EFF India

Lawrence liangs interesting post about the structure needed for eff-india

Hi all
mahesh and badri have posted a range of interesting
question. I will try and respond to the institutional
question of whether we can have an EFF equivalent in
India. My sense is that these debates are still in
theior infancy in india at the moment though over the
past few years we have seen a lot of momentum, and it
may be a little early to speak of a formal
institutional structure in place. There are many
things that one has top think throuigh before taking a
decision at creating an institutional framework, it
hink we have dont even have a very good record of
'civil rights' organizations, leave aside electronic
rights.

There is of course a strong tradition of critical
legal practise in india but very dispersed groups etc.
And those who can be counted as forming a aprt of the
history of critical legal practise in india have
always remained very suspicious of new technolgy etc
(kind of in the old tradition/ modernity debate) etc,
while the younger lot of practitioners/ scholars
interested in issues of electronic freedoms etc do not

necessarily come from a poltical practise of law.

Given these circumstances aprt from what badri has
also identified in terms of resources etc, I think it
would be more important to initiate a discussion /
ideas etc on how we can think of collaborative models
where we pool in various peoples/ organizations
strenghts in forming a colation which can start taking
on issues of free speech, privacy, public domain etc
proactively.

This coalition need not have a formal institutional
structure to begin with but could move towards it int
he future , but i can easily think of lawyers,
techies, media practtitioners, academics, students
etc who would be willing to start a group like this.
Even within commons-law, cyber-law india etc i think
we would have the tentative begining of a group.

We can even begin with mapping out some of the
individuals. groups etc who are already working on
various asoects of what ane EFF-India wouold do and
think of a meeting etc where we can figure out how we
start working in a more networked manner.


I am sure fred noronha of bytes for all could help
with this. The idea has a lot of potential and glad
that this debate has opened up


Lawrence