Online stores under DoT scanner

Some online adult toys and  adult lifestyle stores have come under the scanner of the Department of Telecom (DoT), which wants to regulate such webstores under section 67, 67A and 67B of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2008 for "selling and promoting alleged objectionable products illegally".
A telecom department note mentions online stores like flipkart, Imbesharam.com, thatspersonal.com and OhMySecret.com, which, it feels, are violating rules under the IT Act.
It also refers the names of the CEOs of these portal including Sachin Bansal (flipkart), Raj Armani (IMbesharam), Samir Saraiya (thatspersonal.com) and Vinodh Reddy (OhMySecrets.com).
There are "few online selling websites, which are openly promoting and selling alleged objectionable products illegally," says the note referring to these websites.
The DoT said this was brought to its notice through a letter from the ministry of information and broadcasting and a complaint by one Harit Kumar to the Delhi police, alleging objectionable content being shown on websites.
The other two portals are also explicitly adult stores but it is not clear why flipkart has been mentioned along with them. None of the CEOs were available for comments.
G Krishna Kumar, an IT professional from Bengaluru, said they could have come to the government's notice as they don't have checks and balances that such sites require for their access.
He said measures such as giving access to only those who register their age as 18 years and above would probably satisfy the regulating agencies.
"For adult content sites, it must be mandatory to have a login (assuming that the individual will provide the correct details). It finally depends on how truthful the individual is," said Krishna Kumar.
Incidentally, Facebook requires a person creating a login ID to be at least 13 years old while Google has age requirements as defined by individual countries. Youtube, for example, displays a warning screen when adult content appears, saying "only users who are 18 or older can watch it".

Is your mobile certified for SAR radiation?

Sunday, 11 January 2015 - 7:20am IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: dna

A letter written by India's only authorised lab and certifier of specified absorption rate (SAR) of radiation in a mobile handset to the customs chief in New Delhi brings out rampant misuse and violation of government rules on the same.
Bharat B Jain, chief executive officer (CEO) of BNNSPEAG Test and Calibration Laboratory India Pvt Ltd, told dna he has come across some instances of fake SAR conformance certificates being issued by a Delhi-based entity AB Mobile Standards India Pvt Ltd and has brought it to the notice of the customs.
"This forging of SAR compliance certificate is not only causing a revenue loss to the test lab but also resulting in unchecked mobile phone radiation to general public," Jain wrote in his letter to the Commissioner of Customs Bhushan Kumar Bansal.
What has surprised Jain is that the customs has cleared mobile handsets imports on production of these forged documents. As evidence, he has provided a copy of SAR conformance certificate issued to Maxx MobilE Communications Limited's MX425e model by AB Mobile. The model was made manufactured by United Creation Technology Co Ltd.
"It has come to our notice that under-mentioned organisation (AB Mobile Standards India Pvt Ltd) is giving forged SAR certificates to various mobile manufacturers and importers, who are submitting these to customs for clearance of these phone by illegally using ILAC (International Lab Accreditation) symbol," he states in the letter.
And while Jain is still awaiting response from the customs authority, ILAC – the international body of which his company is a signatory – has already addressed his concerns.
An e-mail sent to him by Sharon Kelly of ILAC has verified that AB Mobile was not an ILAC signatory.
"AB Mobile Standards India is not authorised to use the ILAC MRA Mark as shown on the SAR conformance certificate provided (to us)," she wrote to Jain.
ILAC, which is a global mobile testing and certification body, has taken the matter further and will be carrying out a probe to check whether testing by AB Mobile was done at an accredited laboratory.
"However, this would need to be confirmed with AB Mobile Standards and CNAS (China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment), the accreditation body in China that is a signatory to the ILAC MRA because the conformance certificate indicates the laboratory used was based in China," she assured Jain in her email.
ILAC has said it will use the evidence given by Jain to contact AB Mobile Standards and advise them against inappropriate use of the ILAC MRA Mark.
G Krishna Kumar, telecom professional from Bangalore, said even though India has set guidelines on acceptable SAR level for mobile phones sold in the country, its implementation was a challenge.
"It is worthwhile to note that SAR value by itself does not guarantee that the phone is safe to be used continuously for hours. Data suggests that a SAR value of 1.6 W/kg (watt per kilogram) means that the phone can safely be used for about 18-20 minutes of continuous talking (with phone held against the ear) in a day," he said.
According to him, the government or the phone makers or the telcos needs to educate general public on these aspects.
He said the government should mandate the over 150 mobile phone makers to provide the radiation details for all phone models launched in India over the last one year. "This should be available both online and in all the retail outlets," said Krishna Kumar.

Companies need to have Rs 100 crore net worth to participate in airwave auction

Monday, 5 January 2015 - 7:10am IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: dna
Praveena Sharma

Aircel and Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTL) may find it challenging to bid for airwaves in the coming auction with the inter-ministerial committee (IMC) on spectrum auction reiterating its decision on net worth eligibility of bidders.
The committee has retained its earlier decision, where it had made it clear that only those with net worth of over Rs 100 crore, irrespective of whether they were holding spectrum or license or were new entrants in a band or a circle, could participate in the upcoming airwave auction. For the North East region and J&K service area, the net worth requirement for companies has been fixed at Rs 50 crore.
The telecom panel is of the view that strong balance sheets of those bidding for airwaves would ensure efficient roll out of quality telecom services.

Bengaluru-based telecom professional G Krishna Kumar said while IMC was justified in wanting to invite financially strong players, it should have also taken into consideration how the current competitive market had eroded the net worth of many of them.

"The criteria of having companies with healthy balance sheets to participate is good as it can help in maintaining requisite quality of service. However, due to the highly competitive market, telecom companies have paid exorbitant prices," he said.

Citing example of state-owned telecom company BSNL, he said positive net worth wasn't always necessarily an assurance on quality of service; "BSNL has positive net worth but their quality of service has been wanting".

Kumar said to make the telecom sector healthier, the government needed to address the areas: One, to make available more spectrum and two, reduce the intense of competition that currently exists in the market. "There has to be more spectrum availability. Currently, Indian telcos have less than 20% spectrum compared to their peers in other country. Secondly, we still have 8-12 players in each circle. I think government needs to help with easy M&A (merger and acquisition) guidelines, which will help the overall industry and also the general public," said Kumar.
A note on the minutes of IMC meeting, held late last month, says the committee had decided to hold on to its earlier view on the net worth as it felt lower availability of funds with a bidder would lower its capacity to raise funds, which in turn could hamper smooth running of its operation, expansion plans and quality of service.
It also felt that it was in line with the existing principle related to net worth requirement in the Unified License conditions for authorisation of additional services. However, it has clarified that the criteria did not "preclude" bidders with negative net worth: "Bidders have option of getting the net worth of such promoters of the company counted for participation in the auction for allotment of spectrum, who have directly in their name at least 10% equity share in the total equity of the company".
One of the reasons put forth by the panel was that in view of the government's Digital India initiative it was crucial to ensure the financial strength of bidder for faster roll out of services. Kumar said Digital India was already gaining traction with reports suggesting that there will be 10-15 million 4G (fourth generation) subscribers in India by next year.

Government begins net policing, orders blocking of 32 websites

Thursday, 1 January 2015 - 7:30am IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: dna

The latest to come under its scanner are 32 websites, which have been ordered by the department of information technology to be blocked under Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and the IT (Procedure and safeguards for blocking of access of information by public) Rules, 2009.
Arvind Gupta, the head of Bharatiya Janata Party’s national IT cell, tweeted that these sites on the Net, including vimeo, github, sourceforge and others, have been found carrying “objectionable content” and so directed to be blocked by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on security grounds.

An IT department’s note sent out to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) orders them to “immediately block the access” to all 32 URLs.
Its dictate is reminiscence of the previous government’s similar move where it blocked over 200 websites in a day last year. It led to massive outcry against “censorship of the Internet” and resulted in the UPA government backtracking on it.
Though, after the Bangalore incident, the sentiment on the Net governance is different today.
Som Mittal, former president of IT lobby body National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), believes Internet needs to be governed to a certain extend if it is being used for “unintended purposes”.
“You saw what happened recently on the Twitter (referring to Bangalore case). Internet is a powerful (internet) tool and can be misused to spread sentiments that could be harmful for impressionable users. We should censor only when the freedom (on the Net) is misused (for such purposes). The government should then step in,” he said.
However, he feels that what happened in China during the Hong Kong protest was “clearly censorship”. “What we are advocating is self-governance of the Net,” said the former Nasscom chief.
G Krishna Kumar, a senior IT professional based in Bangalore, is also of the view that government has all the right to block websites. 
“In fact, countries like US, Germany and Japan have clear Internet censorship guidelines. India is much better than China where thousands of websites are blocked including most popular ones like Facebook, Youtube, etc,” he said.
In the current context of blocking 32 websites, however, he said it was not clear why websites like github or sourceforge, which are sites meant for open source based collaborative software development, have been blocked. 
“Instead of blocking a website, can the government enforce strict checks and balances to these website or content providers so that only specific accounts can be blocked?” asked Krishna.