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This is the story of the tropical reinvention of "Captain Copyright", a cartoon superhero who was supposed to devoted his life to teaching children the virtues of copyright. Captain Copyright was the brainchild
of Access Copyright, a Canadian collecting society, and the campaign appeared at the end of 2006, "Captain Copyright" was usually portrayed flying in at the scene of a "crime" in which someone published research without proper credit. In the website dedicated to Captain Copyright, the campaign offered educational resources to be integrated into the classrooms of Canadian school children.
The Captain's classroom exercises taught young children about the limits that copyright imposes people's conduct, but failed to address other aspects of copyright, such as exceptions that favour of everyone in society; the public domain; the ability to share, and so on. At that time, commentators like Professor Geist pointed out: "there is no reference to user rights, which are particularly relevant in the education context." He concluded: "Our children need to develop love for learning, a passion for creativity, and appreciation of art and science. The exercises that are offered do not provide any of that. Instead they reduce Canadian copyright to levels not seen before. They are so shameful that they should not be included in any classroom in the country." The campaign shuttered a few months later in 2007.
Recently, the Colombian National Planning Department (DNP) submitted a document on intellectual property for approval by the National Council for Social and Economic Politics (CONPES). The DNP's document builds upon Captain Copyright's idea of protection and enforcement of copyright. As with Captain Copyright, this document emphasises developing Colombian competitiveness and development only through limits, without taking note of the freedoms that make for a balanced system of creativity.
A comprehensive reading of the document suggests that the Colombian state is focusing its efforts and resources into developing our own version of "Captain Copyright" that will give educational recommendations for children, academics and public officials and will likely produce a surveillance state.
The document's main argument is that our country's intellectual property development relies solely on "protection and enforcement". Such a conclusion is based on the fact that the revenue for intellectual property related industries is higher in developed countries than in ours. The document has absolutely no references or background research, achievements and implications of recent approaches such as Free Software, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Business, etc.
Furthermore the document analysis completely ignores important changes in the intellectual property sector evident over the last few years: these aren't just legal tools for increasing copyright control, but rather legal alternatives that empower authors' to manage their rights. Today, authors can exploit new environments for business or can simply decide to share knowledge using technology. In other words, for example, is it justified that Colombian public policies remain focusing on university professors who produce printed knowledge and want to protect their production incentives? Or is it time to also start considering the digital production that follows from different formats that are equally valuable and legal?
This document is not yet public and only a few people were invited to discuss it in the last weeks -- but despite this, an Internet campaign is already bringing attention to the matter, since CONPES will soon deliberate on this public policy. We are focusing our efforts in requesting the CONPES to: (1) involve government institutions related to education and culture to point out their special needs and legal regimes in this issue, (2) to involve civil society actors interested in this topic, and (3) to immediately start drafting another document that will address the other side of the copyright regime; if despite of its limitations, the current document is still approved.
If you want to sign and support go to firmasonline.com
tags: bogota colombia policy-law public-policy copyright copyleft colombia
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