its integration into the legislative changes being implemented in other laws such as the Negotiable Instruments Act, the Indian Evidence Act, in recognition of the role of electronic media in the 21st century. Renamed as the IT Amendment Bill 2008, several changes were made to the initial recommendations and the draft passed by the two Houses of Parliament without any discussion thereon. Even in terms of media recognition, there was very little coverage of a law as controversial as this though there was a lot of spirited blogging, which could have far reaching implications on privacy rights of citizens.

To an extent, the Act is an updation of the IT Act 2000, differentiating application of digital and electronic signatures in relation to authentication and creation of documents. Definitions have also been introduced to include new technology in communication devices and systems of creation and transmission through various systems. The Act has sought to validate the concept of penalties, compensation and adjudication in dealing with what is popularly known as cyber crimes and in doing so Section 66 and 67 of the existing Act have been enacted.

Source: business-standard IT Act 2008 gets tougher with cyber crime

With the US in recession, India's call centres have opened a new outsourcing frontier: India.

The shift is a sign of how India's flagship export industry is shifting from providing services to the developed world to catering to its own, quickly growing market. The Indian economy grew 6.7% for the fiscal ended March 31.

"We cannot deliver and make money in the same way we make money for an international market," says Ananda Mukerji, chief executive of Firstsource Solutions Ltd, a Mumbai-based outsourcer.

In April 2007, his company opened a call centre in Hubli, a city of 800,000 people 370km northwest of Bangalore, India's outsourcing capital. Hubli is best known for its cotton and peanut farms.

But it is also a place where wages and rents are half of those in major cities such as Mumbai. A call centre worker who gets roughly $500 a month in Mumbai would earn $250 to $300 a month in Hubli.

source: Live Mint India's call centres take calls from home

The intensity of the syndrome could become severe when a team member working on a project is benched or sent out, a leading psychiatrist said.

"It's a mental situation where IT professionals who of late have seen their colleagues, who are often friends, too, being laid off," B.N. Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry at the premier National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) here, said.

"First, it is the anxiety that the axe may fall upon them the next time and, secondly, a sense of remorse, with a tinge of guilt that they have survived, whereas their colleagues sitting next to them have lost jobs," Gangadhar said.

Two million people were employed in the Indian IT and BPO industry in 2007-08, according to the IT industry body Nasscom. The BPO sector employed more than 7 lakh persons.

"These are bad times. Recently two of my colleagues, who are also close friends, were fired. I am feeling terrible after the episode," said Sundar Gopal working with a reputed Indian IT company.

UNITES-Professionals (Union of Information Technology-Enabled Services Professionals), says there is no clear estimate of the job loss in these sectors in the wake of the global economic meltdown.

Source: The Tribune Pink slip fear drives techies to docs

A few continents away, the New York-headquartered Lehman Brothers had just posted record revenues and profits, and was handling assets of over $275 billion. At that time, Vegi was sitting on multiple job offers. One was from American outsourcing giant EDS and the other from Wipro, India's second largest IT company. Both offered to pay him substantially more than what he was earning at TCS. But EDS was willing to pay a little more than Wipro.

Multiple job offers and generous pay hikes were nothing unusual in the IT industry. Talent was hard to come by. Companies had to pay plenty in cash, bonuses, perks and stock options to retain existing employees, and attract new hires by the thousands. New contracts from US clients were flowing in easily and IT companies had a simple formula for success: they could grow as much as they could hire. They often behaved like sharks in a feeding frenzy. They hired indiscriminately.

Vegi chose to accept Wipro's offer ahead of EDS. "I thought my job would be more secure with an Indian company," he recalls. Soon after, on September 14, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. In three months, the bank would be just a footnote in financial history. When Vegi heard the news, he was in Vizag for his housewarming ceremony. "Good I moved out of that account," he thought. But he had no inkling of the catastrophe awaiting him the next day.

On September 15, Vegi was summoned to his supervisor's cabin. He had been a part of Wipro's `free pool' (the bench, IT industry lingo for people without any work to do) for a few months. "The supervisor asked me to resign as there were no projects," recalls Vegi. If Vegi were to be assigned a project during his notice period, the supervisor promised to reinstate him. The supervisor then pushed his laptop across the table and asked Vegi to type out his resignation letter. Flustered, Vegi asked for time.

Source: business.outlookindia.com IT Layoffs: The Fall of the Software Professional

Barely four months after dropping its proposal to force TV channels to show only “authorized” feed during security emergencies, the government is now seeking to censor news portals and other websites, that too even at normal times.

Draft rules released this month empower a designated Central government officer to block public access to any information on the Net for wideranging reasons of security and national interest.

One glaring infirmity in the draft rules prepared by the department of information technology is that they make no stipulation for a prior hearing to the affected website. This is despite the fact that the web host who does not comply with the direction to remove the offending information is liable to be punished with imprisonment up to seven years.

Times View: The desire to curb the media’s freedom seems to run deep in the government. How else do you explain that while the draft rules give sweeping powers to officials, no attention has been paid to a basic thing like a hearing first? Babus tend to be quick in dubbing things as anti-national or compromising national security. Why should their ‘‘request’’ always be heeded? Also, what will these babus do if the web host is located outside India? Will the domestic media, therefore, bear the brunt of this potential abuse of power? The government should think this through before it finalises the draft rules.

Website gag: IT Act amendments not final Government had made an abortive attempt to gag TV channels through a draft notification amending the cable television network rules, but the sweeping power to control the content on websites is being fleshed out in the rules drafted under the recent amendments to the information technology (IT) Act.

Though it was passed by Parliament in December and the Presidential assent to it came in February, the IT amendment Act 2008 will not come into effect till the various rules drafted under its provisions, including the one on blocking public access to websites, are finalized.

Under the draft rules framed under section 69A of the IT amendment Act, every state or Central government department will be empowered to decide whether a certain news item, article, blog or advertisement relating to its jurisdiction is safe to remain on the Net.

Once somebody sends a “complaint” against any information displayed on the Net, the department concerned will take a call on whether the matter in question affects any of the six concerns mentioned in section 69A: interest of sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or incitement to commit any cognizable offence relating to the other five reasons.

If it is satisfied about the need to pull the challenged information out of the public domain, the department concerned will send a “request” in the prescribed form to the “designated officer” at the Centre chosen by the secretary of the IT department. An interministerial committee headed by the designated officer will recommend whether the request to censor the web site should be accepted or not.

If the IT secretary approves the committee’s recommendation to take action, the designated officer will direct the intermediary or web host to block the offending information within the stipulated time. In the event of non-compliance, the designated officer can initiate criminal proceedings under section 69A, which imposes a maximum sentence of seven years on the web host.

The only remedy provided by the draft rules to media organizations is that a review committee will meet every two months to check whether the directions to block information have been issued in accordance with the IT Act.

Source:Times Of India Website Gag: IT Act Amendments Not Final, Govt Arming Itself To Censor News Websites

• Caught In The Web; Draft Rules Stir A Hornet's Nest: From Business-Standard

The verdict could be a step toward helping music and film companies seeking to recoup millions of dollars in lost revenues from filesharers, though analysts said they doubted it would stem the tide of illegal downloading.

"The Stockholm district court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws," the court said in a statement. "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison." Companies including Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI were also asking for damages of more than 100 million crowns ($12 million) to cover lost revenues.

The court also ordered the defendants to pay over 30 million Swedish crowns ($3.58 million).

The men linked to The Pirate Bay Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom were charged early last year by a Swedish prosecutor with conspiracy to break copyright law and related offences. Lundstrom's attorney Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view Of course we will appeal," he said.

"This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours." The group that controls The Pirate Bay launched in 2003, has maintained that since no copyrighted material is stored on its servers and no exchange of files actually takes place there, they cannot be held responsible for what material is being exchanged.

Industry specialists were not convinced the verdict would have a lasting effect. "Every time you get rid of one, another bigger one pops up. Napster went, and then up came a whole host of others ... The problem of file-sharing just keeps growing year on yeal and it's increasingly difficult for the industry to do anything about it," said music analyst Mark Mulligan of research firm Forrester "Pirate Bay was brilliant at self-publicity, but the reality is there are lots of other torrent-tracker sites," said Dan Cryan, senior analyst at media research firm Screen Digest. "The closing of the one that shouts the loudest won't make any difference."

Last year, Swedish prosecutors filed criminal charges against four men they say violate the country's copyright law by operating the Pirate Bay. The file-sharing site has long been one of the top Web destinations for people seeking access to pirated movies, games, books and business software. The site, which says it has 22 million users, is based in Sweden, where the government has taken few steps to curtail piracy until recently.

The four men--Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom--have denied the charges, arguing that they merely provided an index of content and didn't control what other people did with it.

Arguments have finished, and a ruling is due Friday.

The men face up to two years in jail, although the prosecution has asked for sentences of one year. Entertainment companies, including Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., EMI Group Ltd. and Sony Corp.'s Columbia Pictures, are also seeking a total of 117 million Swedish kronor ($14.2 million) compensation for lost revenue.

Source: Live Mint Court Nears Decision On File­sharing Site

Having identified critical sectors that could be vulnerable to cyber attacks, the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology has issued security guidelines to all ministries and government departments asking them to set up 24x7 cyber control rooms, implement information security best practices, deploy information security experts, formulate their own information security policies and ensure background checks of all personnel employed in IT divisions. Henceforth, the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) headed by the Cabinet Secretary will also be monitoring all national-level cyber crises.

SOurce: The Indian Express Govt gets real on cyber terror

एक जैसी रुचियों और पसंद वाले लोगों को एक प्लैटफॉर्म पर लाने के लिए शुरू हुई ऑनलाइन सोशल नेटवर्किंग अब कम्यूनिकेट करने और जानकारियां शेयर करने का सबसे सुविधाजनक, सस्ता और आसान जरिया बन गई है। दुनिया में करोड़ों लोग सोशल नेटवर्किंग वेबसाइट्स से जुड़े हुए हैं और इनमें रोजाना हजारों-लाखों नए नाम जुड़ रहे हैं।

सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट्स के इस बढ़ते नेटवर्क पर आईटी कंपनी क्यूबिट टेक्नॉलजी के एमडी संजय शर्मा कहते हैं कि टेक्नॉलजी को आप रोक नहीं सकते और न रोकना चाहिए। वह सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट्स की तुलना टीवी से करते हुए कहते हैं कि जिस वक्त टीवी शुरू हुआ, गिने-चुने चैनल और प्रोग्रैम थे लेकिन आज सैकड़ों ऑप्शन हैं। ऐसे में आप क्या चुनते हैं, यह आप पर निर्भर करता है। इसी तरह सोशल नेटवर्किंग वेबसाइट्स की भी बाढ़ आ गई है। लेकिन इनका इस्तेमाल आप अपने फायदे के लिए किस तरह करते हैं, यह आप पर निर्भर करता है। वह जोर देकर कहते हैं कि ये वेबसाइट्स आपको प्रफेशन में आगे बढ़ाने में बड़ी भूमिका अदा कर सकती हैं।

प्रफेशनल यूज भी : असल में, इन दिनों सभी सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट्स ढेर सारे प्रफेशन और कमर्शल ऑप्शन उपलब्ध करा रही हैं। इन पर नौकरियों और कारोबार से जुड़े न सिर्फ विज्ञापन हैं, बल्कि लोग एक-दूसरे को सीधे अवसरों की जानकारी मुहैया कराते हैं। जिन्हें अवसर की तलाश है, वे भी यहां मौजूद हैं और जिनके पास अवसर या उससे जुड़ी जानकारी हैं, वे भी यहां हैं। सीधा संपर्क होने की वजह से यहां बननेवाले प्रफेशनल संबंध ज्यादा सटीक और गहरा होते हैं। फिर जितने ज्यादा मेंबर, उतने ही अवसर भी ज्यादा मिलते हैं। ये तमाम चीजें मिलकर एक मजबूत मार्किटिंग सिस्टम तैयार करती हैं, जो आपके ब्रैंड, प्रॉडक्ट और सर्विस को प्रमोट करता है।

• भारत में करीब पांच करोड़ सोशल नेटवर्किंग यूजर हैं।

• सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट्स पर यूजर औसतन 25 मिनट बिताता है।

• भारत में इंटरनेट यूजर्स में से एक-तिहाई सोशल नेटवर्किंग साइट पर हैं।