The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

298 The Network Society
A Legal Plan against Liberties
At the legislative level, this same initiative has also been working
with the aim of criminalizing developers of technological and scientific
applications that endeavour to produce alternatives to the restrictions
imposed by the proprietary technology. In the USA the so-called
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) is already in force. It
severely punishes those who dare to ignore the restrictions. The
DCMA is one of the United States laws included in the FTAA package,
meaning that such laws can be extended to countries that have
signed the treaty. The European Union is also under pressure from
powerful lobbyists who are trying to impose a clone of this anti-democratic
law and the patentability of software upon the Member States
and the European Parliament. This is legislation that is outlawing citizens,
based on the extension of laws which were born out of industry
regulations, i.e. for material products, and which may have made sense
at a certain time to immaterial (digital) products with a (re)production
cost of practically zero. This criminalization does not make sense in
the new information society. With the argument that one is protecting
the commercial interests of digital contents, the rights of the citizens
to the legitimate use of materials with their copyright guaranteed
under the industrial legislation are being taken away. We have the
right to lend and borrow printed books. We have the right to tape or
copy a music CD or a video tape for non-commercial purposes. We
have the right to partially copy a book in a library or borrowed from a
friend to increase our knowledge on certain subjects. However, these
rights are threatened in the digital sphere. “Cyber rights” must not
have totalitarian and fascist preconditions. These laws and initiatives
in the technological fields directly affect all individuals, authors and
programmers and should not be dealt with only from the perspective
of the monopolistic industry giants.
Brazil at the 1st World Summit on the Information
Society
The first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, 7 an official
UNO event that took place on 11 to 13 December 2003 in Geneva,
Switzerland, was marked by the profound differences between the interests of
7 http://www.itu.int/wsis/