Welcome to BASE21

Name/Country: Arun Mehta/India

Position: Managing Director of Indata, CTO, Radiophony and President of Society for Telecom Empowerment (STEM)

Background:

I have been involved with cyber-activism in India since the beginning: in 1994, we stopped the government from instituting annual license fees of US$35,000 on electronic bulletin boards (BBSes), and prevented the closure of India's only ISP at the time. This was under the banner of FREE, the Forum for Rights to Electronic Expression. I also successfully fought the government on censorship of web sites, by mounting a legal challenge. This resulted in the immediate unblocking of the sites. Current position: the judge has asked us to come back if any sites are ever blocked in the future. I have also helped people who had trouble with the law on account of bad IT legislation and interpretation

What issues do you want to raise in the conference?

Reexamining the concept of Intellectual Property, demanding that software written for public money must be open source, developing a legal coordination network to share information and a rapid action network for activists to coordinate their work.

What is the state of internet controling policy in your country, and the resistance to such state regulation?

There are requirements for archiving of all flow of traffic on international gateways, and the use of encryption higher than 40 bits is prohibited for international traffic. Hacking is confused with cracking in the law, and is banned. Internet telephony is banned (until April 2002). A forthcoming Convergence Bill is attempting to treat the Internet like electronic media, and to regulate it similarly. There has been sporadic opposition to these measures, but long-term activity with full-time staff support is essential.

What urgent issues would you like to raise?

In IT, the teacher is the most important person for she or he trains the professionals that produce the entire output of this labor-intensive industry. Teachers, however, are highly neglected, and in countries where that happens, progress in IT will be inefficient and slow.

How do you think participants can continue international solidarity?

E-mail, joint projects and periodic meetings.