Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
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c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s<br />
ating in a market regimen, but whose population obviously needs Internet access.<br />
Anyway, local governments will often depend on partnerships with federal and<br />
state governments, private companies and nonprofit organizations to ensure the<br />
necessary infrastructure for their city. Ultimately, regardless of the model that is<br />
adopted for the network and its management, the local government represents the<br />
interests of the population, and is therefore responsible for striving for connection<br />
systems that are radically in favor of open and free communication.<br />
Finally, the way society deals with content requires radicalization of the choices<br />
about intellectual production. Benkler brilliantly demonstrates how current communication<br />
networks can somehow lead a culture that is founded on the concept<br />
of ownership to an impasse (BENKLER, 2006). It is such a complex issue that the<br />
same article on the Declaration of Human Rights which affirms the right to culture<br />
and to the technological achievements of society (Article XXVII) reminds, right<br />
after that, the need to preserve copyrights (UN, 1948).<br />
The challenge, in a local and in a global level, is not to abolish copyright, but to<br />
ensure the promotion of collaborative processes for content production with open<br />
licenses, of which Creative Commons licenses (http://www.creativecommons.org.<br />
br) are only one of the possible examples. For cities, the hypothesis is simple: if there<br />
is public money involved, either through direct funding or indirect subventions, it is<br />
man<strong>da</strong>tory for authors to arrange in advance forms of socialization and collaborative<br />
use of such content, as taxpayers have financed its creation.<br />
The way local government and the city both deal with local content puts at stake<br />
not only the socialization of knowledge, but also another key issue: the public transparency<br />
of governmental actions. In a radical way, the government must be transparent,<br />
favor the participation of citizens and ensure collaboration between its various departments,<br />
so as to generate innovation and the resolution of the problems of the city.<br />
Dealing with all that content production and collaborative processes requires<br />
courage. Specifically on the topic of information organization, the eight principles<br />
published by the Public.Resource.Org offer clues to good practices (PUBLIC.RE-<br />
SOURCE.ORG!, 2007). The <strong>da</strong>ta produced by the government have to be integrally<br />
published, with free access to primary <strong>da</strong>ta (i.e., without any kind of editions),<br />
immediately after they are produced. They should be accessible to the largest number<br />
of people and the largest range of purposes, in a non-discriminatory way, and be<br />
available in public domain and non-proprietary formats, so that they are processable<br />
by anyone. Of course, special situations foreseen by the Law — such as the secrecy<br />
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