O diretor do Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade, professor Ronaldo Lemos, presidiu no dia 14 de novembro de 2007 a sessão principal do Fórum Internacional de Governança da Internet (IGF - Internet Governance Forum), organizado pelas Nações Unidas e pela primeira vez realizado no Brasil, na cidade de Rio de Janeiro.

O tema da sessão foi "Abertura" ("Openness"), que foi um dos principais temas tratados no evento, juntamente com as questões de diversidade e acesso. O painel, bem como a sessão de leitura dos trabalhos sobre o tema que o precederam, encontra-se disponível em vídeo através do seguinte link.

A transcrição em texto de todo o painel também encontra-se disponível online e pode ser acessada no seguinte link. Segue abaixo o texto completo do discurso de abertura e encerramento efetuados pelo diretor do CTS, bem como demais intervenções durante os debates.

RONALDO LEMOS: Mr. Secretary, (no audio), distinguished discussants, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here representing civil society. I am a professor of law at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School. My remarks are short. I won’t keep the floor long. I’d like to make a few considerations about the issue of openness. The idea of openness cuts across the main themes that have been discussed during the IGF, for instance, the theme of diversity and also the theme of access. You cannot discuss any of these themes without discussing the issue of openness. What I would like to do first is to try to give you three dimensions of the theme of openness. And the first dimension is the legal dimension. One of the crucial issues that are being discussed locally and globally today is the issue of exceptions and limitations to copyright. If you think about the issue of openness, if youthink about collaborative production of culture, information, and scientific knowledge, this is a crucial issue to be considered. The second issue that I would like to call to your attention is the liability of Internet service providers and the liability of online service providers which has to be regulated locally, but the majority of countries actually have not yet regulated these issues. So these are two examples of the issue of openness and how it’s made concrete if you consider the legal realm. The second dimension of the theme of openness is a political dimension. In that sense, openness has a very intrinsic relation with governments worldwide, some governments actively supporting openness, actively creating policies towards openness. And above all, there’s another dimension to the political issue, which is the cooperation between the IGF and the other United Nations bodies. And I will mention only two, which is the World Intellectual Property Organization, especially considering that the development agenda has been approved by the World Intellectual Property Organization, and also the UNESCO diversity convention. Both issues are directly related to the issue of openness and should be considered from the standpoint of the IGF. The third and last dimension of openness is an economic dimension. In this dimension, we have seen increasingly the effect that many businesses, many companies have included openness as part of their respective business models. Actually, in some cases, we have been following in the recent years a sort of a race towards openness in the sense that openness actually increases the value of companies and it creates value in itself. And the second issue from the economic standpoint about openness is related, for instance, to the role of developing countries in regard to openness. And in this case, developing countries cannot afford, for instance, the cost of the lack of interoperability of the systems that the governments worldwide contract. So the issue of openness is directly related also to the issue of interoperability. And this is a crucial and fundamental issue for developing countries. The other dimension in the economic sense is the issue of innovation. Openness lowers the barriers for new entrants in the economic markets, and therefore it also provides innovation. I will finish my short intervention by giving three examples of concrete issues that are related to the openness question. The first example is the case for open standards. And as I mentioned, many governments worldwide are increasingly participating in the discussion about open standards. A Brazilian example is the ministry of planning, which has created recently the AEPINC initiative, which is a governmental body that is worried about interoperability and standards. The second concrete example is open source software, which has in many instances also found support by some governments. One example about that is, for instance, governments licensing the code that has been produced by the government itself so that it can be openly and sometimes freely accessed for the citizens of that country or maybe the citizens worldwide, depending on the license that is being used. And, finally, a very important issue that I think the IGF ought also to consider, which is the issue of open access. Open access refers to the broader access towards, for instance, scientific knowledge, about knowledge in itself. And this is a global discussion that takes place right now. One of the important documents about this issue is the Budapest open access initiative that claims scholars worldwide and institutions worldwide to make scientific knowledge available. And in Brazil, we have the Salvador Declaration on Open Access and the São Paulo Letter on Scientific Knowledge also going in the same direction. Finally, about the issue of open access, there is a role here for the so-called open licensing of scientific materials and knowledge. And in this sense, initiatives like the science commons and the creative commons have a role to play that can be used as a model of how to make this knowledge available for the most people possible. Finally, then I conclude, these are all questions for our panelists. As you know, this discussion is complex. And I believe that the answer we give to these questions is directly related to the type of society that we want to build either locally or globally. Thank you.

>>HELOISA MAGALHÃES: (No audio).... Read the questions from the audience. Okay? Mr. Balasubramaniam. Where is he? Okay. He’s from knowledge ecology international. He has a question for Mr. Ronaldo Lemos: What is the development dimension, if any, of open standards and interoperability? Where is Mr. Thiru Balasubramaniam? Do you want to add something for your question? No?

>>THIRU BALASUBRAMANIAM: No. That’s fine.

>>HELOISA MAGALHÃES: Okay.

>>RONALDO LEMOS: Really quickly, basically, open standards is directly connected to many aspects of development. One of the important things I have already mentioned in my initial presentation in which I mentioned
that the open standards promote lowering barriers for new entrants. So anyone is free to build upon those standards, and especially for a developing country, in which access to knowledge and access to (inaudible) forms that can be studied and improved are crucial to the building of capacity. This is a crucial issue that is connected to open standards in technology and in the Internet.

>>RONALDO LEMOS: I ask your permission once again to take the floor. I will be very brief in my comment. First, there is no contradiction between open source and intellectual property. This is a common mistake, in which people oppose intellectual property to open source and free software. And actually, open source is just a modality of licensing. So the creator, the legitimate owner of the software uses these exclusive rights in order to license the software by means of a license that allows the free distribution, free modification, free changes of the license. So there is no contradiction between that. The second thing is intellectual property is, indeed, a very important incentive for the creation for the promotion of culture, for the dissemination of culture. But it’s one incentive. There are other incentives that should be taken into account. Nowadays, there has been large academic and business discussion about other incentives that are not related. They are called nonmarket incentives. Other people call it commons-based peer production. Others call it simply collaborative culture, and that should also be taken into account. Especially because these incentives are notprimarily linked to intellectual property as their main goal or as their main incentive for being generated. And, finally, regarding the governmental role, it has to be taken into account that different constitutions, for instance, for different countries have principles that actually embed the adoption of open standards. That is, for instance, the case for the Brazilian constitution, in which many of the principles and the rules of the Brazilian constitution mandate the adoption of open standards, diversity, transparency. So that’s it. Thank you.

>>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, madam chairman. (no audio). Concluding remarks, I will just give a Secretariat’s reading of what I heard. And not as ambitious to call it a summary, as that would be very difficult to summarize such a rich discussion. It clearly appeared that openness is a multifaceted and multi-dimensional issue. It’s a cross-cutting issue with linkages to the other IGF themes: diversity, access, and security. And it has legal, political and economic dimensions. Several speakers pointed out that there are questions of balance. There is a balance between the two I.P.s, as several speakers referred to. The I.P. for Internet protocol and the I.P. for intellectual property. There is also a discussion on open standards and free and open source software. It was pointed out that they may lower the barriers of entry and promote innovation. Again, they were seen as important for developing countries. But there was -- was not seen as a contradiction between free and open source software and intellectual property. And it was recalled that in WSIS declaration of principle and Geneva declaration and the Tunis Agenda, that both models were seen as equally valuable and both models have their merit. I think I will try to abridge somewhat as we are running out of time. There was also a discussion on what kind of regulation we want, should we have laws or should we have self-regulation. And my reading was that there was general favor for a mixed solution between hard and soft law instruments. With regard to the economic dimension, there was a discussion on market dominance and virtual monopolies and their relationship to openness and freedom of expression. And it was also pointed out that the discussion we had in the IGF had a relationship to discussions held in the World Intellectual Property Organization, such as the development agenda and also in UNESCO, and there, the conventional cultural diversity again was mentioned. The discussion just towards the end actually recalled very much the discussion we had in Athens last year, that the legislation needs to be adapted to cyberspace. And again it was pointed out that legislation is not something that is taking place outside society, but it
needs to reflect the wishes of society and be adapted to what society really wants. I think the chairman in his opening remarks said it is ultimately a political choice of what society we want. And with that, I hand back to the chair, who will make his personal concluding remarks. Thank you.

>>RONALDO LEMOS: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. All my remarks should be deemed as personal. I’m not trying to summarize or synthesize what’s been said during this panel. Basically, it’s clear that the openness topic is a pervasive topic in Internet governance, and with significant developments and questions related to access, diversity, and security. In its economic and regulatory dimension, the debate has made a point that different regimes of intellectual property or different licensing regimes in intellectual property, either for software or for other components of the network, as well as the dissemination of open standards, might generate in the economic sphere distinctive opportunities for innovation and for the autonomous insertion of developing countries. The debate also pointed out that the new possibilities and challenges brought by the Internet must be considered in the debates about intellectual property and must also be contemplated in -- vis-à-vis issues like privacy rights, right to information, and the fight against criminality. Also, the theme of openness is an essential requisite for the freedom of expression, which is recognized as a human right and must be ensured on a global perspective. The free circulation of information and content on a diversified basis is also intrinsically connected by the openness issue. The Internet is a particularly well-adapted means to accommodate pluralism and cultural diversity and is essential, too, for both to be preserved and enhanced. The maintenance of the opening characteristics -- the open characteristics of the Internet, which was the original Internet conception, is an essential requisite for the fulfillment of the Internet potential in all these aforementioned aspects. Accordingly, the variety of aspects that have been introduced by the distinguished panelists and the distinguished discussants and by the audience as a whole demonstrate that the theme of openness must be -- continue to receive full attention and priority attention in the future discussions about Internet governance. Thank you very much. [ Applause ]