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A news item from SFLC.

New Dehli Office Headed by Mishi Choudhary

New Delhi, India, August 27, 2010//The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) will announce the opening of its new international organization in India at the upcoming Software Patents and the Commons conference in New Delhi. The expansion will allow the SFLC to continue its mission of promoting and defending Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) on a global scale.

Funding for SFLC, New Delhi, an independent not for profit society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, comes from the SFLC's US donors and from a grant by The Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute with the charter to provide legal support to Indian institutions seeking to better the lives of people throughout India by making use of, developing, and promoting free software.

Under the direction of founder Mishi Choudhary, the SFLC's India organziation will provide reliable advice to FLOSS developers about how to organize, license and protect the freedom of the software they make and distribute.

"Advising growing projects and securing respect for their licenses in India and abroad is the core mission of our new branch,” Choudhary said. “As Indian programmers play an ever more critical role in the twenty-first century software industry, the SFLC will be there to assure they thrive."

Choudhary said the firm’s activities include preparing litigation defenses, filing patent oppositions to fight software patents, engaging in policy work to promote Open Standards, Open Access, and ensure digital freedoms. The SFLC will also do advocacy work surrounding legal issues of concern to FLOSS developers and users.

"India is a country of great promise for free culture and software," said Vera Franz, Program Manager for the Information Program of the Open Society Foundation, funded by the Soros Foundation. "We are delighted to be working with the SFLC to establish the SFLC India as a resource empowering India's creative young technologists to make a free and collaborative future that will not only advance learning and improve lives in India, but also contribute to the improvement of the quality of life and access to knowledge around the world."

The History of the SFLC's Mission in India

The SFLC has been an active presence in India since 2006. Its inaugural event in New Delhi, included prominent politicians, jurists and policy makers, along with the then Law Minister of the country, the Attorney General of India, and judges from High Court of Delhi. The SFLC has developed relationships with policy makers in the Central and State Governments, Institutions of Higher studies including various Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Managements, Indian media, the Indian software and developer community.

The SFLC works closely with a number of companies and institutions that are actively involved in FLOSS in India. These include: non-profit organizations like the Free Software Foundation, India, Centre for Internet and Society, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment, Knowledge Commons, companies like Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Confederation of Indian Industries, Government of Kerala and various political parties.

Mishi Choudhary, a native of New Delhi, will oversee the firm's work. Choudhary has been involved in information technology issues and litigation and has worked for the SFLC both in India and the United States, after earning an LLM from Columbia Law School as the first holder of the SFLC's International Fellowship.

Most recently, she has been at the SFLC's New York office working on behalf of its clients on non-profit organizational issues, GPL enforcement actions, registration and defense of trademarks and copyrights, patent re-examinations and other FLOSS licensing issues.

About the Software Freedom Law Center

The SFLC provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect FLOSS. Founded in 2005, the Center has represented many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects, including the Free Software Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, the Gnome Foundation, the Samba Team, PostgreSQL, the Plone Foundation, Joomla!, and Drupal. For more information, please visit the SFLC web site at: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

Contact Director Mishi Choudhary with press inquiries by email: mishi@softwarefreedom.com

An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

Special Keynote Address: Open World Forum

Where: Eurosites George V Convention Center, Paris, France

When: September 30, 2010, 4:30 pm

Who: Eben Moglen

Eben Moglen is giving a special keynote address at the Open World Forum in Paris, France on September 30. For more details about the event, visit the forum website.

An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

Society for Computers and Law 5th Annual Policy Forum: The Future of "Open"

Where: Herbert Smith LLP, Exchange House, Primrose Street, London, EC2A 2HS

When: September 20, 2010, 11:30 pm

Who: Karen M. Sandler

Karen Sandler, the SFLC's General Counsel, is participating in a panel at the 5th annual policy forum of the leading IT professional law association in the UK, the Society for Computers and Law. Sandler will discuss her research on free software in medical devices and other free software licensing issues.

For more details about the panel and the forum, visit the SCL website. The SFLC's paper on free software in medical devices, "Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices," is available on our website.

An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

A Legal Strategy for Pro-Commons Activism: Patent-Breaking in IT and the Life Sciences

Where: Lecture Hall, India International Center Annexe, New Delhi, India

When: Septermber 1, 2010, 12:00 pm

Who: Mishi Choudhary

Mishi Choudhary, the founding director of the Indian branch of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), will be speaking at the "Software Patents and the Commons" conference in New Delhi, India. The one-day seminar, organized by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), Knowledge Commons, and the Center for Internet and Society and sponsored by Red Hat, will explore issues related to software patents from the viewpoint of the knowledge commons as opposed to "intellectual property."

An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

Keynote Address: Software Patents and the Commons

Where: Lecture Hall, India International Center Annexe, New Delhi, India

When: September 1, 2010, 10:00 am

Who: Eben Moglen

Eben Moglen will deliver the keynote address at the "Software Patents and the Commons" conference in New Delhi, India. The one-day seminar, organized by the Software Freedom Law Center, Knowledge Commons, and the Center for Internet and Society and sponsored by Red Hat, will explore issues related to software patents from the viewpoint of the knowledge commons as opposed to "intellectual property."

An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

Legal Services For Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Developers in India

Where: Chennai Trade Center, Chennai, India

When: September 19, 2010

Who: Mishi Choudhary

Abstract: Mishi Choudhary is the founding director of SFLC India. She started working with SFLC in New York following the completion of her fellowship during which she earned her LLM from Columbia Law School and was a Stone Scholar. Prior to joining SFLC, Mishi was a litigator in different chambers in India with areas of practice covering Corporate and Commercial Law, Arbitration & Dispute Resolution, Property Law, Information Technology Law, Trademarks and Copyrights, Constitutional and Administrative Law. In addition to her LLM, she has an LLB degree and a bachelors degree in political science from the University of Delhi, India. Mishi is a member of the Bar Council of Delhi, licensed to appear before the Supreme Court of India, all the State High Courts in India, and in the State of New York.

The date of this event is subject to change. For more details, visit the Open Source India conference website

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An upcoming event related to the SFLC .

Freedom and The Web: Equality in the 21st Century

Where: Chennai Trade Center, Chennai, India

When: September 19-21

Who: Eben Moglen

Abstract: The World Wide web is less that 7000 days old. In that short time, it has changed human life around the world forever. When it is 10,000 days old it will have begun eradicating ignorance and changed for the better the fate of billions of people, or else it will be constructing the most oppressive system of inequality and un-freedom ever devised by tyranny. In this speech, I consider how, the FOSS community we might affect which happens.

The date of this event is subject to change. For more details, visit the Open Source India conference website.

An episode of the Software Freedom Law Show.

Show Notes Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley is President of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and Karen is one of the Conservancy's pro bono lawyers. Karen is also an officer of the Conservancy, and Bradley is a director of the FSF. Got that?(03:17)
• Thanks for sending us your ideas!(06:22)
• The SFLC is not the EFF, despite what slashdot says.(09:18)
• To learn more about the default judgment you can read the court's opinion or listen to Episode 0x29.
• If you liked Episode 0x21, you should check out the paper that SFLC published about software transparency on medical devices (25:05).

Send feedback and comments on the podcast to <oggcast@softwarefreedom.org>. You can keep in touch with the SFLC on our IRC channel, #sflc on irc.freenode.net, and by following SFLC on identi.ca.

If your not-for-profit FLOSS project needs legal assistance, write to <help@softwarefreedom.org>. If your project needs an organizational home, write to <conservancy@softwarefreedom.org>.


The Software Freedom Law Show is produced by Dan Lynch of half baked media. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this podcast and the accompanying show notes are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Blog post by Mishi Choudhary. Please email any comments on this entry to <Mishi@softwarefreedom.org>.

According to the Government of India, private service providers like AirTel and Vodafone are failing in their legal obligations under the Information Technology Act, hastily amended in the days immediately following the Mumbai 7/11 attacks, by not providing access to the content of emails and texts sent to or from BlackBerry users. As a lawyer, I have some doubt about this legal position, no doubt under discussion between GoI and the service providers. But there is no doubt that the Government has failed to make clear the context of this dispute, or the real consequences of the demands it is making.

BlackBerry devices use the wireless networks of the local service providers to deliver email and texts through servers operated by Research in Motion located outside India. If you or I as individuals buy a BlackBerry through one of the offering service providers, our email and text traffic will not be encrypted, and GoI will have whatever access to our communications the law requires. If, however, your BlackBerry was given to you as an employee of an MNC or a large local enterprise, for work use, those emails and texts will be encrypted so that only the sender and receiver, but not Research in Motion (RIM) and not the local Indian wireless service provider, will be able to read them. Since these parties do not have access to the content of encrypted messages, and therefore cannot provide what Government says the Act requires, the Government now threatens to force a halt to their services as of August 31.

Unless a ring of terrorists is embedded entirely within some MNC, and is using its email and messaging system to plan terrorist attacks or other crimes using corporate BlackBerries, such a service cut would not be likely to prevent the planning or execution of any attacks. What it would do, however, is effectively cut off India from the global financial system. The ability of banks, insurance companies, law firms, consultancies and other professional service enterprises to operate around the globe depends entirely on the flow of confidential intra-firm communications. People cannot do business anywhere unless they can be sure that their firm's business communications are not being overheard by competitors or other parties using breaches in communications networks. So every such enterprise relies upon mechanisms that ensure complete confidentiality on which the movement of trillions of crores every day in the world economy depend. BlackBerry provides one portion of that network to a large subset of that market. Any country which shuts off encrypted BlackBerry communications has shut down its place in the global economy.

Government knows, what the extent of its threat implies if our connection with the global economy is temporarily lost. But if the Government were clear with the public now about the small security benefit to gain and the magnitude of the harm it will cause if its threat is carried out, its dis-proportionality would raise questions in the mind of the public. Apparently GoI believes that such a threat can, from its very desperate dramatic quality, induce a useful result. Unfortunately, this too is wrong. Because nobody but the enterprises themselves have an access to the decrypted information, Government must get inside the BlackBerry itself if it is to read the messages.

Thus, it is likely that GoI is pressurizing the local service providers like Airtel and Vodafone to put spyware within the BlackBerries attached to their networks. Thus, an arriving investment banker or CEO from New York or Frankfurt would have his BlackBerry subject to the introduction of spyware by the network, along with all the BlackBerries used by Indian financial services firms. There is precedent for this effort. One UAE wireless company, Etisalat, was caught installing spyware on more than 100,000 enterprise BlackBerries in the Emirates last year. Research in Motion was required by its customers to bear the cost of software upgrades to the system to remove the spyware and secure their business communications. Etisalat has been fundamentally injured in its credibility in international business, and is in some danger of becoming a global pariah.

GoI is making threats that could only be fulfilled at cataclysmic cost to the economy. It will in effect result in causing immense harm to India's telecommunications sector and our reputation in the global financial services economy, where so many of our jobs are being created. In the end, it would inflict immense damage, much greater than any terrorist could ever cause scarcely achieving any additional security.

A news item from SFLC.

The Software Freedom Law Center is seeking a motivated systems administrator for our small office, where we use only free and open source software. This is a full time position on site at our New York City offices. More details, as well as application instructions, are available in the full position listing. All applications should be submitted no later than August 19, 2010.