Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote [at 09:50 AM 7/24/2006] :
I think it is abundantly clear now that we need a lobbying front for the rights of internet users in India, somewhat akin to the EFF.
I've had this conversation multiple times over the past decade, including with a couple of the original EFF founders (Barlow and Gilmore). And as I indicated to you during our chat a few days ago, I think that there needs to be *at least* one FULL-TIME person doing this stuff, in order for the effort not to peter out.
This front must necessarily be a legal and media collective. I'm given to understand this has been attempted before but always fallen apart for lack of a full-time coordinator. We're going to have the same problem again unless appointing said coordinator becomes the first priority.
My impression is that we need to get some of the people who've made enough money from the IT industry to set up a corpus which could be used for this kind of activism. One subset of the above gentry of particular interest would be those who have "retired" and thus have time as well as money to contribute - while still having fat rolodexes.
I've copied Eric Johnson of Internews on this. Eric was setting up something in Delhi to do activism, inter alia. Eric, please see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/16553 for context, and could you update us on what the status of your India efforts are?
Thanks, Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
