If you are in the vicinity of Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá by tomorrow 26 March, do not hesitate and pop in!! If you are not around use the online connection (1 and 2) and you can still join us!!

Traficantes de sueños ("Dream Traffickers") has been an emblematic project for years, it has grown up not only as an interesting copyleft project but mainly as possibly the most important Spanish-speaking publishing house of the gender.

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Last week I reproduced on my blog a post by Argentinian blogger Patricio Lorente, who was telling of another “piracy”-related criminal suit. The special situation in this case is that the criminal offender is a professor at an Argentinian university who has been doing what many professors have done for centuries: facilitating the access to books for his students. He had a site devoted to Jacques Derrida and, around the Spanish texts of this philosopher, he also published research results, has forums and many other knowledge resources. The use of ICT he is doing is "affecting" the commercial interest of publishers and he is now facing a criminal cause. Here is a partial translation of Patricio’s post:

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On these days, it was revealed by the famous magazine Sports Illustrated that the baseball player from the New York Yankees, Álex Rodríguez, was positive in an anti doping control test in 2003, but this fact had stayed away from public knowledge up to now. This event gets back to the spotlight one of the more undesirable behaviours in sports: Doping, that is not another thing that to obtain a disloyal advantage in a competition by using illegal medications. In spite of the commotion that Rodríguez’s case could have caused in United States and nearby countries, where baseball is popular, here we will refer to some doping events, famous worldwide due to the relevance of the involved people and the sports in which they took place. 

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Few years ago I wrote my first article in English criticizing the criminal law reform in Colombia. This reform increased the sanction for copyright infringements, becoming one of the strongest laws I know, and by doing so I believe there can be important social consequences. Well, all my fears were materialized last week when I read a local newspaper here.

This last newspaper note was about the new “bracelet” system to allow prisoners to leave prison and have a controlled life under surveillance. The title of the story, "First prisoner to use electronic bracelet was condemned for buying pirate CDs”, caught my attention. The journalist tells the story of a young Colombian man (23 years old) who bought one day 16 music CDs on a Colombian street, the police asked for the bill, and he was taken to the police station; after signing a couple of documents, he was released. Few years later, after he joined the Police department, after a criminal background check he was taken to prison. The criminal procedure against him continued without his notice and he was condemned to 4 years in jail. The young man switched his position in just one day from police staff to prisoner.

In a country where people involved on economical fraud in form of pyramid schemes (hundreds of people lost their savings) receive 53 months prison, or paramilitary chiefs linked to homicides are condemned to 6 years prison, the story of this young man seems like a good movie plot, but it is true… and yet today many more Colombians will be buying pirate stuff on the streets… there is something really wrong when we use criminal law mainly as a threat as we forget the social consequences.

If you can read Spanish, you might find this other article interesting as well: La ideología de la propiedad intelectual, la inconstitucionalidad de la tutela penal de los derechos patrimoniales de autor.

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Indigenous guard from Cauca (Photo: El Turbión newspaper via Indymedia Colombia)

Two main issues have been central on the indigenous demonstration held in Colombia these days. The first one is their demand for more protection from the Colombian State because of the indigenous people murdered by the groups fighting in the Colombian internal armed conflict. The second one has to do with their constant and almost eternal fight for land.

It is true that, due to some of the customs the indigenous communities have, there are reasons to question the way how they and their discourse have inserted into a global context flavoured with "correct multiculturality" (with racism still alive and kicking in the world), which contradicts or reassert their claims and life projects. Political "correction" stands everything. But, beyond antropological and cultural questionings, related to the way indigenous people behave and Western society’s behaviour toward them, let’s be honest, today more than ever, interests and claims by the indigenous communities in Colombia are worthless. Right now it is worth to question the real role of indigenous fight into the Colombian and global environmental discourse.

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Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo is Colombia’s most important banker. Therefore, he is interested in the courts to work fine. His banks’ legal processes, small seizures and unpaid mortgages are a big piece of his business.

In what kind of country private citizens "suggest" the President to declare a state of emergency, him rushes to obey and no one succesfully stands on his way? In a country torn into pieces. I mean, in Colombia. Here —as showed last week— democratic guarantees matter far less than the so-called investment trust. No matter what rights are to be ridden roughshod over, to Mr Uribe the important thing is the rich to be still richer.

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On 7 July 1948, the assembly of the recently founded Major Division of Colombian Football, Dimayor, created by the representatives of the clubs that had acquired the status of professionals (that is, the ones where the footballers received a salary to carry out their activity), determined that since August, they would hold an annual football championship of first division in Colombia, with the participation of teams coming from the most important cities in the country.

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Crossposted on iCommons

Promotion for the movie Perro come perro (Carlos Caicedo, Flickr / CC-BY-NC-SA licence)

Despite interesting movies and efforts in Colombia no film industry in the true sense of the word has really evolved. During the 80s a public institution, Focine, provided support for some productions but it was not viable financially and had to declare bankruptcy during the 90s. In 2003 the "film law" (Ley 814 de 2003). offered important incentives, in the form of tax deductions, to companies and individuals who fund film productions, in an effort to boost the industry.

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In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Colombia, the highest criminal judicial tribunal and Cassation Court (deals with the Cassation procedures also known in other juridical traditions as right of appeal on points of law), determined that in order to establish a criminal violation of copyright, it is necessary to find if the criminal conduct is for profit-making, if it causes effective injury and if the intention is to cause harm on the right holder.

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This article has been cross-posted from iCommons

This is the story of the tropical reinvention of "Captain Copyright", a cartoon superhero who was suppose to devoted his life to teaching children the virtues of copyright. The brainchild of a Canadian government campaign that appeared in the end of 2006, "Captain Copyright" was usually portrayed flying on the scene 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 classroom’s of Canadian school children.

The classroom exercises that Captain Copyright taught young children generally reinforced the limits that copyright imposes on the conduct of people and failed to address other aspects of copyright, such as exceptions in 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 had to be ended, months later in 2007.

Recently, the Colombian National Planning Department (DNP) will submit for approval to the National Council for Social and Economic Politics (CONPES) a document on intellectual property that takes upon Captain Copyright’s idea of protection and enforcement of copyright. As it happened in the case of Captain Copyright’s materials, this document emphasis the possibilities of developing Colombian competitiveness and development only on the limits side of the equation, without watching all the other issues that influence the maintenance of a balanced system of creativity.

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