Month: March 2015

March 27th 2015: TRAI consultation begins, and how AIB got involved with the Net Neutrality campaign

It was sometime in the afternoon on Friday the 27th of March that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India unexpectetdly released the Net Neutrality consultation paper.

The spectrum auctions had ended on the 25th of March, and I expected that it would be at least a week or two before they release the paper. There’s a pattern: Firstly, regulators usually focus on one thing at a time, so I knew there would be nothing until the spectrum auctions finish. They also take a bit of a breather between issues, to wait for the news cycle related to the previous issue to die down. The paper being released just two days after the auction ended was unusual.

What was not unusual was that they released the paper on a Friday. Governments typically prefer to release consultations or orders on Friday: it’s the end of the week, and journalists turn in their articles for the week and most of them take the weekend off. A fresh news cycle begins on Monday. This probably staves off further scrutiny of whatever is being done.

I already had plans for Friday: I was going all the way to Gurgaon from North Delhi to meet an old friend (and as we did when we met, get drunk). I skimmed through the paper, and it seemed overwhelming and long.

I posted a tweet with a link to the paper, and asked people to mail me if they wanted to work with me over the weekend to help simplify the paper. I called Apar and told him we need to get started with this, and asked him for help. He was on board: we had discussed Net Neutrality during the Shreya Singhal case. Raman, on the other hand, was on a break: he had left Google a few weeks prior, and at that time, was out of the country, on a beach somewhere I think, and seemingly offline. 

Then I mailed Gursimran Khamba for help. Khamba and I had followed each other on Twitter for a few years. On 2011, he had mailed to interview me for a 5000 word paper he was planning for his media studies subject at Tata Institute of Social Sciences on the IT Act. We never ended up having that chat. A couple of years later I had connected him with a friend (Sidharth Rao of Webchutney for some benefit events for HopeMonkey, which Sid had funded).

We had met twice briefly before this: Once I had landed up at an Open Mic at a bar in South Extension in Delhi where Khamba was trying out new material. This was well before he was famous. Another time, we met with a common friend (Surekha Pillai) once, after a gig in Delhi. 

I mailed him because a year before, in June 2014, John Oliver had done a show on Net Neutrality, as the fifth episode of the first season of “Last Week Tonight”. The number of comments sent to the US’ Federal Communications Commission let to them voting to reclassify broadband as a utility in the US in 2015. Given my plan to push for 10,000 submissions to the TRAI, I thought the only way to get to that number was to get AIB (All India Bakchod), a comedy group that Khamba was a part of, to do something. 

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if AIB would help. This was a tough year for them and they had been in silent mode for a few months after they had got into trouble because of the AIB roast, which was held in Mumbai in December, and was uploaded to YouTube in January 2015. The outrage that followed was significant enough for them to almost go underground. There were lawsuits filed against them. In fact, that’s how I first met Tanmay Bhat. Vijay Nair, co-founder and CEO of Only Much Louder, which managed AIB’s business, was an old friend. Vijay and I first met in an unusual way in 2004. I used to go for a lot of music gigs, and he used to organise them. I remember one day, I was at home, and I recognised Zephyretta (by Them Clones) playing. It was one of my favourite indie songs. I stepped out of my house, and it sounded like it was being played live. I got into my car and drove towards the music, to Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi University and landed up at a music concert. There I recognised Vijay (I don’t remember how I recognised him) and went over and said hi. His brother, Ajay, used to be “Mage” at an online forum called Freshlimesoda, where I had been “Alter Ego”, and I remember using that as a reference to start a conversation.

Our paths crossed again once I started writing about the digital industry, especially digital music. We met at Nokia Music Connects in Mumbai a few times. He was in Delhi often, and we ended up meeting several times in Delhi and Mumbai, including at gigs, parties and the NH7 weekender, which he used to organise. I went for the NH7 Weekender to Pune from Delhi for most of the initial years, and was the only journalist who paid for his ticket, according to Vijay. I wanted to support the scene. 

Vijay needed some help from me: he was coming to Delhi, and wanted to meet. He was planning to go for the AAP government swearing-in at Ramlila Maidan on February 16th, but I told him that I’m not really interested in spending half my Sunday morning at a political rally. We were to meet at the Lalit (opposite Barakhamba Road) early in the morning, at around 8.30am. It wasn’t very far away from the Ramlila Maidan. I reached there in the morning and waited for Vijay. He was late, not for the first time. Eventually, after almost an hour of waiting, just as I was to leave, he called. He reached the Lalit shortly, and suggested that I join him at the swearing him. We can chat there, he said.

I got into his car, and Tanmay Bhat was there, along with Rega Jha, then the editor of Buzzfeed India. We went for the swearing in, and Vijay and I sat separately from Tanmay and Rega, and we discussed the lawsuits filed against AIB. Once the swearing in was over, we found that his car couldn’t pick us up because there were just too many people exiting Ramlila Maidan. The roads were packed. We decided to walk to Connaught Place, and grab lunch at Monkey Bar. As we walked from Ramlila Maidan towards CP, every few meters, someone would stop us to take a selfie with Tanmay.

This made me realise that for all the outrage about the AIB roast, regular people who had watched it really didn’t mind. If nothing else, it had only enhanced AIB’s celebrity status. I don’t remember any of the conversation from that day– except for a weird instance where my water alarm went off (with an drinking water sound), and Tanmay turned to me and said “Dude. What IS that?” — but I did find Tanmay very authentic. He is genuinely smart and funny, and just seemed like a guy who enjoys making people laugh.

I don’t know if any of this had an impact on AIB’s decision to work with the Net Neutrality campaign, but this meeting did give me the idea of reaching out to them. On the day the TRAI paper came out, I didn’t have Tanmay’s email address or number, so it all depended on Khamba. I sent him a short, sharp email at 3:35PM:

“Trai’s consultation paper on net neutrality is out. Over the next week or so, am preparing a response and a simplified paper. Is there any way you can help get the word out and people to participate? Trai favors telcos who have pushed for this consultation, and telcos have a very strong lobby. We need 15000 responses to counter their 10, and get people to tell Ravi Shankar Prasad to stop this.”

Khamba responded within a minute (at 3:36PM), saying “For sure. How do you think we can help? Will be more than happy.”

At that time, I didn’t actually know how.

I said something silly via email to Khamba: “One would be memes. Have an idea for a small crazy sketch as an appeal.” My only big idea here was to get AIB involved: they were approachable, I knew how to approach them, and I had hope. 

I’d just taken a long-shot, and it hit bullseye.

Khamba connected me with Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya for a call. I took the call with Rohan and Ashish on my way to Gurgaon. I think they said they’d get back to me with ideas, but I’m not sure if we discussed a video then. I reached Gurgaon, met my friend, and bored him with conversations about Net Neutrality and rants about telecom operators while we got drunk.

The Net Neutrality campaign had begun.

March 25th 2015: Sidin Vadukut and the plan for the Net Neutrality campaign

The Shreya Singh verdict from the Supreme Court was announced on the 24th of March 2015. It remains the foremost judgment for free speech on the Internet, even though some parts of it did not go our way. I say “our way” because some of us had spent years pushing back against Section 66A, and in court, I spent some time helping Senior Counsels understand the issues better. It was also, interestingly enough, a case which was being live tweeted by some lawyers, and including by J. Sai Deepak, who I had multiple conversations with about intermediary liability in court. I felt it was my case: I had almost become a petitioner, but instead, recommended my friend Faisal Farooqui to the Software Freedom Law Center, in my stead, because his organisation, Mouthshut, had received hundreds of takedown notices.

I remember walking out of Court number 1 of the Supreme Court after the verdict and feeling despondent. We may have had Section 66A (arrests for posts that were annoying, inconvenient or grossly offensive) taken down, but Section 79A (takedown of content upon notice) was only watered down, and Section 69A (secret blocking) remained protected. Raman and Apar were thrilled and talked some sense into me: a victory like this was unprecedented and significant. The judgment we got here today is one that can be used in free speech cases in the future.

That day (or the next) Sidin Vadukut, twitter star, author and columnist with Mint, and asked on twitter (now x) what the lessons were from the campaign. I had been preparing for the Net Neutrality campaign for almost 3 months, so I thought I’d write it down. Here’s the text of the email (with minor grammatical and typo errors fixed)

Subject: Learnings

Text: tldr: civil society orgs have it all wrong. need to get people involved.

*

Not specific to this case, but learnings from the last two years of watching how the policy space works

There are three levels of advocacy: politics, power and influence. This is in increasing order of perceived impact, decreasing order of credibility. Civil society members essentially focus on power: they create a position of power for themselves, and use perceived influence to push those in political positions to act. For example, an organization like ORF, SFLC or CIS will invite experts from across the globe to speak at small events they organize, invite people of importance in the audience, and through discussion, position themselves as a source of knowledge and connections with experts, to position themselves as experts. They will hold consultations, create research and white papers, and using their expertise, and connect with the media (who they invite for events), try and influence policy makers. They take the sniper approach: target the right people. 

Two years ago, a week before the global IGF event in Baku, there were four events in Delhi in the space of a week. The same people, the same audience, the same conversations, the same panelists. They meet regularly. It’s an echo chamber. 

In my opinion, this is useful, but likely to fail. Policy makers, given that they are likely to be influenced more by politicians, the industry, the press and people (social media), are likely to lean towards what impacts them the most: whether it is keeping their position of power, ensuring what keeps their paymasters happy, or what keeps the perception right. A few civil society organizations complaining will be seen as irritation, and can be ignored. These are people who will send them white papers, research reports and plead with them rationally about what is to be done.

What they can’t ignore, is people. 

If you see how the judgment panned out, 66A was the only part that people cared about. They didn’t care censorship: about 79 and rules which allow takedowns and 69 which allows secret blocking. 66A was declared unconstitutional, 79 was written down, 69 was left as is. There are reasons, but the judges could have found reason to address 79 and 69 too. The massive public sentiment against 66A, reflected by reactions on social media and in the press put pressure on the government and the judiciary. Volume matters. 

We worked on aggressively reporting Net Neutrality issues for three years. Nothing happened. Telcos spoke up about wanting to create interconnection charges and charge startups for allowing access to their apps. No one cared. It is when Airtel made VoIP costlier that there was a massive public outcry, there was pressure on TRAI to stop Airtel, pressure on Airtel to change the plan. Airtel brought people on board. We only explained to people why they were wrong, helped them understand. Now, when this goes to the TRAI for consultation, we are up against telecom operators and telco bodies who have been lobbying the TRAI for a year and a half. Telco CEO’s have met them several times, their execs meet the TRAI guys twice a week. TRAI’s policies often take the middle ground, and lean towards the telcos. On Net Neutrality, any middle ground is bad. It’s 8 powerful telcos versus people. My point is, while civil society organizations are taking a sniper approach, wouldn’t a shotgun approach be better? Once the TRAI opens up for submissions on net neutrality, if we can get 10,000 submissions from people like you and me, against 10 from telcos + telecom industry orgs, which way will the TRAI be forced to lean? 

That’ll be an interesting experiment, and I’m already on it. 

Now there’s some additional context needed here.

Firstly, the differential usage of power, politics and influence is something I learned in organisational dynamics in college in 2004, in terms of how groups and teams work in organisations. We had to do a group presentation on the usage of tactics in power, politics and influence, and their impact on recipients. Instead of applying it to a workplace situation, I took it to a public perception battle at the time that there was a split impending between the Ambani brothers and analysed the strategy behind their communication choices and the impact on how the media reported on it. The group went along with whatever I decided, and we titled it “Reliance and the Art of War”. This was not what the teacher had taught or expected, but I found out a year later that our presentation was being used in other colleges for teaching the concepts.

Secondly, I had being going for TRAI open house discussions since 2007: I knew how the consultation process works, how open house discussions were held, and having reported on, and participated in TRAI consultations, I knew the process. I knew that typically, there were 15-30 submissions to TRAI on most issues. The Internet, I hoped, could help us get to 10,000, so that the regulator understands what people want.

Thirdly, I had had this exact discussion around my frustration with how civil society organisations work, with Apar sometime in December. He had been working on a research project on Civil Society in India, and had interviewed me for it. As you can imagine, I was frustrated that Civil Society orgs didn’t do enough around issues of 66A, 79A and 69A even at that time. I didn’t realise then that they’re built for research, not advocacy, and that research is, in many cases, a weak form of advocacy.

This understanding helped me formulate some of the plans for the Internet Freedom Foundation later.

At that time, though, I didn’t know that there was mayhem just around the corner. The TRAI consultation would begin in a matter of days, not weeks.