Hi all!
Richard Stallman has an article up on NewsForge where he discusses how the Microsoft Palladium and it's notion of "Trusted computing" in conjunction with American legislatures like DMCA, CBDTPA and TCPA can actually act as means of restraining people's freedom to compute. Given the strong inluence that America can exert over Indian technology legislation, IMO we should take this issue quite seriously.
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/10/21/1449250&tid=19
I am not sure if we have people on this list who are capable of influencing the lawmaking process but I feel that the some people from the LUGs etc. should atleast have an informal group that comprises people who can exert influence over the government.
If you look at the way the laws for cellular and wireless communication have been framed,you might get an idea of what could hold for the future of Indian computing, especially when people like Vijay Mukhi and Flynn Remedios have so much say.