Access

Where the Government in Pakistan, Intellectual Property Organization, Federal Investigation Authorities and the Business Software Alliance BSA are initiating a crackdown on Software Piracy in Pakistan, there is hardly any awareness of piracy and its implications within society apart from members of the IT Industry. It is crucial to the basic Human Rights of the citizens of Pakistan that they fi...

Here’s an early initiative to flow out of the APC South Asia Consultation: BytesForAll has just launched a new mailing list, specifically focused on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS, or FOSS). Details of the group are below. We invite all interested to join.

As far as radio waves go, South Asia could perhaps call itself the dark continent. This part of the planet has an almost-uniformly unenlightened policy when it comes to opening up its airwaves. Voices from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal….

Should people who illegally copy software onto their computer (probably because it’s so outlandishly priced) be called ‘pirates’? Is it fair to liken people who attack ships at high seas to those who make copies of digital products, though it’s against the law? Or is illegal copying of software "infringement of illegal property and unethical, crimal and immoral" anyway?

"Whatever is the state of localisation in India, the government is definitely responsible for framing the policies. We have dreams of software superpowerdom, yet basic tools are not in place. They have spent crores (tens of millions by Government of India organisations) CDAC and TDIL, and that too all in the name of undertaking work in Indic computing and benefitting the people," says Ravikant...

In the Himalayan country of Nepal, a large section of the population is deprived of the usage of computers because of the language barrier i.e. English which is the communicating language of the computers, One of the institutions there, an archive-and-library there was facing challenges in cataloging its books, and ran into hurdles with ‘sort’ and ‘find and replace’ req...

A report from the workshop “Post-WSIS and Uganda’s Way Forward” (arranged by the Collegium for Development Studies at Uppsala University Sweden, I-Network Uganda, Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), with support from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and Ministry of Works, Housing and Communications, Uganda) is now available as a pdf, 441kb. http://www.kus.uu.se/pdf/publications...

Just four days before the WSF starts in Karachi on 24th March, it is common knowledge that leading women rights organizations in Pakistan have detached themselves from the WSF and will not participate in any event.