Dr. Sushant Sinha‘s free access to law service for India, Indian Kanoon, is the subject of my new, in-depth article on Slaw.ca, the Canadian legal blog.
The article provides a great deal of detailed information about Indian Kanoon, including information on technology and open source, users and usage, business models and sustainability, partnerships, product differentiation, advertising, Indian Kanoon‘s online forums, and Dr. Sinha’s innovative concept of “the thirst for law”: the idea, first expressed in Dr. Sinha’s recent VoxPopuLII post, that free access to law online stimulates the public’s demand for such access, in a virtuous circle.
The post also describes Indian Kanoon‘s new partnership with PRS Legislative Research, in which Indian Kanoon is adding to its content full text of the debates of the Parliament of India, which PRS will then use in providing legislative history and research services to members of India’s national and state parliaments. This partnership exemplifies how civil-society-based free-access-to-law services can function as “extensions” of e-Government, consistent with the vision set out by Robinson et al., in Government Data and the Invisible Hand.
I’m very grateful to Dr. Sinha for taking time for extensive interviews that provided the content of the article.
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