20.01.2005 Manuel Castells and Gilberto Gil participate in a debate
The event will discuss issues that refer to copyright as well as those concerning the freedom of knowledge in an information society.
The Catalan sociologist, Manuel Castells and the Ministry of Culture, Gilberto Gil, have confirmed their presence at the 2005 World Social Forum, which will be held from January 26 to 31 in Porto Alegre. Both of them will participate at the debate on the Digital Revolution: free software, freedom of knowledge and freedom of expression within the information society, promoted by the organization Free Software Brazil Project and by those who developed the concept of Creative Commons (CC). On the agenda of this event are the freedom of knowledge and the copyright issue.
Manuel Castells is one of the greatest theorists of the effects of the Digital Revolution in society. He is a professor in several universities – Paris, Mexico, Santiago, Madrid and Barcelona – and lecturer in sociology and urban and regional planning at the University of California, in Berkeley. Castells also has written several books, among these, “The Era of Information”. The work, which consists of three volumes – “A Networked Society” (1977), published in Brazil, “The Power of Identity” (1998) and the “End of the Millenium” – is the result of twelve years of studies about the various aspects of the new technological society.
Creative Commons: some rights reserved
The singer, composer and current Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil,
will also participate in the debate as an enthusiast and participant in Creative Commons, and as one who has even yielded one of his songs, the Oslodum, to the CC. Creative Commons is a system of licensing works (artistic, scientific or other) via the Internet. By way of the site
www.creativecomms.org, the author and other copyright holders can,
for example, authorize the download of a music and its public performance(at shows, on community or commercial radios, as seen fit) and even the “sampleamento” (modification) of the work.
Besides the presence of Castells and Gil, the debate table will also have the presence of the American professor of law who developed the concept of Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessing, from Stanford University; John Perry Barlow, from Electronics without Frontiers Foundation (EFF), an organization that works for freedom of expression within the network; and by Christian Ahlert from the BBC in London.
“All of those who have been invited to the debate defend giving flexibility to intellectual property, which today does not protect authors and inventors anymore. It serves only the interest of guaranteeing the market for great corporations, that appropriate the copyright for themselves and impede the sharing of knowledge”, as Marcelo Branco, member of the Free Software Brazil Project, explains. “The idea that has been elaborated by Lessing is exactly that of drawing up a new juridical theory that would adapt and protect the author within this new reality of digital revolution. Within this logic, CC has instituted the idea that ‘some rights reserved’ in place of ‘all rights reserved’”.
Digital Revolution: free software, freedom of knowledge and freedom of
expression in a society of information.
Saturday, January 29, 2005, at 08:00 AM
Venue: not confirmed as yet.
mis à jour le 21/05/2013
