[datameet] ML-India at Bangalore and Chennai

[Shashank Srikant]

Hi all

The founding team, Varun [https://goo.gl/Cgk1fu] and Shashank [
https://goo.gl/rBcdnL], of ML-India will be at IISc, Bangalore and IIT
Madras, Chennai later this week. ML-India is an initiative to get all
activities related to machine learning in india under one roof. Check out
our analysis on the current publication record of researcher in India at
top ML-conferences at ml-india.org/insights

We would be happy to interact with people in Bangalore and Chennai who
might want to promote chapters of ML-India in their cities.

Some initiatives that we have started off with this year includes having
interviews of people, both in academia and industry, working in ML
 and also growing our
database of companies who use ML as one of the key components in their
products. We could discuss if anyone wants to lead such initiatives in
these cities specifically.

The team would be in Bangalore from 4 Feb to 7 Feb and will be in Chennai
on 8 and 9 Feb. Please feel free to drop in a line to
shashank.srik...@aspiringminds.com  to set up a
time to have a chat.

Looking forward.

Shashank

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Re: [datameet] Bhuvan Derived Data Copyright Question (Shapefile data)

[Nikhil VJ]

Hi,

Also (with a real lawyer's help of course) look into these angles:

Is the govt of India a privately held company or is it owned by the
people of India?
Is data whose assimilation and curation was paid for using taxes
collected from citizens of India.. then not the property of the
citizens of India?
Is government property actually public property held in stewardship by
the govt on behalf of the citizens it represents (similar to power of
attorney), or is it exclusive private property irrsepective of who has
paid for it?
If a citizen of India makes use of data that has been paid for by
citizens of India, is that not rightful use?

I know the systems as of today are in some other boat as far as these
questions are concerned, carrying their own assumptions that conflict
with these points. But these questions can be useful in challenging
the systems.

Some proxy activism might also work out.. for example, what if an
elected representative publishes such data using the same principle of
representation of people that a govt agency uses to claim its rights
over it? If we can get a sitting MP or MLA or even corporator or
sarpanch on board, will the govt agency be that willing to go hammer
and tongs after them?

Else, even opposition political parties might be happy to publish the
data "on behalf of the people". And human rights, activist groups like
NAPM too.

Also, how about this thought-germ:
Any geographical data is first and foremost the property of the
citizens residing upon the territory that said geographical data
covers. So the ward boundaries of Pune are firstly the property of the
residents living within those boundaries. The groundwater data of
Maharashtra region is firstly property of all Indian citizens residing
in Maharashtra. Someone else cannot claim ownership over that data
even if they have taken efforts or spent money to create it, as that
is seen as a plublic service rendered to those residents.

I guess the underlying idea behind this, which directly conflicts with
official copyright laws discussed here is : the people own the
government.


On 2/1/16, Raphael Susewind  wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> what I would find particularly useful is a (tentative) legal answer to
> the question at which degree of data curation copyright kicks in.
>
> As I understand, Indian copyright law knows the concept of "factual
> data" which is exempt from copyright (in that it seems quite similar to
> US law). Curation of data attracts copyright, though.
>
> I rely on this distinction quite a lot for my work with election data,
> assuming that results published by the Election Commission, or more
> precisely the fact that candidate X pulled Y votes in locality Z are
> "factual data". If we as a group curate or improve upon (clean up etc)
> this data, the information itself remains factual, but the curation
> effort attracts copyright (which we can then lift under open licenses -
> for instance this one: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/).
>
> My legal question is after what level of curation data ceased to be
> factual only. If the Election Commission tabulates it into a PDF, is
> that already copyrighted? If we do not redistribute the PDF, but just
> its contents, what does this imply for copyright? Or does copyright only
> kick in after more complex operations, such as creating maps or other
> "expressions" as you called it?
>
> It seems that this transition from factual to copyrighted data is a
> blurry but important one, and it would be useful to have some legal
> guidance on borderline cases - especially when public data is not
> expressly licensed (earlier versions of GIS data from the ECI had no
> legal disclaimer, for example - so what about these? Later versions have
> an express disclaimer that one is not to reuse it. Which is fine - if
> the data owner/curator asks for something, one should obey. But the
> borderline cases concern a lot of our work here)...
>
> My 5 cents for the lawyers ;-)
>
> Best,
> Raphael
>
> On 01.02.2016 06:50, Nisha Thompson wrote:
>> Hey
>>
>> Thej and I have been consulting with lawyers to get a better idea of the
>> risk or releasing data through the group.
>>
>> Copyright in India is a gray area, but a discussion on the issues are
>> definitely necessary.  Our understanding is that the expression of data
>> is copyrighted not the data itself. Maps are an expression of data which
>> means they are copyrighted. However there are questions around the
>> status of the shapefiles and taking information out of maps and putting
>> into a different expression.
>>
>> We were advised for the data we are releasing to understand how the data
>> is being liberated and what the intention is. While this doesn't protect
>> in every situation, as the government becomes more open we can use it as
>> a lobbying effort to change policies.
>>
>> Demand, process and intention of data liberation are the basic steps.
>>
>> What is the demand for this data among the