Keep up the good work!

Elmer Hawkes

Even you are not in favor of totally ending copyrights. What
Ever is protected must be protected in digital form too.

Ley Lleras just protects in the digital space whatever is protected by copyright.

This is why I challenge opponents of Ley Lleras to point to articles in the bill when making their arguments. They can’t because the problems they – you – have are in a different place. The copyright law.

You of all people should see the benefit to punishing piracy so that rights owners enter the market, even while you insist that their rights recognized by law should be changed. Otherwise the only alternative is a culture of disregard for the law and Colombia has has too much of that.

Big hugs!

Here I am again, after a busy couple days at events and #leylleras related talks.

I would like to add that my name is Pablo Francisco Arrieta and I’m a university professor here in Colombia, in both Javeriana University (Social Communication Faculty) and Los Andes (Architecture and Design Faculty). I’ve been a consultant for Macromedia, Adobe and Apple. I also do work very closely with the publishing world by thinking and showing succesful ways to change from a paper bussiness to a digital one.

My concerns with creativity and digital media have been around since my begginings in this universe (started working as web creator back in 1995), and as proof of that, I’d like to share with you and your readers my first long article on the subject, published in 2003 and in which I introduce Creative Commons to Colombian audiences, by the hand of Lawrence Lessig himself. In this piece I talk with several authors and artists around the subject of creation, business oportunities and law. Amazingly, although things have changed all over the world, they are pretty the same in latin countries. And this was written pre iPod! ;-(

http://xpectro.posterous.com/pasado-desconectado-futuro-enredado

So, more than web guru, I’m a creator, user, professor, living and working in Colombia, travelling all over the world sharing ideas from this perspective and I do fear laws like this based on the possible harm they allow to do by people that don’t use correctly the powerful resource that the web (that we all have built in so many years) gives to developing nations like mine.

I hope for the best, but I’ve seen many times wrong results… and it’s really sad.

Please stay warm and dry if you can in Bogota. La Nina is going to end!

Thanks for your observations and response. I have drafted an article to be published soon by the Latin America Law & Business Report that will address some of your thoughts.

For now, let me offer these responses:

1. I posted the text of the Lleras Law to encourage a discussion of the actual provisions and language. This comment is directed generally at the rights provided by copyright laws. That is an important debate. But the Lleras Law does not change the rights provided by copyright law. In fact, Article 2 of the Lleras Law provides it does not change copyright law: “Information used in computer systems or networks will be protected by legislation on copyright and related rights if it meets the conditions for such protection.”

The Lleras Law does increase the punishment for copyright infringement — it creates a criminal sanction for online piracy in Article 17 to make it criminal to “Make available through a computer network accessible to the public, for commercial purposes, a work of literary or artistic character or selection protected by related rights, cinematic works, sound recordings, video, computer software, photographic works, among others,” by one “who sells or offers reproductions of them in digital format via the networks mentioned.”

2. Regarding the point that “in many cases, the complaints and orders are going to come from employees that don’t consider directly the author’s but the companies interests,” the right of an author to sell her copyrights to a publisher, or of a corporation to have the rights of an author, is not changed at all by the Lleras Law.

3. The Lleras Law will undoubtedly make it more difficult to use rights-protected material through ISP’s, in fact that is its design and purpose. In other words, you are correct that “What the fight right now is about, more than free software against proprietary ideas (as others, including the government have wrongly pointed), is how an ISP is going to let users express their free speech, their right to innovate (remix, mashup, cut up) against companies that try to protect more than anything their investment.” Here is how that actually will work.

Online service providers “let” their users do anything they want, because the online service providers have no duty to monitor use. However, online service providers have to “take down” allegedly infringing use when a proper notice is served. It will only work, therefore, where the rights owners have taken the considerable time to discover the infringing use and serve a particularized “take-down” notice. Therefore, in reality, a lot of infringing use is probably going to slip under the radar because the burden on rights owners is too high to catch it all.

4. Another point you make that is true is “it’s very hard when, based on fear, there is no real competition from content providers for this pirates. There is no easy way for consumers to get their goods in a XXI century way. Variety, timely delivery, fair prices, language options… there are so many factors… Users here, in many ways, are not “third world”… they have seen the other side, so they expect to be treated in a similar way.” But the goal of the Lleras Law – a FIRST in the region — is to attract rights owners into the Colombian market by promising respect for their rights.

Without digital security, rights owners will avoid an economy with virtual impunity for piracy. Why shouldn’t they? What kind of society Colombia wants is being defined right now, and I am very impressed by an attitude gaining widespread acceptance in the country that is firmly opposed to impunity.

It is also true that Internent guru’s and futurists — like yourself — have a vital role to play in creating marketplaces that respond to evolving demands and uses. Getting the security for rights owners is a start, not a finish, to that process. Like the security that has spread across much of Colombia, opening up the economy, creating jobs and reducing unemployment, reducing poverty, security is necessary but insufficient to achieve these goals.

As you know, Colombia is a developing country and many content companies here provide access to foreign goods. There is not a bigger national product than external. So, in many cases, the complaints and orders are going to come from employees that don’t consider directly the author’s but the companies interests. And, that would be a high risk.

There is a fair way to access and use cultural material, as many examples around the globe can testify. This proposed law has a several flaw in not providing any kind of limits or guidelines to the way users could be protected. It only specifies “lucro”, that many of us wish that only leads to processes where money is exchanged for the copyrighted content.

What the fight right now is about, more than free software against propietary ideas (as others, including the government have wrongly pointed), is how an ISP is going to let users express their free speech, their right to innovate (remix, mashup, cut up) against companies that try to protect more than anything their investment.

Piracy should be treated as a market problem, and actions as opening content stores should go, if not first, at the same time a policy like this is proposed. The industry should take an active role in provideing solutions. They have more ways to do it: pricing, distribution models, availability, worldwide release… It relates to music, movies, books, TV… you name it. There are examples (“competing with free” is possible by treating piracy like a business problem.” http://flpbd.it/Bfqg “).

I’m a personal supporter of copyright, of propietary ideas as much as I am of free ideas and sharing knowledge. In order to have a better society, as many developed countries have, you must educate before imposing policies. I live in a country where security has been improved by more armed guards in the streets, not by lowering the problems that generate many of the frictions that lead to violence. I do fear that an act like this law gives tools to people to close paths, to censure, to use power to stiffle (cultural and technical) innovation, from the rightly grounds of protecting intellectual property.

In Colombia, a law like this one should limit clearly and show exceptions. There are many, and they are necessary.

As a creator, educator, developer and consumer, I would like to see options before sanctions. I do enjoy in my iPad a lot of content I have paid for, as many of us do. Colombians want to pay. But, it’s very hard when, based on fear, there is no real competition from content providers for this pirates. There is no easy way for consumers to get their goods in a XXI century way. Variety, timely delivery, fair prices, language options… there are so many factors… Users here, in many ways, are not “third world”… they have seen the other side, so they expect to be treated in a similar way.

I do hope this talk around LeyLleras makes our local industries more open to digital ways. Not the opposite. There are risks with innovation, and there has been years to test new models, so fear should give space to action.

My 0.2 cents… from a very cold Bogotá.

I personally feel that while “human rights concerns” is often cited as a cause, it is rarely the real reason.