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The
Cultura Livre project creates a dialogue between countries of the south
about Culture, Media and Intellectual Property, with the objective to
generate and put into practice instruments for the promotion of
development, access to education, knowledge and democratisation of
information.
The project is developed
through a partnership between The Centre of Technology and Society at
Fundação Getúlio Vargas and The Link Centre in South Africa.
The Centre for Technology and Society is a global
reference and a pioneer in research and studies in Intellectual
Property in Brazil and is coordinated by the professor Ronaldo Lemos,
S.J.D by University of São Paulo and LL.M. by the University of
Harvard, responsible for the diffusion of the Creative
Commons Project in Brazil (www.creativecommons.org.br). The
Link Centre is a leader in research and training for the
development of politics, regulations and Information Technology
management in South Africa, and is co-ordinated by the researcher
Heather Ford, of the University of Wits, in Johannesburg. The
project is sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
The
Cultura Livre project aims at studying the impact of intellectual
property for development, media and culture. In short, the project
explains how changes in the regimen of intellectual property affect the
routine life of artists, journalists, bloggers and of the media in
general.
Apart from that, the project
accompanies the changes occurring internationally regarding
intellectual property and how those changes affect economic
development. Special attention and follows ups will be given
to the so called "Development Agenda", presented to the international
community by Brazil and Argentina, with support of a group of countries
called the "friends of development". The objective of the
"Agenda" is that Intellectual Property becomes a prominent factor for
development and not only favourably restricted to developed
countries. At the moment, the proposal is being negotiated in
the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), one of the main
international entities about the matter, that accepted, recently, the
Centre of Technology and Society (CTS) at FGV DIREITO RIO as an
official observer, permitting its participation and contribution to all
meetings of the entity in the matter. Because of this, it
will be possible to defend the access to knowledge and cultural
autonomy from the Brazilian civil society's point of view.
The project also cooperates with local initiatives in
Brazil and in Africa. In Brazil, for example, it acts in
association with the city hall of Olinda, making available local
content through Creative Commons licenses; with the NGO
Eletrocooperativa from Salvador that acts broadly in musical
productions, also free; and with the South African bank of remixes
CC-Mixter, where works can be freely downloaded and remixed by anyone.
The
site will display in real time the arguments carried out in the WIPO,
all translated and explained for a layman audience, showing what's at
stake, counting on our direct correspondent in Geneva. It will also
contain the studies produced by the project and recent news about local
initiatives supported by Cultura Livre.
The
publication of a first vast study about the competitive structure in
the cinema market is programmed for March of 2005, analysing from an
economic point of view the difficulties for Brazilian films to make it
in the national movie market. Every six months another vast study will
be published, always focusing on important issues in the media, in
culture and intellectual property.
The Cultura Livre project represents, in this way, one more step
in the road of national and international civil society in its fight
for cultural emancipation and for the access to goods and cultural
products, in the attempt of rearranging the equilibrium between
interests of Public Power, private initiative and of the Civil Society,
especially in developing countries. Summing up, the project contributes
in the sense of generating instruments so that developing countries can
each day have more access to culture and knowledge, in an efficient,
inclusive and democratic way.
For more
information on the project please contact Bruno Magrani at magrani [@]
fgv.br or call the numbers indicated in the footnotes.
References:
Cultura
Livre
Centre for Technology and Society
Link
Centre
Ford Foundation |
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