Professional Documents
Culture Documents
connected youth:
Internet Governance
YOUTH OBSERVATORY
SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP OF INTERNET SOCIETY
ENGLISH EDITION
DECEMBER 2017
SPONSORED BY
The contents presented in this book are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, who agreed
with Creative Commons Licence.
SPONSORED BY
7_ PRESENTATION
9_ FOREWORD
21_ INTERVIEW: HOW TO TREAT ONLINE GENDER VIOLENCE WITHIN THE BRAZILIAN
YOUTH LIVING IN THE PERIPHERY?
Mariana Giorgetti Valente and Natália Neris
72_ CYBERSECURITY
73_ NUANCES OF PRIVACY IN THE DIGITAL ERA
Arthur Emanuel Leal Abreu
129_ THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION AND COPYRIGHT: PARADIGMS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Rafael Ríos Nuño and José Benjamín González Mauricio
200_ DEFENSE OF COMPETITION AND ONLINE PLATFORMS IN THE BIG DATA ERA
Paloma Szerman
PRESENTATION
This has been a thought-provoking challenge for the Youth Observatory since its
inception in 2015, during the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil.
We emerged back then as youths committed to national, regional and global political
governance arenas, who felt the need to work as a collective to think about the impacts
Internet has on their realities and propose solutions to issues around them.
We are part of a generation that grew up side by side with the globally expansion of
the Internet, and just as many other youth initiatives we do want to take responsibility on
actively building this network. Internet Governance (IG) is the acting front we have chosen
to accomplish this goal, and in our horizon we see the Internet as a powerful tool to face
social inequalities — especially in Latin America and the Caribbean — and even more
specially within other youths who are still unable to experience positive transformations
the Internet has made possible for us.
Ever since, we have tried to show that we want more than just a voice — even though
being heard is an important victory in political arenas, oftenly is not that inclusive. We
want to learn and empower ourselves together, in order to “become actors of our own truth
within the construction of the IG”1.
Step by step, in multiple collective and decentralized fronts — not surprisingly, as this
is a characteristics of the Internet itself — we have taken part on different initiatives. As a
Special Interest Group of Internet Society, we see our possibilities of dialogue expanding to
youths all over the world, what it is still a challenge ahead of us. With well known youth’s
boldness, we attended national and regional IG forums, as well as the Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) in Jalisco (2016) and the next to come in Geneva (2017), presenting proposals
and critics to current issues. Also, the Youth Observatory is the organizer of YouthLACIGF,
the first forum aimed to create dialogues and synergies between Latin American youths
on Internet Governance discussions, which were held in 2016 in San José (Costa Rica) and
in 2017 in Panama City (Panama), as pre-events for the LACIGF, the Regional Preparatory
Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum. Furthermore, we leaded the Young Latin
American Women Declaration2, a document that proposes a feminist and youth perspective
in the construction of Internet Governance.
And we wish that socially oriented impact actions keep growing all over.
1 To read the declaration “We, the youth of Latin American and the Caribbean”, document that
stated the founding principles of the Youth Observatory, access <igf2015.br/declaration/> (also
available in Spanish and Portuguese).
2 To read the declaration “Enabling access to empower young women and build a feminist
Internet Governance”, access <bit.ly/2ufKwz1> (available in English).
_PLURALITY
Until here we have always spoken “youths”, using the plural form. It was not a
random choice. We believe it is impossible to talk about youths — and their demands,
opinions and actions — in singular. We embrace the diversity of our formations, areas
of activity, cultures and opinions as something that strengthens us and that certainly
also strengthens Internet Governance itself.
With this spirit, and following the result of a new and instigating process for us,
this book is released.
This project seeks to capture some drops — out of a large ocean — of what so many
youths in Latin America and the Caribbean are producing and thinking about the
Internet and society in its greater and diverse possibilities. The discussions brought
here show that this phenomenon - the expansion of Information and Communication
Technologies in the world - brings us many questions, many concerns, but also thirst
for proposals, knowledge and courage to take new paths.
There is still much to be done. We hope this is the first book of many others.
For a plural, accessible, affordable, neutral, safe, inclusive and quality Internet,
Youth Observatory
December 2017
FOREWORD
I remember when 25 years ago (yes, I’m from that generation!), we were discovering
this new technology. I was not a part of this amazing Internet community at the time,
but as a normal user I remember talks about speed, about being able to access the
Internet in more places, about the cost, about new cool applications.
Today, in the year the Internet Society celebrates its 25th anniversary, the
conversation is very different. Today while deployment of connectivity is still an issue
(we still have to connect half the population) the concern is less the technology; the
technology exists and is known. The conversation today is about how to make the most
of the technology to improve our lives. On how to use the Internet to eradicate poverty,
to improve education, to innovate using the Internet. Today we talk about Artificial
Intelligence, about Internet of Things, about blockchain... We talk about the role of
government, the influence of large tech companies, about gender (in)equality, we talk
about human rights online versus offline.
Around end of October 2015, a group of about 120 young people -- who attended the
Internet Governance Forum in João Pessoa, Brazil, as fellows of the first edition of a
youth fellowship programme designed by Internet Society and the Brazilian Internet
Steering Committee (CGI.br) -- were thinking about creating a platform to share
innovative ideas, and start with an observatory of Internet Governance issues from a
youth perspective.
Look at where we are now... two year later we have this book, with an Observatory
fully up and running in three languages, the group also created a Youth Special Interest
Group, we continue to have Youth@IGF programmes not only at the global forum but we
now see a lot of regional and local Youth initiatives.
Because the Internet is now such an important part of our lives, it will be crucial
that the ‘más grande’ (an elegant way to say older) generation, the current youth and
the next one be part of the conversation on how the Internet is governed and how it
needs to evolve to meet the needs of the next generation.
I’m confident that initiatives like this book and the Observatory, will pave the way
for the three (or more) generations to have these conversations, each bringing their
own generational perspectives to the table.
Joyce Dogniez
Senior Director Global Engagement
Internet Society
GENDER
ISSUES AND
YOUTH IN
INTERNET
GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
DIGITAL FEMINISM:
A PROPOSAL FOR AN
INCLUSIVE INTERNET
ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
Feminist and journalist, currently a Law student
contrerasangelica9@gmail.com
Mexico
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
1_DIGITAL FEMINISM
The Internet has told us “Hey, you are not alone”. We are among feminisms.
The feminist movement taught us to go out on the street and gather at meeting
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
points where we march together. We look for those who have a “beautiful handwriting”
to make the posters and we improvise accomplices with garbage cans and various
instruments that we find at home to put the beat together and complement with music,
watchwords, and marches. Digital feminism, however, brought us the interaction, the
connection, and surrounded us with other expressions; the easiest thing to say is that
it gave us the tools to organize ourselves from afar to get together.
There are other female authors who consider that this new wave of feminism also
brings a more popular movement in which the leadership is done from the bottom up,
and it undoubtedly opens a new wave of feminism characterized by mass participation
and greater visibility on the large scale but, moreover, a repercussion on the global scale.
2_DIGITAL MOVEMENT
Is the Internet a public or private space for women? We women live in constant
search for spaces to develop ourselves, spaces that allow us to be “women” without
having to face harassment, violence, and sexism. Thus, according to that belief, we seek
a public space but also a private space for our development and safety.
The problem with this public and private issue is that we continue to believe that
women should “keep their opinions to themselves” and this behavior is replicated
on the Internet, thanks to which we are witnesses of massacres, crises, and violence
against women around the world. This has led us to organize ourselves from the public
to the private sphere, anonymously.
In the last few years, we have witnessed feminist movements that arise, organize,
and spread in social networks, but which are the product of the discontent that is
experienced in the offline world. They are movements like My First Harassment (Mi
Primer Acoso), Violet Spring (Primavera Violeta), Not One Less (Ni Una Menos), Women’s
March, Distributed Denial of Women, International Women’s Strike, among others.
All of these movements have common denominators. They arise from the
nonconformity between events or incidents that are recorded offline and that are
disclosed by the media. Arising from the outrage of collectives or people, the online
organization is born, with a general slogan, using social networks and a hashtag to
make it public. Different media outlets on the Internet join to spread the slogan, women
from several countries come together and a logistics of mobilization in two segments,
offline and online, is then born.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
3_DIGITAL SORORITY
The feminist Marcela Lagarde e de los Ríos (2012) defines sorority as the mutual
support of women to achieve the power of every woman.
The Internet offers us a tool that allows us to be together, that is, arising from
the Internet, a primordial value of feminism spreads sorority, which allows us to
commiserate with each other and discover ourselves in our struggles.
We were taught to be passive users of the Internet: reading, sharing, and liking,
but not creating content on our own. In Mexico, a study by the Mexican Internet
Association (2016) about the habits of Internet users says that only 18% of all Internet
users are content creators, access or maintain their own spaces, such as a blog or other
platforms. “Women are half as likely as men to speak out online, and a third less likely
to use the Internet to look for work (controlling for age and education)” (World Wide
Web Foundation, 2015).
The Mexican blogger Claudia Calvin (2012) points out: their silence ends up, without
themselves knowing, complicit in realities that are sexist or that marginalize them
and, as they gradually appear and express their voices. They change the surroundings.
Silence, according to Calvin, was never a partner of empowerment.
Empowering women gives them the opportunity to trust and believe in their voice
(oral, written, graphic) so they can develop proposals and projects or simply so they can
be themselves in digital spaces.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
The World Wide Web Foundation’s report (2015) on the Digital Rights of Women, on
the topic of inequality, presented the following results:
• Gender gaps in how men and women use the Internet are significant −
but not as large as gender disparities in access to the Internet [...]
The need to include more women who take part in the Internet also exists in
terms of creation. Their active participation would expose one of the problems of lack
of content, not only in their own language but also of content written by women for
women. Examples of this are the Editathons, meetings in which content for Wikipedia,
written by women and about women, gets edited and created. This exercise helps
eliminate gender stereotypes on the Internet, such as talking about the number of a
woman’s children or who she is married to, rather than their professional merits.
Why are Editathons necessary? Because we women are forgotten and made invisible.
A proverb says: “history is written by the winners”. These winners are men. Only 13%
of editors on Wikipedia are women, and the percentage of profiles about women in
English is 17%: the scarce number of female editors on Wikipedia, uninvited by a male-
dominated world of technology, promotes gender inequality (BBC World, 2016).
Patricia Horrillo concludes that fears must be faced: that of technology, caused by
ignorance, and that of lack of legitimacy, which makes us believe that, as women, we
are not entitled to tell stories in digital spaces.
Feminism, then, presents itself as an option to take over spaces, although male
spaces rarely, or only after many struggles, include women without stereotypes. The
creation of exclusive spaces is also an option for empowerment, such as community
networks or autonomous feminist servers.
Additionally, governments’ public policies need to see the training and preparation
of women as a necessity. Many governments give women access to the Internet, but
where do they connect? Do they connect? What do they do? It is necessary to present the
Internet as a tool to empower their voices and opportunities, and improve their lives.
Our participation in the creation of the Internet strengthens us and we must enter
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
the spaces of power. Feminism seeks the seizing of public spaces, therefore, digital
feminism seeks that these spaces allow us, mainly, to have violence-free access.
Of course it is! From the “boys only clubs”3, to the discrimination, the violence, the
troll males, the lower salaries, and the few spaces in forums and panels. The Internet is
a space for men, one that censors photos that do not meet their policies, such as women
who breastfeed. But, how many feminists who defend women’s rights are “banned” due
to violent content?
The report by the World Wide Web Foundation (2015) notes that seven out of ten
young women (18 and 24 years old) who use the Internet on a daily basis have been
abused online and three out of ten men agreed that the Internet should be a male-
controlled domain.
Spaces such as the Internet Governance Forum do not exceed 40% female
participation: 35% participation in 2012; 37% in 2013; 35% in 2014; 38% in 2015 and
39.6% in 2016.
How can we ask the Internet to be feminist if women are not taking part in the
spaces? The gender perspective is still seen as a whim to include women just for the
sake of including them.
Women are not safe on the Internet. We see how offline violence gets replicated
in digital spaces, such as harassment, threats, and violence. Our presence remains a
nuisance; we are using the Internet as a public space to make our voice heard. The
Internet replicates sexist practices. For example, a very common practice is the trolling
of women who express themselves on a specific topic and are attacked by a group: first,
one person attacks through a comment and, later, the other sexist trolls repeat the
hate message. Additionally, it is common practice to receive images of men threatening
with guns, harassing messages, the evil of the so-called “revenge porn”, and the social
repudiation of sexting.
3 Translator’s note: the expression originally used in Spanish was “Clubs de Toby”, referring to a
boy character in The Little Lulu Show cartoon named Tubby (Toby in its Mexican version), who had
a club with friends where no girls were allowed. Originally, that club was called “The Fellers”.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
6_WHAT NOW?
6.1_SORORITY
Sorority in access to the Internet and in the use of information technologies should
be defined as the sisterhood among women for empowerment and digital appropriation
(Contreras, 2017b), that is, to create non-sexist tools and practices on the Internet, some
of which being the non-sharing of violence, the support in cases of violence, and the
sharing of experiences.
The year 2016 was full of digital movements, but it is time to work as a team and
view digital activism not only as a “click” but also as a way to act upon physical spaces.
6.3_DIGITAL LITERACY
When we talk about access, we must also consider that there are women who have the
infrastructure for access, but who do not know how to do it and do not exploit these resources
because they don’t know how. Public access policies should be designed for two groups of
people: those who lack access-infrastructure and those who do not have access-literacy.
It is an invitation to take the subject of women from our spaces to the discussion
tables to propose, discuss, and seek—as a team—ways to build and consolidate good
practices for the exercise of women’s rights in digital spaces. In the Women’s March, a
poster said that “women belong to the resistance”, and on the Internet, we find a space
to carry out this banner of resistance, “which asks us to shout and be a voice to demand
respect for our rights and it is this same voice that we must take to the Internet, to demand,
but also to participate, and to build together” (Contreras, 2017a).
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
_REFERENCES
Alcaraz, F. In De Titto, J. ¿Una nueva ola del feminismo? Retrieved from < https://
notas.org.ar/2017/02/22/nueva-ola-feminismo>
BBC Mundo (2016). ¿Quiénes son nuestras mujeres olvidadas? ¡Únete a nuestro
«editatón” de Wikipedia y haz que sean recordadas! Retrieved from <http://www.bbc.
com/mundo/noticias-38236627>
Contreras, A (2017a). Feminismo Digital: garantizar que nuestros derechos offline sean
respetados online. GenderIT. Retrieved from <http://www.genderit.org/es/feminist-
talk/feminismo-digital-garantizar-que-nuestros-derechos-offline-sean-respetados-
online>
De Titto, J. (2017) ¿Una nueva ola del feminismo? La Otra Voz Digital. Retrieved from
<http://www.laotravozdigital.com/una-nueva-ola-del-feminismo>
G. de la Cueva, C. (2015). Feminismo 3.0, las iniciativas digitales que debes conocer.
Gonzoo. Retrieved from: <http://www.gonzoo.com/creadores/story/feminismo-3-0-las-
iniciativas-digitales-que-debes-conocer-3179>
Internet Governance Forum (2012). IGF 2012 Baku - Attendance Statistics. Retrieved from
<http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2013-bali/attendance-statistics>
Internet Governance Forum (2013). IGF 2013 Bali - Attendance Statistics. Retrieved from
<http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2013-bali/attendance-statistics>
Internet Governance Forum (2014). IGF 2014 Attendance Statistics. Retrieved from
<http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/igf-2014/attendance-statistics>
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
Internet Governance Forum (2016). IGF 2016 Attendance & Programme Statistics.
Retrieved from <https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2016-
attendance-programme-statistics>
World Wide Web Foundation (2015). Nuevo informe: Derechos digitales de las mujeres.
Retrieved from <http://webfoundation.org/nuevo-informe-derechos-digitales-de-las-
mujeres>
ANGÉLICA CONTRERAS
Director of Institutional Relations at
Youth Observatory and member of the
Internet Society – Mexico chapter, and
of the Multidisciplinary Academy of
Law and Technologies A. C. (Academia
Multidisciplinaria de Derecho y
Tecnologías A. C – AMDETIC). She writes for
GenderIT, Women Constructing (Mujeres
Construyendo), is a blogger and director of
the digital feminist magazine Quintessential
(Quintaesencia). She has taken part in
different feminist projects and campaigns
and in forums of Internet Governance.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
INTERVIEW:
HOW TO TREAT ONLINE
GENDER VIOLENCE
WITHIN THE BRAZILIAN
YOUTH LIVING IN THE
PERIPHERY?
NATÁLIA NERIS
Coordinator in the area “Internet and Gender, Race and Other
Social Markers” at InternetLab
natalia.neris@internetlab.org.br
Brazil
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
At the end of 2013, the suicide of two Brazilian girls began an intense debate in
the media about the unauthorized dissemination of intimate images. The practice was
not new, but with the Internet the speed of dissemination of these materials gave it
new contours. That is why it gained even a name—the revenge porn—and proposals of
confrontation in the National Congress of Brazil.
Revenge porn refers to cases in which the former partner of a woman/a girl, upset
after the end of the relationship, releases images of her. Besides the name being quite
inadequate—would not the word revenge presume a previous damnable action? And
are we really talking about pornography? —our research over the past two years has
indicated that the phenomenon is much more diverse than it appears to be. It may
ultimately be related to frustrations of men’s expectations over women’s behavior, and
it may just have the purpose of humiliation, regardless of prior relationship. And yes,
women and girls, because we are clearly dealing with a problem that affects them,
whether in the regularity of practice or in the severity of the consequences.1
In this line of catching the problem by its complexity, the “Top 10” is an emblematic
example. The widespread practice (although little known to adults) is a “ranking” of
girls, usually between 12 and 15 years old, by groups of boys in a school or community,
according to their alleged sexual behavior. They are listed out by the boys and referred to
as “sluttiest”: in videos, images of the girls are exposed with phrases on their behavior,
involving or not nudity, depending on the context in which they are disseminated—
some platforms such as YouTube and Facebook do not keep nude images online.
1 We have been giving attention to the issue through empirical studies in InternetLab since
2015. In 2016, we published the book “The Body is the Code: legal strategies to face revenge porn in
Brazil” (“O Corpo é o Código: estratégias jurídicas de enfrentamento ao revenge porn no Brasil”) about
the jurisprudence of the State of São Paulo on the topic. We also led a case study on the “Top 10”,
which we will deal with later, and analyzed the legislative and public policy proposals. One of the
data we found was that, in the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo, more than 90 % of the
cases (these are cases of the victim against the aggressor, or against application service provider)
referred to the dissemination of images of girls and women. This absolute predominance is also
easily perceived by mere observation. The book can be downloaded for free at http://tinyurl.com/
z9gpwhu (available only in Portuguese). For a specific and briefer reflection on the treatment given
by Justice to cases involving teenagers, see the article “Terra Com Lei” published by us in Revista
E-Sesc in June 2016: <http://tinyurl.com/zft438a> (available only in Portuguese)
2 Reviewer’s note: in Brazilian Portuguese (original language of this article), the noun periferia
(periphery), besides the literal meaning, denotes the regions of a city that are far away from the
urban center. In general, it is about neighborhoods lacking infrastructure and urban services,
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
activists in these regions managed to bring the debate to the Legislative Assembly of
the State of São Paulo, where a public hearing was held,3. They also proposed debates in
the communities themselves, from events such as a Feminist Graffiti4 to group chats
with teenagers. In these spaces, individuals have a space to denounce the aspects which
up until now had garnered little discussed in the public sphere: the limited access of
teenagers to the justice system, and the lack of control over the narrative of their stories
of violence and abuse.
In the case study we conducted on the “Top 10” in 2015, we interviewed and
maintained contact with the Women in Fight Collective (Coletivo Mulheres na Luta), a
women’s group in the Grajaú neighborhood, and the Sowing Rights Project (Sementeiras
de Direitos), from the Community Library Paths of Reading of Paralheiros (Biblioteca
Comunitária Caminhos da Leitura de Parelheiros), two neighborhoods of the South Zone
of São Paulo. The view of professionals and activists has guided our analysis of the
problem,5 but it overflows widely. Their voices are sources for an in-depth understanding
of the use and appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies by
young Brazilians from the peripheries, about the relationship between Internet, abuse,
and emancipation, and about the role and problems of traditional media approaches to
this type of violence.
Thus, already from contacts and the analyses developed over time, we proposed
an interview with representatives of the two projects, which shed light on issues such
as the criminalization of the youth living in the peripheries, the distant relationship
between the communities in which they are inserted with legal operators, the role of
educational initiatives, and a diagnosis of the need for interlocution between the fields
of gender and sexuality (with a vision for other social markers) and Internet policies.
The publication of this interview is another step in this approach.6
inhabited by low-income families. We decided to keep the use of the term in its direct translation
to demarcate the comprehensiveness of the expression in its original context.
3 See brief report on “Wave of videos with degrading content against teenagers is discussed in
the Humans Rights Comission”, https://goo.gl/R5MfzC (Portuguese only)
4 See action details on the video hosted on the Grajaú Women in fight Collective page on
Facebook: <https://goo.gl/liUcwK> (Portuguese only)
5 In addition to the book “The Body is the Code”, we also recommend reading the article “Not
revenge, not porn: analysing the exposure of teenage girls online in Brazil” (see references). A
translation to Portuguese is available here: <http://tinyurl.com/z6k6esr>
6 We also thank the collaboration of the researcher Juliana Pacetta Ruiz in the assembly of
this interview.
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Community Library Reading Paths/Sowing Rights: We believe the media has begun
reporting “Top 10” cases in response to pressure from feminist social movements in the
territories where the cases occurred. Spontaneously, the theme would not appear or be
reported exclusively from the sexist7 and stereotyped look, which blames the “girls from
the peripheries” for the supposed exacerbated sexuality, for being shameless when they
let themselves be photographed in intimate situations... exposure news is not given in
the same tone when the victim is a famous actress. The pressure of feminist collectives
and alternative media brought the issue to the mainstream press.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
media in recent months, a fact that reinforces their opportunistic nature, which only
deals with the periphery interests when they are convenient.
Women in Fight Collective: In the Grajaú, the impacts were more negative than
positive. We cannot deny that the media gave visibility to the issue and, in a way,
provoked the population to debates in informal spaces (buses, supermarket) ... There
was also a CPI on the Top 10, but honestly, we do not know very well how it is since we
had difficulty following closely. The media gave a certain focus to this issue and made
adults think “Does it exist?”. Negatively we can see this side of the criminalization of
poor, mostly black youth. There is a punitive discourse in our society, and the media has
promoted it with the “Top 10” as well.
Researchers: It seems to us, too, that the media gave special attention, at that
moment, to the cases that were happening in Parelheiros and Grajaú, peripheries
in the outskirts of São Paulo. But because of other specific matters, or cases that
come to us, we know well that the unauthorized dissemination of intimate images
is a problem that affects several social classes, and even other age groups, beyond
adolescence. Do you think that the cases in Grajaú and Parelheiros, which you
accompany, have particularities, due to the age group and the locality?
Women in Fight Collective: We believe that the particularities, in this case, are
the fact that we are talking about teenagers exposing teenagers, and the responsibility
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
Women in Fight Collective: Before answering this question, our exclamations were
“humpf”. For it is interesting to see how alienated these agents are from the reality
with which they work. We have mobiles phones, we access the Internet, we are in this
technological context as well. Of course, we have several difficulties to access the “virtual
world”, because in some regions the signal is bad or Internet companies refuse to install
it, but the peripheries do have a mobile phone, Internet and produce knowledge using
these media. This phrase is loaded with prejudice and a caricature view of the peripheries.
We wondered “who are these agents?” And “what kind of Justice this agent promote?”
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
rather than dehumanize. Thinking about the Top 10, we created a methodology for
the deconstruction of stereotypes on the Internet: we picked up sexist phrases that
circulated on social networks and we met to think about answers and share on the
Internet. We have created a WhatsApp group to discuss and share themes related to
women’s rights, deconstruction of sexism and misogyny. This has been our way of
provoking the reflection that technology, the Internet, social networks can be our allies
and not our enemy or “weapon” to destroy and humiliate others.
Researchers: Although the topic of safe Internet use by youths has been
approached by experts in the legal and technological field, issues of gender and
sexuality on young people still seem to emerge timidly in these debates. We would
like you to tell us about the experience of your groups, considering your focus on
sexual education, and to comment on how this approach can contribute to policies
and actions to address the problem.
Women in Fight Collective: We have thought that neither these experts address
sexuality and gender nor have we addressed the safe use of the Internet. Perhaps
because we are acting right in the street, and with poor signal of mobile Internet, or
prioritize the contact face-to-face, often we do not approach our fight for the gender
equity of the technological questions. Among us, we discussed the need to bring the two
reflections, which are in fact a single one: the freedom and security of girls and women,
wherever they are (real or virtual). Recently we created a video called “I already sent
nudes”, and even the text that follows this video was created by Natália Neris [one of the
interviewers]. We are crawling in the discovery of this virtual world and the discussions
around it, but we know the importance of respecting privacy and guaranteeing security
in that environment.
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GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
_REFERENCES
Valente, M. G., Neris, N., & Bulgarelli, L. (2015). Not revenge, not porn: analysing the
exposure of teenage girls online in Brazil. Global Information Society Watch: Sexual
rights and the Internet. p. 74-79. Retrieved from <http://tinyurl.com/jdzod7p>
Valente, M. G., Neris, N., Ruiz, J., & Bulgarelli, L. (2016). O Corpo é o Código: estratégias
jurídicas de enfrentamento ao revenge porn no Brasil. São Paulo: InternetLab.
Retrieved from <http://tinyurl.com/z9gpwhu>
Valente, M.G., & Neris, N. (2016). Terra com Lei. Revista E-SESC, 241. Retrieved from
<https://goo.gl/CakhMK>
Jornal TVT (2015). Grajaú tem grafitaço feminista contra “Top 10” e machismo. Rede
TVT. Retrieved from <https://goo.gl/j7Bj0d>
“I already sent nudes” (“Eu já mandei nude”), by the Women in Fight Collective.
Retrieved from <https://goo.gl/kOvmuH>
“Out Top 10 is feminist” (“Nosso TOP 10 é feminista”), by the Women in Fight Collective.
Retrieved from <https://goo.gl/kI64BE>
29
GENDER ISSUES AND YOUTH IN INTERNET _ MARIANA GIORGETTI VALENTE + NATÁLIA NERIS
NATÁLIA NERIS
Graduated in Public Policy Management
from the University of São Paulo (USP),
Master in Law from Getúlio Vargas
Foundation (FGV). She is a researcher at the
Center for Law and Democracy (Núcleo de
Direito e Democracia) at Brazilian Center for
Analysis and Planning (Centro Brasileiro de
Análise e Planejamento, Cebrap).
30
ACCESS AND
DIVERSITY
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
32
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
33
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
Workers who use their skills to create, generate and disseminate new knowledge
characterize the information society1. This technological society, socially organized in
the generation, processing and transmission of information, creates every day new
sources of market-demand productivity as a globalization requirement. It is based on
the intellectual development of individuals, who fulfill tasks to generate new knowledge
and skills that contribute to technological innovation, which is the leading engine of
world economic development (Alonso, Ferneda, & Santana, 2010). Therefore, it is from this
society and the capitalist system (that organizes and defines those workers) that issues
such as digital inclusion, freedom of expression, cybersecurity and privacy appear.
1_WHY INCLUDE?
The notion that individuals and nations will be “left behind” if they do not effectively
use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has become strong as an
argument to justify the need to provide access to them — a strategy for persuasion of
those who are allegedly less aware of the crucial importance of technology. Turning lack
of interest in participation and people offline in ICT users become mandatory, and there
is no option aside from being included (Cogo, Dutra-Brignol, & Fragoso, 2014). Thus, the
Internet has emerged as the main tool to increase the globalized power of connection and
has already reached more than 3 billion people in the world (Internet Live Stats, 2017).
1 Society is not static. Quite the contrary, it is constantly changing, and so is contemporary
society, which is established in a process of change driven mainly by new technologies. Some
authors identify a new social paradigm based on a precious asset, the information. They assign
it with different names, such as Information Society (also called Knowledge Society or New
Economy), a concept emerged in the late 20th century (Information Society, n.d.).
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
“Digital inclusion” projects, such as Facebook’s Free Basics — quotation marks used
to ensure the interpretation of irony —, delimit what may or may not be accessed by the
user under the pretext of free access. Rather than experimenting with curiosity, research
and production, these projects turn the online experience into something centralized,
automated and directed. Furthermore, even without giving the user the ability to define
access content, Facebook says “the websites are available for free without data charges
and include content on things like news, employment, health, education and local
information. By introducing people to the benefits of the internet through these websites,
we hope to bring more people online and help improve their lives” (Internet.org, 2017).
Silveira (2008) points out that digital emancipation advances a crucial issue, which
is the risk of digital inclusion ending up serving only for the expansion of the consumer
market for technology products and services. This may happen when digital inclusion
is limited to digital literacy, teaching the mechanical use of computer programs and
access to the Internet, preparing the student solely to know how to type a text and set
up a worksheet, and thereby, perform these tasks in the job market.
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
A software has the power to completely define our communication; furthermore, its
design, functions, operations and interfaces are defined by programmers, who create
and keep it updated. The code, in general, is closed and incomprehensible to those who
use the software. It is an obscure, not transparent thing. The main software market was
structured around a property remuneration model designed by the denial of access to
the knowledge of its logically linked routines (Silveira, 2014).
From this perspective, how can individuals be included if they learn to use a
software but cannot know how it actually works?
In addition, how can inclusion projects propose a
contact between “marginalized” individuals and
proprietary software that is expensive enough to THE FREE SOFTWARE
make its use impossible to them? MOVEMENT IS
A CONCEPT OF
Although neglected by governments and COLLECTIVITY,
sometimes ignored by companies, the alternative WHERE ONE SEEKS
to an aware and collaborative inclusion is the
TO ENSURE THAT
use of Free Software. According to Teixeira (2010),
SOMEONE WILL
accepting the Free Software philosophy is accepting
NOT APPROPRIATE
the challenge of being an author, recognizing
themselves as a node of a collaborative network
THE PRODUCT OF
that, through reflexive experiences of authorship COLLECTIVE EFFORTS
and co-authoring, is refined and improved in a
dynamic of temporary autonomy.
A Free Software is characterized by the offer of four basic freedoms: (0) the freedom
to use the program, for any purpose; (1) the freedom to study how the program works,
being able to adapt it to its own needs; access to the source code is a precondition for
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
this; (2) the freedom to redistribute copies to help others; (3) the freedom to improve
the program and make it accessible to the general public; access to the source code is a
precondition for this (Open Suse, 2017).
The Free Software movement is a concept of collectivity, where one seeks to ensure
that someone will not appropriate the product of collective efforts; instead, it will be
controlled not only by the collectivity itself, but by the public domain (Almeida, & Riccio,
2011). In addition to the cooperative way of working, it is also about seeking, adding and
modifying what was said, written or recorded without a proprietary logic and without
the dynamics of accumulation and secrecy (Lemos, 2004).
Full access to a source code, one of the explicit freedoms of the Free Software,
implies giving up the “power” of the property in the name of the collective (Almeida,
& Riccio, 2011). It is from this kind of detachment that possibilities of free production
and construction of content, knowledge and programs arise, which must be done from
initiatives that present opportunities and possibilities of democratization arranged
through the use and development of the Free Software. Therefore, only digital inclusion
programs that ensure their learning process based on free, open and free tools, in fact,
promote the creation of accessible and shareable knowledge.
From this, the Internet Governance (IG)3 plays a key role: to unite the private sector,
governments, academy and civil society to think and carry out actions to define the
evolution of a free, decentralized and accessible Internet.
The spaces of Internet Governance debate are the first that should be inclusive. After
all, why debate about governance and inclusion of “others” if, even before that debate,
they are already excluded? With this, it takes place, right there in spaces intended to
horizontalize Internet debating, the exclusion of realities which are subject to policies.
Unknown policies to rejected people. It is necessary for IG debate spaces to become more
plural, democratic and representative!
According to the “Youth@IGF 2015” Declaration, endorsed by youths from all over
Latin America and the Caribbean during the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of 2015
in Brazil, access to ICTs should take place “[...] ensuring the inclusion of the vulnerable
youth population through an unlimited, affordable and quality access”; it can become
“an effective tool to for social and human development in the region” (Youth Observatory,
3 Internet Governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector, and
civil society in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures,
and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet (Internet Governance, n.d.).
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2015). In this context, it is essential to reassure the importance of Latin American youths’
protagonism in the policymaking process, both in the government’s legislative spaces
and in forums and congresses, as well as in the execution of digital inclusion projects.
It should be highlighted that young people are not the future of governance, but rather
the present; from the perspective of young people throughout LAC, we can create a more
democratic and accessible Internet.
If the IG community does not consider from the beginning that its processes
should be accessible and that achieving it requires reinvention, then not even the rights
of the billions of people already connected will get expanded. Connecting even a few
people demands thinking of Internet Governance from the Digital Inclusion approach.
_REFERENCES
Almeida, D., & Riccio, N. C. R. (2011). Autonomia, Liberdade e Software Livre: algumas
reflexões. In Bonilla, M. H. S., & Pretto, N. D. L. (Orgs.) Inclusão digital: polêmica
contemporânea. Salvador: EDUFBA. p. 127-144
Alonso, L. B. N., Ferneda, E., & Santana, G. P. (2010). Inclusão digital e inclusão social:
contribuições teóricas e metodológicas. Barbaroi, (32). p. 154-177. Retrieved from <http://
pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-65782010000100010>
Cogo, D., Dutra-Brignol, L., & Fragoso, S. (2014). Práticas cotidianas de acesso às TIC:
outro modo de compreender a inclusão digital. Palabra Clave, 18(1), p. 156-183. Retrieved
from <https://dx.doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2015.18.1.7>
Dias, L. R. (2011). Inclusão digital como fator de inclusão social. In Bonilla, M. H. S., &
Pretto, N. D. L. (Orgs.) Inclusão digital: polêmica contemporânea. Salvador: EDUFBA. pp.
61-90.
Information Society (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved on July 13, 2017, from <https://
pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociedade_da_informa%C3%A7%C3%A3o>
38
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ HUDSON LUPES RIBEIRO DE SOUZA
Internet Governance (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved on July 13, 2017, from <https://
pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governan%C3%A7a_da_Internet>
Lemos, A., & Costa, L. (2007). Um modelo de inclusão digital. O caso da cidade de
Salvador. In Lemos, A. (Org.). Cidade Digital: portais, inclusão e redes no Brasil.
Salvador: EDUFBA. pp. 35-48.
Silveira, S. A. (2014). Para Analisar o Poder Tecnológico Como Poder Político. In Silveira,
S. A., Braga, S., & Penteado, C. (Orgs.) Cultura, política e ativismo nas redes digitais. São
Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo.
West, A. R. (2007). Technology Related Dangers: The Issue of Development and Security
for Marginalized Groups in South Africa. The Journal of Community Informatics, 2(3).
Retrieved from <http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/272>
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40
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
41
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
42
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
The Brazilian Access to Information Law, or Law number 12.527 (2011), was created
to make the public administration more transparent and efficient, to increase social
participation and monitoring, as well as decrease current corruption levels. In force
since May 2012, the law allows any person or legal entity to have access to public data.
The law encompasses the three powers (Judiciary, Legislative, and Executive) at the
municipal, state and federal levels, Courts of Auditors, Public Prosecution Offices and
non-profit private entities. It also guarantees the citizens access to information for free
and without the need for explicit reasons.
The concept of public data stems from a definition by the United Nations (UN),
which classifies the access to information as a fundamental human right, an already
internationally established idea by the Declaration of Human Rights. Information
is a key point for the development of citizenship, allowing citizens to be engaged in
policies; information is also a basic requirement for the legitimization of democratic
governments. Furthermore, the technological progress is at the heart of the increase of
open data adoption through transparency portals, whether due to the new possibilities
of storage and organization, or the new ways in which relationships are established
between the citizen and the state. These relationships have been created by means that
facilitate the communication between both parts in a way that is substantially faster
and more dynamic – mainly if we consider social media. The Internet’s ecosystem
promotes environments more open to debate, and it encourages more citizens who
are willing to discuss multiple subjects to be engaged, given the facility to find any
kind of information from a search engine. These new technical possibilities, combined
with the recent troubling cases of corruption in Brazil – placed the 79th position in
the ranking of corruption perception in the world in
2016, a worsening of three positions compared to the
previous year (Salomão, 2017) – help to increase the
THE CONCEPT OF
citizenship awareness framework of the population,
PUBLIC DATA STEMS
which understands the importance and the strength
of its role as a monitoring agent of public affairs. The
FROM A DEFINITION
Brazilian Access to Information Law is another step BY THE UNITED
towards social encouragement. NATIONS (UN),
WHICH CLASSIFIES
Combined with the popular movements started THE ACCESS TO
in Brazil since 2013 – which brought into the political
INFORMATION AS
arena an ‘empowerment’ of entities until then
A FUNDAMENTAL
restricted to an audience with a higher education
HUMAN RIGHT
(Meirelles, 2017) –, is expected that all these available
resources provide permanently grow of the number of
citizens engaged in monitoring public. An increase in the non-profit initiatives that
bring together those interested in being more active in monitoring public expenditures
is also expected. In Brazil, some of these initiatives include:
1 Available at <http://osbrasil.org.br/>
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
supported to supervise the use of public funds in the municipal spheres. The
focus of the organization is the fiscal control of purchases, contracts, and
other expenses made and taken by public administrations. According to the
Observatory, this work save more than R$ 300 million annually (about 91
million dollars);
2 Available at <https://luciobig.com.br/>
3 Available at <https://serenatadeamor.org/>
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
by the outrage with recent events – such as the Operation “Car Wash” (Operação Lava
Jato)5 –, but, to that end, some changes must still take place.
Another skill becoming increasingly necessary and is already considered the new
way of alphabetization in a connected world, is coding. Initiatives such as the Serenade
of Love Operation show how useful and efficient an algorithm can be in dealing with
the gigantic quantity of available data in a way that conventional human labor could
never deliver. Furthermore, other forms of transparency that should be demanded from
governments require technical skills to, for example, audit algorithms used to make a
draw or in other official decisions. Citizens need to acknowledge and take hold of their
right to know; this also requires demanding public initiatives that turn these skills
into accessible tools that are available in a context of equality without economic, racial
or gender prejudice. This is another urgent matter in the struggle for the reduction of
inequality and for a better education.
Besides, even with all the progress concerning open data, we are still far from
having reached a satisfactory state of affairs. According to a report by the Ministry of
Transparency, Oversight and Comptroller-General of Brazil (2016), between 2012 and 2015,
the Brazilian Access to Information Law has been used for 334,463 requests of access,
of which 333,854 have received responses – an efficiency rate of 99.8 %, which includes
accepted, denied and non-responded requests. However, even with the existence of the
5 Reviewer’s note: Group of investigations run by the Federal Police of Brazil, ongoing since 2014,
aimed at identifying corruption and money laundering cases involving politicians and companies,
such as construction companies and Petrobras.
6 Available at <http://portaldatransparencia.gov.br/>
7 Available at <http://livre.jor.br/>
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ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
_REFERENCES
46
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY _ JULIANA DE FREITAS GONÇALVES
Salomão, L. (2017). Brasil está em 79º lugar entre 176 países, aponta ranking da
corrupção de 2016. G1. Mundo. Retrieved from: <http://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/
brasil-esta-em-79-lugar-entre-176-paises-aponta-ranking-da-corrupcao-de-2016.
ghtml>
Transparency International (2017). Open data and the fight against corruption in Brazil:
report. Retrieved from: <https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/open_
data_and_the_fight_against_corruption_in_brazil>
47
DIGITAL
INCLUSION
DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
Lawyer graduated from the Faculty of Law of the National Uni-
versity of Cuyo,
Mendoza, Argentina.
georgina.g.33@gmail.com
Argentina
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
_THEMATIC
Digital inclusion
Digital rights
_ABSTRACT
50
DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
The information society and its innovative language, with its inevitable and
overwhelming progress, has strongly impacted on the model from which social problems
are addressed, both from their identification and in the proposal of possible solutions.
ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), and specifically access, knowledge
and better use of them, have begun to cement broad differences in the opportunities for
development and growth both from an individual and social projection, at the same
time that they have generated a new group of excluded: those who do not access and/or
dominate technology and fall into the so-called “digital divide”.
The United Nations (UN) already mentioned in its World Summit in 2003 1 that
what we call “digital divide” can be synthesized in the division between those who
can effectively use the new tools of information and communication, such as the
Internet, and they cannot. Taking into account this conceptualization and without
losing sight of subsequent reformulations on these guidelines and nuances that
these can acquire according to Buchmueller et al. (2011), would be atomized into
two large groups: the so-called “onliners” and “none-liners.” The complexity and
richness of the analysis that this distinction provokes does not stop here since there
are multiple edges that must be considered if we
understand that it is not just a quantitative problem,
restricted to access to information technologies
and infrastructure for it, but that the phenomenon THE ISSUE
unfolds in a context of economic, social, cultural AROUND THE
and political inequalities prevailing in societies, of DIGITAL DIVIDE
which the digital divide participates. IS EFFICIENTLY
CONFINED TO
Contrary to this reductionist vision, from
TWO GENERAL
which the study of increasingly complex social and
DIMENSIONS:
technological manifestations is usually faced, it is
possible to resize the question in treatment and add
INFRASTRUCTURE
other variants such as, the business culture to guide (CONNECTIVITY)
the economic action to the network, the capacity and AND THE POOR
effectiveness for the management and maintenance ACCESS AND
of network resources, cooperation, capital investment DEVELOPMENT OF
- for the creation, management and maintenance of TECHNICAL SKILLS
the network - together with a legal framework and FOR THE USE OF
adequate planning, professional training, quality ICT (SPECIALIZED
content and the own language. Last but not least, TRAINING)
users with skills and competencies that allow them
to use the network efficiently. These sketched notes,
1 The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a summit organized by the United
Nations in two phases; one took place in Geneva (2003) and another in Tunis (2005). One of its
main objectives was the treatment of the global digital divide, which separates rich countries from
poor countries, by disseminating access to the Internet in the developing world.
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and without being exclusive and exhaustive, undeniably show that we are facing a
multidimensional phenomenon in which, although it is valid to directly relate the
digital divide with access to ICT (infrastructure, accessibility and usability to link to the
network of networks), its background responds to social processes that require renewed
interpretations based on the incidence and transforming capacity of technology.
As it emerges from the observations made above, the search for an integral
approach requires not only the contemplation of the technological component, but also
the synergistic and reciprocal result of the economy, politics, and culture, in addition to
the necessary consideration of factors such as geography, age, sex, language, education,
employability, and physical integrity. In spite of everything pointed out, if we examine
our realities it is not accidental to find that the issue around the digital divide is
efficiently confined to two general dimensions: infrastructure (connectivity) and the
poor access and development of technical skills for the use of ICT (specialized training).
Understanding and the qualitative examination of the application and orientation that
users give to the resources provided are in the background, in fact, these concerns are
invisible in the discussion tables where the articulation of policies that can guarantee
sufficient responses is discussed, and all-embracing to the problematic. Logically, it
derives an ethereal, but current naturalization of a kind of “uncritical inclusion” that
does not ask about the “why” to promote access to ICT. Interpellations about these issues
and the assimilation of their need and relevance allow, among other things, to discover
and resignify the close relationship between knowledge and the use of ICT, evolution
that leads to the inclusion of the cognitive dimension in the conception and study of
the notion of digital divide (dimension to which, by the way, should also be added an
ethical positioning).
The lack of access to ICT, without a doubt, is a cause that is more conducive to real
equality of opportunities, since marginalizing the most disadvantaged social actors of
the benefits of the Internet today means closing the door to entry to the Internet, the
world of information and knowledge. We are talking then, not only about the digital
divide with all its implications but also about a cognitive divide. The latter is at the
mercy of the fast speed of technical advances and runs the risk of deepening, further
aggravating the social disintegration that now adds another form of exclusion; digital
social exclusion.
These paragraphs are intended to strip the reader of the idea that the mere fact
of giving a person the means to be in the network, causes, by osmosis, a process of
immediate personal improvement that eliminates the inequalities that underlie the
digital divide. We will try, therefore, to ponder the role of education as a process built
from the participation and involvement of all actors in society, whose goal is not only
to alphabetize in the informational but also achieve a critical mass of citizens that can
transform and transform society.
Education is a point where the digital divide and the cognitive divide converge, and
which allows us to address, with more excellent solvency and prospects of success,
the needs, and demands of those who hope to be part of the change. These projections,
however, are not deprived of some dichotomies; On the one hand, in the face of a
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
technology that is advancing by leaps and bounds, education evolves slowly and
through residual responses or in the worst cases with almost no impact; while, on the
other hand, as Rafael Capurro (2010) very well expresses, we are walking towards the
horizon of a digital ontology, which leads us to live an existential project whose social
consequences are difficult to foresee.
The studies aimed at analyzing the extent to which new technologies can contribute
to the inclusion of the most disadvantaged groups of society are usually based on an
approach to social exclusion, from ICT, which is exclusively related to the risk of falling
or deepening the digital divide. This biased perspective forgets to delve into the relevance
and positive impact that these have when accompanied by an appropriate training
that allows them, to those excluded, find in them the opportunity to generate and/
or strengthen individual inclusion spaces that safely they will influence the collective
sphere. These approaches are complementary and have as their axis the conception
of technology as an instrument that allows us to overcome barriers, and that opens a
range of unlimited possibilities, forging transformation alternatives towards a more
refined and cohesive society. Starting from this premise, it is useful first to make an
approximation to the concept of social exclusion.
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
54
DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
Now, the travel through the ambitious paths of digital information literacy,
understood as a set of competencies that lead to an appropriate, reflective, critical
and responsible use of information and media, ideally complemented with technical
knowledge for the management and creation of programming languages; can begin
by discussing the fundamental development of three aspects: access to technology,
skills and attitude, which clearly affect the worsening or decrease of social and digital
exclusion that involves being in prison.
When discussing the possible access to technology, and especially to the Internet in
these areas, the heterogeneity of the difficulties in terms of open access to the Internet
is the first problem that arises, since the prison population must be isolated from the
outside world, except for the official channels, a requirement that apparently disagrees
with the claims pursued. This technological distancing, which means a stay in prison,
also poses an additional difficulty for inmates and former inmates, which further
complicates social integration, rehabilitation and employment, the latter is directly
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
related to the desire to desist from committing a crime, well, just giving up offense
does not necessarily imply a process of social inclusion. In this way, the importance
of overcoming the exposed collision is evident and reinforcing, on the other hand, the
influence of the acquisition of necessary tools to achieve a better quality of life; ICT can
be one of the answers.
In a generic sense, and regarding the use of computer tools and/or programming,
a good line of action for approaching them should not be standard or limited in time,
characteristics that seem to have no hold in prison if we take in consideration the
hindrances revealed. In spite of this, some proposals with concrete and compatible
prospects appear, on the one hand, with the need for security and isolation, which
implies the penalty of deprivation of liberty, and on the other hand, with the fight
against digital exclusion, these are:
- Basic computer training: teaching the most elementary aspects of using a PC.
This is an initial measure that can be widely disseminated, because it does not need
communication with the outside world, with low costs, and that also has the purpose
of updating previous knowledge that each inmate brings, but that the passage of time
between walls makes obsolete.
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
and its direct effect on the social and digital divide prevail, and that understand the
fundamental nature of the technology for our daily life, as well as its potential to
regenerate relationships and social equilibrium.
In Argentina, despite the fact that for more than a decade Educ.ar has promoted and
promoted a transformation in the teaching and learning processes, trying, on the one
side, to transcend the merely instrumental uses, and on the other, to determine what
type of competences was necessary to manage not to be a digital illiterate, his intentions
have been partially fulfilled. At the same time, the current Argentine government has
stated, formally, its intention to advance even more on this ground by announcing
programs that aim at labor insertion as the program “111 mil programadores”2. These
attempts, although meritorious, fail to satisfy the real and deep needs of society and
show that much remains to be seen, places to penetrate (for example, the initiatives
mentioned above have not managed to permeate the walls of the prisons), and more
to do. Some people even question whether the digital divide is an area for policy
intervention, or not, and if so, what are the appropriate measures to be taken. Faced
with this, it is reaffirmed that access to technologies is assumed, according to Foster
(2000), as “a capital civil right”; and consequently there is no doubt that society and
politicians should strive to narrow it. The crux of the matter is the good balance and the
good sense, not only of the private sector but also of the public (since in the success of its
policy lies partly the solution of the problem, but also its aggravation), to which must be
added the training of professionals in terms of theoretical content related to ICT, which
include methodologies and intervention strategies for a true e-inclusion.
4_FINAL THOUGHTS
The digital divide is nourished and fused with the deep divides that result from
inequitable progress and is inserted in a context that does not show much concern for
social redistribution. However, the promising horizon of the information society raises
a certain optimism anchored in the potential of a balanced and reasonable exchange of
information, but above all of the knowledge, and in the idea that technology is a driver
of development. According to Trejo Delarbre (2001), the so-called information society is,
therefore, reality and possibility; the latter is understood here as a possibility to identify
and advocate for knowledge as an indispensable social good, as well as the chance of
promoting good practices that emerge from the bosom of an active and committed
citizenship to transmute into positive and far-reaching public policies that face the
divide in an integral way, especially considering the role of well-understood digital
literacy. Of course, all this will be feasible if we assimilate that the transformation
that implies the diminution of the distances of the divide demands proportionally of
a conception of the relations settled in the cooperation, the respect, and the equity;
feedback that radiates beneficial effects and breaks into the core of social disparities.
From its transversality, ICT, beyond the profiles of the excluded population and
despite the criticisms that are conceived and the consequent apprehension that they
2 Watch on <https://www.argentina.gob.ar/111mil>
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
generate, contribute and provide valid and advantageous solutions. Precisely in the
theme that this text covers, you can see how they could undoubtedly add to the inclusion
of the most disadvantaged groups, operating from the relational and labor, becoming a
means to achieve specific adaptive, educational, and re-socializing objectives. Likewise,
the concept of digital literacy is added and accompanied, which is revolutionary insofar
as it points to a training that exceeds mere instrumental competencies; and in the
specific case of the group that experiences or has experienced a deprivation of liberty,
seeks to promote the acquisition of skills that are linked to the search for autonomy,
self-criticism and awareness of individual social responsibility.
This will be viable only with an appropriate appropriation of the TIC, objective that
will be achieved if human resources and solid materials amalgamated exist with a
correct direction of the knowledge and the forms that are used for their use. Although
the peculiarities of the context of confinement will inevitably be present, to achieve the
proposed goals, one must try to penetrate into the workspace and approach the subjects,
as much as possible, as far as possible, the adversities. The inadequacy of the merely
technical profiles for this task is highlighted, and it is advisable to take a step towards
a pattern of digital social literacy, which takes on this challenge also from an ethical,
pedagogical dimension and recognizing its political implications.
This challenge requires the deepening of the design and evaluation of the applied
methodologies, from a perspective that embraces the transformative power of these
initiatives that, on the one hand, open the doors that lead to the reality of a free and
integrated life and that it is plausible if we think
about the benefits of the use, generation and critical
transmission of information shared through ICT;
THE PROMISING
and that, on the other, close those that lead to
HORIZON OF THE
recidivism.
INFORMATION
SOCIETY RAISES Currently, if we consider the general picture,
A CERTAIN of which the problems of exclusion of the
OPTIMISM aforementioned group are part, the dilemma lies
ANCHORED IN between forming a society of users of technology
or an organization that incorporates a new way of
THE POTENTIAL
conceiving, creating and using that knowledge; to
OF A BALANCED
focus on collaboration and participatory processes,
AND REASONABLE
in which priority is given to accessibility, among
EXCHANGE OF other things, sustainability, meaningful use,
INFORMATION, social appropriation, empowerment and social
BUT ABOVE ALL OF innovation. Proposing, without further ado, access
THE KNOWLEDGE, to ICTs, skipping the necessary interdisciplinary
AND IN THE IDEA conversations about the end of their uses, hardly
THAT TECHNOLOGY leads to the solution of the digital divide that
IS A DRIVER OF feeds back social divides, hence the failure and
DEVELOPMENT ineffectiveness of many of the State initiatives,
including those related to criminal matters, which
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
demonstrate that the social divide as a condition of the digital divide and vice versa,
responds to a social and political model plagued by decisions taken from an erroneous
approach and stripped of real and plural multistakeholder.
Only by democratizing knowledge can we face this situation, this will allow us to
promote sustainable development in education, integration, equality of opportunities,
security, and justice.
_REFERENCES
Díaz, F. J., Banchoff Tzancoff, C. M., Harari, I., & Harari, V. (2008). Reduciendo la
brecha digital en sectores de bajos recursos. XIV Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la
Computación. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2qb79QX>
59
DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
<http://bit.ly/2q9ck5w>
Fres, N. F., & Serra, M. G. La inserción laboral de los y las expresos. Una mirada desde la
complejidad. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2q82oJR>
Novo-Corti, I., & Barreiro-Gen, M. (2014). Barreras físicas y barreras virtuales: delito
y pena en la era digital. Nuevas políticas públicas para la reinserción. Revista de
Investigación del Departamento de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, 2(5), 85-104.
Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2qbjWCQ>
Novo-Corti, I., Barreiro-Gen, M., & Varela-Candamio, L. (2012). Las TIC como
instrumento de inclusión social a través de la formación académica y profesional en
los centros penitenciarios: análisis de las percepciones de la población reclusa en la
región de Galicia, España. Inclusão Social, 5(1). Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2qzfLUr>
Prado, M., Salinas, J., & Pérez, A. (2005). Inclusión Social Digital. Una aproximación a su
clasificación. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2r0nmv9>
Sánchez, M. R. F., Berrocoso, J. V., & Domínguez, F. I. R. (2012). Una revisión sobre la
perspectiva social del e-learning: TIC, inclusión digital y cambio social. RedEs, (1), 48-
63. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2r0EPTX>
Travieso, J. L., & Ribera, J. P. (2008). La alfabetización digital como factor de inclusión
social: una mirada crítica. UOC Papers: revista sobre la sociedad del conocimiento, (6),
7. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2q9pUpy>
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DIGITAL INCLUSION _ GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
GEORGINA A. GUERCIO
Research scholar and university professor.
Collaborator in the University Education
Program in Confinement Context of the
National University of Cuyo.
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_THEMATIC
Digital inclusion
_ABSTRACT
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1_DEFINITIONS
1.1_PUBLIC POLICIES
1.2_HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The objective of ensuring that we all have the same opportunities is to develop
capabilities. For UNDP, the development of capacities is a process by which individuals,
organizations, and societies obtain, strengthen and maintain the necessary
competencies to establish and achieve their own long-term development objectives
(UNDP, 2008). Thus, for young people, the development of skills is a crucial process for
decision-making, for example, regarding the life they wish to lead, participation and
democratic organization, the improvement of their living conditions, the employment
generation, among other.
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1.3_DIGITAL DIVIDE
The digital divide will have different definitions according to space or focus. To begin
with we must mention that, the difference in access to ICTs between people, countries,
men and women, children, youth and adults, exists as a result of socioeconomic
inequality, problems of income distribution, investment in infrastructure and the
educational level of the region (Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean [ECLAC], 2002), complementing.
1.4_DIGITAL INCLUSION
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Regarding the differences in Internet access between rich and poor countries, it
is argued that the price of telecommunications services plays a fundamental role in
reducing the digital divide, despite the fact that the prices of mobile broadband services
have fallen between 20% and 30% during 2015, the developing economies present
problems since their mobile services represent more than 20% per capita gross national
income. In the American region, the digital divide has differences among its different
economies, with the United States and Canada being the countries with the highest ICT
Development Index (IDI) and, Nicaragua and Cuba, the last two respectively.
When comparing the percentage of monthly income required for ICT services in
households in Colombia and Uruguay, it is confirmed that at lower prices, a smaller
digital divide exists. For example, in Colombia for a household to have access to fixed
and mobile1 ICT services, it is needed to invest 34.50% of monthly income, compared to
the 24.85% required in Uruguay (Katz, 2015). Additionally, mobile services become more
expensive due to taxes, affecting access to mobile ICT services for people at the base of
the pyramid, including young people, this analysis serves to highlight the importance it
could have for the universalization of broadband, the elimination of tax burdens (ibid.).
In addition, considering the figures of the Labor Market of the Youth (Mercado
Laboral de la Juventud) of the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE,
by its initials in Spanish, 2016)2, which stated that during 2016 the youth unemployment
rate in Colombia was 15.3%, it can be inferred that expensive prices and tax rates of
mobile and fixed Internet plans are strong barriers for young people to access ICT.
Continuing with the figures presented in the previous section, I take as an example
the results of the 2013 Latinobarómetro survey of the Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean (2013), which shows that 34.6% of young people in the
region access the Internet every day, while 26.3% do it occasionally. In other words,
approximately 60% of young people between the ages of 16 and 29 have had access to
technology, surpassing in some ways the digital divide. However, the distribution of
access to ICTs of young people varies according to their socioeconomic status: half of
youngs in the highest stratum (48%) of the region use the Internet every day, and 28%
do it occasionally; just over a quarter of middle-class youth (27%) use the Internet every
day and 28% occasionally (Sunkel, 2015). These figures are high compared to the Internet
1 Includes: two smartphones with the cheapest data and voice plan, paid TV and fixed
broadband connection.
2 This report provides information on the indicators and labor market behavior of young people
aged 14 to 28 years.
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access of young people from the poorest strata, since only 13% use the Internet every day
and 18% occasionally (ibid.).
It should be remembered that, since the 1990’s, with the emergence and subsequent
massification of the Internet, governments have designed public policies and programs
to reduce the digital divide, given that the digital divide and exclusion are inheritances
of socioeconomic inequality, the disparity in the distribution of income and the low
educational level that have marked the region in the Latin American case (ECLAC, 2002),
which is why it is not surprising how these situations affect young people by limiting
their possibilities for development and incorporation into the information society.
Public policies have made important efforts with the aim of improving the Internet
access rates of people, assuming that by achieving universal access to the Internet it will
be possible to improve the economic growth rates of their respective countries. This is
based on the behavior that has had the economies of countries that have tried to reduce
the digital divide. In this regard, The World Bank notes that in 2009 the multinational
Google generated 19,000 jobs in the 20 countries where the main Internet search engine
is present, as well as the most visited search engine in China (Baidu.com), created 6,000
jobs (World Bank, 2010).
For its part, in Latin America, reduction of the digital divide has supported the
modernization of its productive, industrial and commercial processes. The generation
of a job in the ICT sector supports the creation of 2.4 jobs in other economic activities.
Chile has shown that the reduction of 10 points in the digital divide helped with a 2%
decrease in the unemployment rate (Katz, 2009).
It is undeniable that ICTs have changed the way we relate and its use reflects
the inequities and injustices of the societies in which they are inserted. It should
be recognized that ICTs are not negative or positive for society, rather they take the
form and direction of the society in which they are introduced, giving shape to social
relationships (Gómez apud Kuttan, & Peters, 2003).
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are effect of inequalities of gender, ethnicity, language, disability, and place of residence.
They affect development processes, so they need to be worked carefully in the virtual
environments in order to not contribute to accentuate the divides; on the contrary, they
must support their elimination (UNESCO, 2010).
In short, the reduction of the (first) digital divide in young people continues to be
a task that demands efforts of many sectors and actors of society, beginning with
governments and the public policies they design to guarantee universal access to ICTs,
the telecommunications operators (public and private), businessmen, schools and
universities and, of course, the young people themselves. It is also necessary to design
public policies for digital inclusion or reduction of the second divide, which refers to the
differences between groups according to their skills and abilities to use technologies
effectively, and where is the possibility of youth to take advantage of the opportunities
offered by new technologies (Sunkel, 2015).
Digital inclusion policies should generate capabilities in young people to help them
overcome situations of vulnerability, exclusion, poverty, bullying, etc., as well as build
the road to access to information and knowledge society. Aligned with that, UNESCO, in
its report “Towards Knowledge Societies” mentions that reducing the digital divide will
not be enough to reduce knowledge divides, a more complex issue than just developing
technological infrastructure (UNESCO, 2005)3. As a mechanism to facilitate reduction
of poverty, the entry into the Information Society and, above all, the socioeconomic
mobility of those who learn to make critical use of ICTs, the discussions about reducing
the digital divide must be deeper, regarding uses and their impacts, having basic digital
3 “Closing the digital divide will not suffice to close the knowledge divide, for access to useful,
relevant knowledge is more than simply a matter of infrastructure – it depends on training,
cognitive skills and regulatory frameworks geared towards access to contents”.
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literacy to achieve better learning processes, having more tools in the workplace and
also exercising our citizenship (UNESCO, 2013).
4_CONCLUSIONS
The divide, the inclusion and the digital appropriation are consecutive and
differentiated stages of the process that seeks
to introduce people in the information society.
These processes are applied in society through
public policies, to solve problems such as
DIGITAL INCLUSION
exclusion – in this case, digital exclusion.
POLICIES SHOULD
Young people, as citizens, should enjoy the GENERATE
right to access the information and knowledge CAPABILITIES IN YOUNG
society, and public policies should guarantee PEOPLE TO HELP THEM
access to ICT for young people in conditions OVERCOME SITUATIONS
of vulnerability and poverty, reducing prices OF VULNERABILITY,
of Internet services and navigation devices, EXCLUSION, POVERTY,
progressively reducing taxes in a general or
BULLYING, ETC
sectored way.
Digital appropriation will be the stage when young people make critical use of ICT,
developing reflective skills about their environment, social needs of their communities,
their role in participatory democracy, organization and classification of information for
generation of knowledge and they will become agents of change. The main objective of
ICT policies for young people is to encourage the formation of agents of change.
Finally, in each of the stages above and for the formulation and design of ICT public
policies for young people, their active participation is essential. It would be contradictory
to formulate a policy focused on youth without first knowing their needs, problems and
perspectives regarding the use of technology. For this, it is urgent to diagnose existing
public ICT policies, what youth issues they address, which state institutions are in charge
of them, the progress made, civil participation in its design and implementation etc. In
the same way, it is still important and necessary that young people begin to organize
ourselves civilly to participate actively in democratic processes, with perspectives that
respect cultural, social, economic, political, gender, age and educational levels.
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_REFERENCES
Chen, W., & Wellman, B. (2003). Charting and bridging digital divides: comparing
socio-economic, gender, life stage, and rural-urban Internet access and use in eight
countries. Toronto: Toronto University. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2qhls7T>
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2002). Los Caminos Hacia
una Sociedad de la Información en América Latina y el Caribe. Libros de la CEPAL, 72.
Punta Cana. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2rfBUnL>
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2005). Oportunidades
digitales, equidad y pobreza en América Latina: ¿Qué podemos aprender de la
evidencia empírica? Estudios Estadísticos y Prospectivos. Santiago de Chile. Retrieved
from <http://bit.ly/2r6zZVv>
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2013). Latinobarómetro
Informe 2013. Santiago de Chile. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/1bxZdfc>
Duarte, F., & Pires, H. F. (2011). Inclusión Digital, Tres Conceptos Clave: Conectividad,
Accesibilidad, Comunicabilidad. Revista Electrónica de Recursos de Internet Sobre
Geografía y Ciencias Sociales. Barcelona University. Retrieved from <http://bit.
ly/1uubNXh>
Gavilanes, R. V. (2009). Hacia una nueva definición política del concepto de “política
pública”. Revista Desafíos. Bogota: Rosario Univeristy. Retrieved from <http://bit.
ly/2pzrGSb>
Gómez, R. apud Kuttan, A., & Peters, L. (2003). From digital divide to digital opportunity.
Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.
Gómez, R., & Martínez, J. (2001). Internet... ¿Para qué? In Martínez, J. Internet en
América Central: Análisis de entornos nacionales. San José: IDRC. Retrieved from
<http://bit.ly/2pMBcwa>
Katz, R. (2009). El Papel de las TIC en el Desarrollo. Propuesta de América Latina a los
Retos Económicos para la Fundación Telefónica. Madrid: Editorial Ariel. Retrieved from
<http://bit.ly/2rfQOun>
Kraft, M. E., & Furlong, S. R. (2007). Public Policy: Politics, analysis, and alternatives.
2nd edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press. p. 5.
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Thoenig, J. C. (1999). El análisis de las Políticas Públicas. Revista Universitas, 93. p. 75.
Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2rfYpci>
World Bank (2010). Building Broadband: Strategies and Policies for the Developing
World. Washington D.C. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/1wQP3lx>
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CYBER-
SECURITY
CYBERSECURITY _ ARTHUR EMANUEL LEAL ABREU
NUANCES OF PRIVACY
IN THE DIGITAL ERA
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_THEMATIC
Cybersecurity
Digital rights
New problems of the Internet
_ABSTRACT
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CYBERSECURITY _ ARTHUR EMANUEL LEAL ABREU
We are currently living in a digital era, grounded on the Internet, which arranges
instant connections between people and data, regardless of whether they are
physically close or far away from each other. With the Internet, we notice a permanent
intensification of the information flow, which redefined the way society communicates,
both in their most restricted circles and with the biggest audience possible.
Consequently, the revolution led by the Internet has reached the fundamental
rights of human beings, such as reputation, image, and, especially, privacy. After all,
as Stefano Rodotà (2013, p.11) stated, today, the simple fact of ‘being in society’ can no
longer be separated from a continuous flow of information diffused from a person
towards countless directions. This allows to interlocutors the possibility of building
their own “truths” regarding the data sender.
In our legal framework, the Federal Constitution of the Republic of Brazil (1988) lists
the fundamental rights on article 5, subsection X: the intimacy, private life, honor,
and image of people are inviolable; the right to compensation due to material or moral
damage caused by the violation of such rights is assured.
Although there are no explicit mentions of the word “privacy,” the text assures
constitutional protection to people’s intimacy and private lives. According to Marcel
Leonardi (2012, p.83), this legislative choice aims to prevent that, from the scope of
constitutional protection, could conceptual divisions formulated by the doctrine make
escaping a fraction or a marked area of people’s lives. Thus, it enables a wider custody,
regardless of the distinction between the concepts of intimacy and private life.
With that, the constitutional protection of all aspects of a human being’s privacy is
reaffirmed regarding the most intimate aspects of a person and what they share with their
many social circles, from the smallest to the largest ones. Following José Afonso da Silva’s
(2005, p.206) line of thinking, he says he would rather use the expression right to privacy
in a general and wide way, in order to embrace all these manifestations of the intimacy,
privacy, and personality scopes, which were established by the constitutional words.
Besides the Federal Constitution, the legislator has also emphasized the protection
of privacy, establishing it as a personality right on the Brazilian Civil Code. If article 21
reiterates the inviolability of private life, as it is supported by the Constitution, article
11 predicts that except for the cases considered legal, the personality rights are non-
transferable and irrevocable, and their exercise cannot undergo voluntary limitation
(Law n. 10.406, 2002).
The law intends to protect the rightsholder, preventing them from renouncing from
these fundamental rights, from accepting inadmissible restriction or from voluntarily
limiting their personality rights. Schreiber (2013, p. 27), however, argues that art. 11
exaggerates when it excludes each and any “voluntary limitation” from the exercise of
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the personality rights. This exclusion would make not only the reality television shows
illicit but would also outlaw way more ordinary activities, such as exposing personal
data on social media, such as Twitter and Orkut.
Attempting to clarify the previously mentioned law, the Statement n. 4 of the 1st
Civil Rights Journey (Jornada de Direito Civil) of the Federal Justice Council of Brazil
(2002), says that the exercise of the personality rights may undergo voluntary limitation
if not permanent or general. Under this perspective, the rightsholder may themselves
restrict the exercise of their personality rights in a delimited and non-permanent way,
to their own interest. Then, it would be acceptable to limit their privacy, such as, for
example, when using social media.
In fact, exposing on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, currently the
most popular platforms, can seem at first sight the opposite of what one seeks to protect
through the constitutional guarantee of privacy. However, we should understand that
part of the nuances of the right to privacy in the digital era relies on allowing a person
to have control over how much of their private life they share on the Internet.
What happens is that, even under the exposure on social media, one cannot consider
a general surrender of privacy. It is needed to always have in mind that privacy is
about individual voluntary disposition. They can choose to have aspects of their private
life shared on a small scale, with their closest friends, or at a large scale, with an
unrestrained audience. However, the person should have control over what they are
sharing and with whom they are sharing.
In our society, with tools such as Instagram, anyone can be catapulted to the
condition of “celebrity,” as Bauman mentioned. However, it is important to stress that
any person, even celebrities, have the right to privacy. According to Anderson Schreiber
(2013, p.44), if the occupation or success of a person exposes them to the public’s interest,
their right to privacy must not be reduced, but doubly assured. Just because a particular
person is a celebrity – wrongly named a “public person” – that fact cannot be used as an
argument to legitimize privacy invasion, here included not only the household space of
development of the person’s intimacy but also the many aspects of their daily routines
and private lives.
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These stats corroborate Anderson Schereiber’s lesson about the public’s interest in
the private lives of celebrities, such as singers, actors, politicians, athletes, and other
prominent positions. Over the last few years, many of these famous people chose
to give up part of their privacy and disclose aspects of their private lives in order to
avoid persecution from press agents, who are persistent on extracting information.
The consensus is, since their private lives will be taken to the public anyway, the
information might as well be molded by the person who owns the right to share it.
Therefore, we conclude that the use of social media with the exposure of many
aspects of an individual’s private life does not represent a resignation to their right to
privacy. On the contrary, we must see such conducts as an effective exercise of rights,
that assures a person’s privacy, since that person now has control over their narrative,
sharing some angles of their lives that they wish to disclose and, at the same time,
keeping public eyes away from other aspects of their intimacy.
As Marcel Leonardi (2012, p.29) says, we are living in a transitory moment. Almost
all Law officers are still not familiarized with the Internet. Therefore, there is much
room for progress when it comes to understanding classic fundamental rights when
inserted in the virtual environment.
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Such idea is based on reciprocity, such as the case of an individual who has their
intimacy preserved on social media and also respects the intimacy of others in the
same virtual universe (Duque, Pedra, 2013, p. 68). That way, the virtual environment will
become more civilized, and the Internet will be an even more beneficial tool, enabling
us to healthily share and access to information.
_REFERENCES
Law no. 10.406 (2002, January 10). Institui o Código Civil. Diário Oficial da República
Federativa do Brasil, Brasília, DF. Retrieved from <http://www.planalto.gov.br/
ccivil_03/leis/2002/L10406.htm>
Silva, J. A. da. (2005). Curso de direito constitucional positivo. 25 ed. São Paulo:
Malheiros.
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CYBERSECURITY _ NATALIA MENDOZA SERVÍN
_THEMATIC
Cybersecurity
Digital rights
New problems of the Internet
_ABSTRACT
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CYBERSECURITY _ NATALIA MENDOZA SERVÍN
Along with the reform, many benefits came to the Mexican state. To mention a few
examples, the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data
Protection (INAI) was granted full autonomy, empowering it to promote unconstitutionality
actions before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, among others new attributions.
Also, new laws on transparency and data protection were created (Romero, 2014).
Those previous actions, alongside with others, constitute the National Transparency
System of Mexico. And while it implies an abysmal and extremely complex challenge
for the State authorities, it is also true that its design and execution do not represent
disadvantages or objections. On the contrary, it has been complemented and perfectly
merged with other national projects such as “Connected Mexico” (“México Conectado”)
(Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, 2017) and “Open Data” (Open Data
of the Government of the Republic, 2017), which constitutes the first step to transitioning
to open government and proactive and engaged transparency.
Notwithstanding, it is important to point out that one of the possible issues, or one
of the most significant challenges of the National Transparency System, is to guarantee
the privacy and protection of personal data towards the significant threat that ICTs
(Information and Communication Technologies) may represent on this topic.
Why speak of privacy and protection of personal data if the system is about
transparency? It turns out that the National Transparency System should also be
understood as the National System of Transparency, Access to Public Information and
Protection of Personal Data2
1 Decree by which various provisions of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States
are reformed and added, in matters of transparency (2014).
2 Besides, it would be necessary to add the public archives subject, since the proper functioning
of these makes it possible to turn transparency and the right of access to information a reality.
Nevertheless, Mexico has a National Archive System, supervised by the General Archive of the
Nation, which is linked always with INAI.
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It is true that the constitutional reform gave particular emphasis to transparency and
the right of access to information, however, the National Transparency System also includes
all issues related to them, including privacy and protection of personal data3, reason why
this text addresses the challenges that the project will have on privacy against ICT.
Since the present paper aims to identify the challenges existent between the right
to privacy and data protection compared to ICTs, we will not go into detail in the
discussion about the balance of the right to information and the right to privacy and
data protection. However, it is important to remember that ICTs are events of substantial
meaning in many aspects of human life, including those related to the right of access
to information, accountability, and transparency, in such a way that they have been
considered human rights of the fourth generation (García Mexía, 2014). However, an
arbitrary use and inadequate regulation of these rights also entail a range of serious
effects on other rights that are the object of this analysis.
The so-called big data 4, cloud computing 5, the Internet of Things 6, the open data 7
and social networks 8, among others, should be meticulously regulated by the Mexican
authorities so their use will not violate the privacy of the person online regarding
its openness, especially because the currently trade of personal data is an important
market element to the sectors dedicated to various branches of negotiation, including
for State authorities themselves9.
4 According to Mckinsey Global Institute (2011 apud Joyanes, 2013), big data is the data set whose
size is beyond the capabilities of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and
analyze.
5 In accordance with article 3, section VI of the General Law for the Protection of Personal Data
Held by Obligated Subjects (2017), cloud computing is the model of external provision of on-demand
computing services, which involves supplying infrastructure, platform or computer software,
distributed in a flexible way, through virtual procedures, in dynamically shared resources.
7 In accordance with the provisions of article 3, section VI of the General Law on Transparency
and Access to Public Information (2015), open data is public digital data that is accessible online
and can be used, reused and redistributed by anyone interested.
8 Santamaría (2008) points out that a social network is a social structure made up of nodes -
usually individuals or organizations - that are linked by one or more types of interdependence,
such as values, points of view, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, conflict, trade,
among others.
9 The best-known example is the case of Edward Snowden, who accused the United States of
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At the moment, the Mexican legislation on the protection of personal data offers
what is necessary so that any person can defend themselves from interference with
their privacy arising from actions offline and even from some online. However, for the
resolution of cases derived from ICT, it is possible that the laws do not contain specific
answers. Therefore, the arguments and interpretations of guarantor bodies regarding
data protection laws are fundamental. Those bodies should perceive a solution to the
problems that ICTs will cause.
As we have seen, ICT constitutes a fundamental pillar to achieve the optimal state
of transparency, accountability, access to information and integral development of
individuals. In other words, they significantly benefit and strengthen the National
Transparency System in the matters above. Notwithstanding, the challenge regarding
the protection of privacy and personal data in Mexico still has pending commitments and
questions regarding ICT, since the higher legal matters in the topics contemplate legal
mechanisms that allow a real protection of the right to privacy and online data protection.
For this reason, it is considered that the answer to this class of problems that may
arise, or that already exist, can be a good legal engineering, a good argumentative quality
and interpretation by the Mexican judges, as well as an effective system of sanctions.
Therefore, it is proposed that the National Transparency System, in its mode of protection
of privacy and personal data, consider the following figures in its regulatory agenda:
violating privacy and liberties on the Internet against the world’s population. However, it is not
intended that this is a pretext to block ICTs as in the case of the Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A).
10 Reviewer’s note: According to Article 1 of this law, “obligated subjects” are, at the federal, state
and municipal levels, any authority, entity, body or agencies of the Executive, Legislative and
Judicial power, autonomous entities, political parties, fiduciary and public funds.”
11 Article 12 of the General Law for the Protection of Personal Data in Possession of Obliged Subjects.
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3.1_DIGITAL IDENTITY
The identity is defined by the Royal Spanish Academy as the set of features of an
individual or a community that characterize them compared to others.
Everyone has the right to an identity that can be composed of name, surname or
nationality, among other data. All these features make the individual unique; they
make them a creditor of certain types of rights and obligations.
In offline life, at every moment we must accredit our identity for everyday situations,
such as entering work facilities, cashing checks or even making complaints that affect
the person directly.
In that same sense, and in times where it is almost impossible for human beings
not to interact with ICT, it is essential to delimit the digital identity. This means
determining all the information that makes an individual unique online, in order to
guarantee rights and also obligations to the rest of the users.
The proposal consists of the Mexican legislator defining the digital identity,
establishing characteristics and elements subject to the protection that allow outlining
what should be safeguarded from a person because it is part of his sphere.
3.2_RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN
Mexico, as Europe, just began to analyze this type of issue, which Is the possibility
to people remove information from the Internet that affects their free development.
The Mexican legislator must assess whether it is necessary to implement the right
to be forgotten as an autonomous figure or if the right to the cancellation of personal
data is a sufficient and appropriate means of defense in such situations.
The judges in matters of privacy and protection of personal data must know and
understand the operation of ICT so that their arguments and interpretations of the laws
are appropriate, relevant and guarantee the rights of their owners always.
3.4_NETWORK SECURITY
It is true that the laws on protection of personal data of Mexico provide security
measures to protect personal information. However, it is considered essential to
promote and study such actions as seen from the needs posed by ICT.
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3.5_PRIVACY BY DESIGN
Embody the privacy inside the information systems (García Mexía, 2014). The
former Commissioner of Information and Privacy of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian,
considers privacy by design as the implementation of privacy from three areas of
application: information technology systems; responsible business practices and
physical design and network infrastructure, based on the ever growing and systematic
effects of information and communication technologies, and large-scale network
data systems.
Data protection laws in the country delegate to the guarantor bodies the power to
train institutions as well as ordinary people on the subject. However, it is necessary to
emphasize how ICT can affect the privacy of people, as well as the solutions and means
of defense that can be exercised in case of suffering any mishap in this regard.
In the words of Dr. Villarino Marzo, we must achieve that in a total Internet
environment by default, privacy is be also offered by default. That is our great challenge.
_REFERENCES
12 Besides that they will avoid legal sanctions, it is important to point out that the holders show
increasing interest in those services that protect their privacy.
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Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States (Constitución Política de los Estados
Unidos Mexicanos) (1917, February 5). Última reforma publicada en 24 de febrero de
2017. Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. Retrieved from: <http://www.
diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_240217.pdf>
Federal Law for the Protection of Personal Data Held by Individuals (Ley Federal de
Protección de Datos Personales en Posesión de los Particulares) (2010, July 5). Cámara
de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. Retrieved from: <http://www.diputados.gob.
mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LFPDPPP.pdf>
García Mexía, P. (2014). Derechos y libertades, internet y tics. España: Tirant lo Blanch.
General Law for the Protection of Personal Data in Possession of Obliged Subjects (Ley
General de Protección de Datos Personales en Posesión de Sujetos Obligados) (2017,
January 26). Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. Retrieved from: <http://
www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LGPDPPSO.pdf>
Open Data of the Government of the Republic (Datos Abiertos del Gobierno de la
República) (2017). Datos. Retrieved from: <http://www.datos.gob.mx>
Pérez Luño, A. (2014). Nuevas Tecnologías y derechos humanos. El tiempo de los derechos
4. México: Tirant lo Blanch.
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Vélez Martínez, C. (2015). Internet de las cosas. Gazette 2015 may. Engineering
Institute of the National Autonomous University of México. Retrieved from <http://
www.iingen.unam.mx/es-mx/Publicaciones/GacetaElectronica/Mayo2015/Paginas/
Internetdelascosas.aspx>
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RIGHTS
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CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
IN THE REFORM OF THE
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
OF INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATIONS
TECHNOLOGIES IN ARGENTINA
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_THEMATIC
Digital rights
Contents and cultural assets on the Internet
_ABSTRACT
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1_BACKGROUND
Some years ago, both at the regional and international levels, multiple human
rights organizations (including the Organization of American States, the United Nations
and their respective Rapporteurs) have emphasized the importance of the right of free
expression and information as a human, individual and collective right, whose defense
constitutes one of the essential columns for the construction of more solid and inclusive
democracies. Therefore, many countries, reverberating these postulates, have adapted
their regulations to international standards on freedom of expression.
The Argentinian case is a clear example of how certain historical aspects of political
systems can meaningfully, and in the long term, condition the form and standards of a
media system operation. Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the emergence
of the first media (the written press and the radio), political decisions regarding media
regulation have been characterized by a constant volatility because of particular interests,
detachment from democratic principles and the non-inclusion of social demands. These
elements shaped the media system, allowing, by action or omission, the consolidation of
a commercial, hyper-concentrated and little-participative system. The early adoption of
a business model contributed to a decision-making process reduced to the preferences of
private groups - who held the economic power and owned media companies - and those
of public power - political actors with the ability to determine the “game rules” of the
media system (Mastrini, 2009; Colombo Gardey, 2016).
Over the time these conditions have almost completely and systematically annulled
the possibilities of citizens to express their interests when the rules that regulate the
process of production and exchange of information were defined. Thus, who should be
the holder of the right to communication have been excluded from the process.
This situation deepened with time in Argentina, beginning with the continuous
concessions made by different governments to the companies that now are “mega-
media” and dominate the market of information and communications technologies (ICT).
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That law becomes highly relevant when we consider that it is, after many reform
projects, decrees-law and necessity and urgency decrees, the second law that has
passed through all legislative procedures and a parliamentary debate process1. It is also
the only law that generated debates in the public space, and the first one that aspired to
the regulation of mass media as a defense of a human right.
However, the most remarkable aspect about the LACS - which replaced, after 29
years, the old decree-law established in 1980 by the military dictatorship headed by
Jorge Rafael Videla - is that it emerges under really exceptional conditions.
In 2009 happened the confluence of various factors, among which we can briefly
highlight the emergence of a conflict between the agro-export sectors and the Kirchner
government, due to the increase of taxes over exportations, causing the rupture of the
relations - until now friendly - between the government and the Clarín Group. These
circumstances opened a window of opportunity for the resurgence of demands for the
“democratization of communications”, carried out by civil society groups that since the
return to democracy had claimed the need to reform the decree-law imposed during the
last de facto government. These demands were opportunely resumed by the ruling party
in order to promote a new regulation of the media capable of reducing the influence that
Clarín - aligned to the interests of the agro-export sectors - exerted on public opinion
(Colombo Gardey, 2016).
The law was sanctioned on October 10, 2009, within a Congress favorable to the
ruling party and in concurrence with the growing regional claims in Latin America
regarding the democratization of media systems.
Years later, in December 2014, Law No. 27,078, known as “Digital Argentina,”
was passed. It replaced the National Telecommunications Law (Ley Nacional de
Telecomunicaciones), No. 19.798, which since 1972 regulated this sector. This first attempt
to adapt to convergent technologies presented different nuances. On the one hand, the
law established the need for the regulation and opening of the telecommunications
market, as well as the inclusion of the net neutrality concept. On the other hand, the
text was vague and inaccurate, insufficient for the protection of privacy and personal
data. It also granted excessive power to the enforcement authority2, validated an
allocation regime tied to the Executive Power. It allowed, at the same time, an increase
1 The only similar precedent is Law No. 14.241 on Regulation of Broadcasting Services, sanctioned
in 1953 by Juan D. Perón.
2 This law gives the enforcement authority - and through it, the government - a high discretion in
matters such as the definition of what is understood by business actors “with a significant market
position” (ambiguous expression) from which you can take measures such as the regulation of
market prices, you can request disinvestments, etc. This type of wording, which allows the discretion
of the State or the entities implementing the rules in the field of communication, moves away from
the aspirations of democratization and transparency of the LSCA.
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Towards the end of Cristina Fernández’s term, six years of fragile application of the
LACS had elapsed. Among other factors, this happened due to legal actions filed and
a weak political will to pursue democratic ends after the implementation of the law.
Moreover, the sanction the “Digital Argentina” Law, which contradicted aims set by LACS.
Faced with the urgent need to adapt to the processes of technological convergence
and the growing trend towards the concentration of the ICT market, the assumption of
Mauricio Macri as president, on December 10, 2015, posed new challenges that led him
to take two firm decisions. Only 19 days after taking office, he published the Necessity
and Urgency Decree No. 267. This was followed by the creation of the Commission
for the Preparation of the Bill for the Reform, Updating and Unification of Laws No.
26,522 and No. 27,078 (from now on the Commission), as established in the article 28
of the Necessity and Urgency Decree mentioned. Although the Decree also stipulates
the presentation of a preliminary draft within 180 days from the constitution of the
Commission, the latter requested the extension of the term, but, until now, it has not
yet raised any draft bill.
One year after the creation of the Commission, Mauricio Macri signed the Necessity
and Urgency Decree No. 1340/16, whose objective was the reform of laws No. 26,522 and
No. 27,078. The government said that these modifications sought to overcome issues such
as distortions in competition, high costs, and damages for users, to create a regulatory
context tuned with the development of the media and telecommunications industry.
The current process of regulatory reform reaffirms once again the democratic
aspirations of the international regulations to which Argentina has followed and
also expresses the will to supply the need for adequate regulation of technological
convergence, correcting inconsistencies and overlapping areas of previous laws (LACS
and Digital Argentina). The guiding principles of such reform, which will guide the
definition of the preliminary draft law, are contemplated in Resolution 9/2016.
Next, we will consider three aspects that, in our opinion, play a fundamental role
regarding State’s responsibility to guarantee the full enjoyment of the human right
to freedom of expression and access to information. We aim to analyze government’s
initiatives on regulatory reform presented in 2016, in order to evaluate if they are
adequate to international regulations principles subscribed by Argentina.
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The guiding principles of the Commission that approximate this objective refers
to public control and social monitoring of the new regulatory framework as well as
guarantees for citizen participation and respect for the principle of federalism. This
Commission proposed to open the process of reformulation of the regulatory framework
to the interested parties, contemplating an instance of direct citizen participation.
The Commission organized a meeting with the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of
Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); carried out 20
participatory meetings, collecting the contributions of 76 organizations; 2 international
seminars with 16 national and international experts gathered in 5 discussion panels; 5
academic debates in Buenos Aires, Cuyo, Córdoba, Jujuy and Rosario, where 26 specialists
participated in 8 panel discussions; received 3 additional contributions; and, finally,
made a digital consultation (#SumáTuAporte) from September 22 to December 15, 2016,
from which received 700 opinions, up to 300 characters each, of registered citizens.
3 Reviewer’s note: Enacom is described on its website as an autarchic and decentralized entity
operating under the Ministry of Modernization of the Nation. Its purpose is to drive the process of
technological convergence and create stable market conditions to ensure access to all Argentinians
to the Internet, mobile and fixed telephony, radio, post offices and television. Enacom was
created in December 2015 through Decree No. 267, which established the agency as regulator of
communications in order to ensure quality service to all users. Source: <https://www.enacom.gob.
ar/institucionales_p33>
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If we take into consideration the actors invited to join in the participatory meetings,
we observe that they were, mainly, commercial chambers (18), business associations,
commercial associations or cooperatives (15) and non-profit organizations (16). To a
lesser extent, worker’s unions (8), public entities (8) and federations and confederations
(5) participated. Among these actors, the most represented areas or industries were
telecommunications and Internet (14), TV broadcasting (9) and radio transmission
(8). This is not a surprise since those companies are in a dynamic core as the ones
with the most favorable externalities (Becerra, 2017). However, it should be noted that
the actors focused on issues related to the protection of civil rights and democratic
strengthening represented only 11.8 % of the participants. Organizations representing
the interests for gender equality put particular emphasis on the need to include in the
regulatory framework, transversely, sectors with the least possibility of participation
and representation in the media, as well as the incorporation of a non-sexist language
in the drafting of the new law (ENACOM).
Finally, considering the series of meetings mentioned above and in view of the
publication of Decree 1340/16, which seems to skip the necessary deliberative step in
strengthening a regulatory framework on media, it is worth asking to what extent
citizen participation in the process of elaboration of the preliminary draft law is not
reflected only in the discursive plane, in contradiction with the practice. As stated by
Santiago Cantón, former Rapporteur of Freedom of Expression and former Executive
Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the participation of
citizens and other interested actors must provide an exchange of ideas, otherwise, a
freedom of expression law would be only complying with the formalities, but mainly
he would be looking to avoid real participation (ENACOM).
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The role of the State as guarantor of rights supposes that it must regulate, monitor
and act in the face of possible violations of freedom of expression. As it refers to essential
services for the citizen, the State must have an active role so that the administration of
communication services does not generate situations of abuse of a dominant position
while promoting universal access to said services.
For its part, the guiding principles of the Commission establish that the definition of
democratic criteria for the assignment of licenses is necessary; the neutrality, openness
and competitiveness of the networks; the plurality and diversity of audiovisual content;
and the guarantees of political, religious, social, cultural, linguistic and ethnic pluralism
in the media.
However, Decree 1340/16 presents a series of worrying measures, since they favor
the market concentration, a fact that acts to the detriment of plurality and pluralism
within the ICT media system.
Article 3 protects for 15 years the last mile4, a standard defined by European regulation,
for example, as a cause of unfair competition, since it favors the protectionism of
certain actors for many years.
On the other hand, the dominant industries are favored by looser assignments
of access and exploitation of the radio-frequency spectrum. In fact, it postpones the
obligations of companies that acquired spectrum licenses for 4G three years ago, which
is a free access pass for large media companies. Also, it allows telephone companies
to operate cable TV licenses and, conversely, cable operators operate mobile phone
licenses.
All this makes possible the market convergence when historically dominant players
can access new concentrated markets by marginal cession of their principal market.
These regulations not only affect the rules of entry for smaller actors but also affect
plurality and pluralism, ignoring international principles of protection of freedom of
expression5. In this sense, during the participatory meetings, many positions were
4 Reviewer’s note: last mile refers to the part of a network infrastructure that allows
the connection between backhauls (intermediary infrastructure) and the end-user of a
telecommunications services.
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raised to reflected the need to open the market and develop a regulatory framework
that allows this, as well as ensuring the maintenance and access of various actors to
the ICT market and the generation of content with linguistic, ethnic and geographical
diversity, among others.
It should be noted that many actors invited to the participatory meetings raised
concerns related to both the current market concentration and the existing tensions
to ensure pluralism. The positions covered ideas ranging from the protection of low-
power media - which today represent 70% of Argentina’s communication companies
- and of small broadcasting companies in areas with little access to the Internet, to the
protection of content on different media.
The Necessity and Urgency Decree 267/15 ordered the creation of the National
Communications Agency (ENACOM) to replace the Federal Authority for Audiovisual
Communication Services (AFSCA in Spanish) and the Federal Authority for Information
and Communication Technologies (AFTIC in Spanish). Then; the decree established a
single regulating agency for audiovisual communication services and information and
communication technologies.
As regards its composition, four of the seven ENACOM board members are appointed
by the National Executive Power, while the remaining three are appointed by the
Bicameral Commission for Promotion and Monitoring of Audiovisual Communication,
Telecommunications Technologies and the Digitalization of the Congress of the
Argentinian Nation at the proposal of the parliamentary blocs, corresponding one to the
majority or first minority, one to the second minority and one to the third parliamentary
minority (which gives it a fifth possibility of appointment to the party of government).
the full exercise of people’s right to information. In no case should such laws apply exclusively to
the media. The concession of radio and television broadcast frequencies should take into account
democratic criteria that provide equal opportunity of access for all individuals.”
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Board members have a four-year mandate and can be removed by the National
Executive Power directly and without expression of a cause. Currently, the ENACOM
board is made up of an official majority: Miguel de Godoy (PRO), Heber Martínez (PRO),
Silvana Giudici (PRO) and Alejandro Pereyra (PRO), Miguel Ángel Giubergia (UCR), Claudio
Ambrosini (Frente Renovador) and Guillermo Raúl Jenefes (FpV). Likewise, the ENACOM
is monitored by the General Syndicate of the Nation and the General Audit of the Nation.
This panorama indicates three irregular aspects regarding the nomination process,
the composition and the attributions of the national regulator, as elements that can
condition their independence. First, the procedure by which the creation of the same
was arranged and the consequent merger of the pre-existing control bodies, that is,
the AFSCA and the AFTIC, through a Necessity and Urgency Decree, which bypassed the
democratic and deliberative instances of legislative treatment. On the other hand, the
National Executive Power not only had broad interference on the creation and regulation
of the agency, but the nature of the board nomination violates the guarantees of political
independence since it is mainly made up of members of the executive party. Finally, it
is this same Power that can revoke the mandate of all board members, without the need
to specify the causes, generating an apparent imbalance of power.
The new decree 1340/16, also, assigns greater powers to ENACOM. Although the
“quadruple play” service package (fixed telephony, mobile, cable TV and Internet
service) will be valid for Rosario, the City of Córdoba, the Federal Capital and Greater
Buenos Aires, ENACOM will be able to enable it in the rest of the country (Article 5).
Also, the decree not only assigns the regulator the capacity to command the rules of
administration, management, and control of the radio-frequency spectrum but also
gives it the power to assign and manage spectrum frequencies and authorizes it by
establishing compensation, obligations of deployment and coverage (Article 4).
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4_CONCLUSIONS
We need to understand that the actions are taken so far, rather than promoting
competition or investments attraction from new players, favor the expansion of the
two or three dominant companies in each sector (fixed telephony, mobile telephony,
broadband and paid television), increasing the power of the conglomerates and,
therefore, contributing to the concentration.
About all the above, it is worth noting the existence of a well-known discursive
change at the governmental level regarding the objectives of communicational policy.
Despite both governments - Cristina Fernández and Mauricio Macri - have proclaimed
criteria of democratic participation as the axis of their policies, the former highlighted
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- at least on the discursive level - the need to expand the number of voices in the
public space through divestment of the dominant market companies, while the latter
and current government says to be oriented to the strengthening of the conditions of
economic competition and to adequate adaptation to the convergent processes.
Experience has shown us how the political will of the Kirchner government was
insufficient for the crystallization of a communicational democracy, while its actions
tended to the implementation of a system of rewards and punishments from which
they favored political allies - owners of media companies -, and they tried to silence
opposition voices.
In these instances, we face a new issue, before which we must, as citizens, act
promptly. We need to identify early action indications aimed at the concentration that
decrease plurality and pluralism, as well as monitor government actions to demand
more legal security at all stages of the development of the new standard, respecting the
principles that conform international standards in the field.
_REFERENCES
Becerra, M. (2016). Audiencia en la CIDH sobre los DNUs de Macri. Retrieved from
<https://martinbecerra.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/audiencia-en-la-cidh-sobre-los-
dnus-de-macri/>
Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its Critics. 6th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Digital Argentina Law (Ley Argentina Digital) (2014, December 19). Ley No. 27.078.
Desarrollo de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones. Retrieved from
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<http://www.saij.gob.ar/desarrollo-tecnologias-informacion-comunicaciones-ley-
argentina-digital-desarrollo-tecnologias-informacion-comunicaciones-ley-argentina-
digital-nv9937-2014-12-16/123456789-0abc-d73-99ti-lpssedadevon>
Loreti, D., & Lozano, L. (2014). El derecho a comunicar. Los conflictos en torno a la
libertad de expresión en las sociedades contemporáneas. 1 ed. Buenos Aires: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores.
Necessity and Urgency Decree 267/15 (2016, January 4). Creación del Ente Nacional de
Comunicaciones (ENACOM). Retrieved from <http://www.saij.gob.ar/creacion-ente-
nacional-comunicaciones-enacom-creacion-ente-nacional-comunicaciones-enacom-
nv13584-2015-12-29/123456789-0abc-485-31ti-lpssedadevon>
Resolution 9/16 (2016, March 1). Resolución para la creación de la Comisión para la
elaboración del proyecto de ley de reforma, actualización y unificación de las Leyes Nro
26.522 y Nro 27.078. Retrieved from <http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infolegInternet/
anexos/260000-264999/260465/norma.htm>
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CONSUMER PROTECTION
IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
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_THEMATIC
Digital Rights
New problems of Internet
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) considers
the digital economy as part of a new vision of development that may operate as a
catalyst of a structural change, promoting long-term investment, diversification of
the productive structure and greater convergence in productivity levels of the whole
economy (ECLAC, 2013).
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We can also identify a need to ensure the net neutrality, which is an important
step to guarantee to consumers an open access to the Internet and that identical types
of traffic will be treated equally. One of the usual ways to define the term is the non-
discrimination of contents, applications, and services by Internet service providers.
According to this rule, the user should not notice differences when navigating at a
website or another.
Another important issue is the pursuit of reduction of barriers that slow down
the cross-border e-commerce development, regarding to the rules for regulation of
cross-border parcel shipment and taxes to sale of goods and services, that, due to
their fragmentation and to the lack of transparency, difficult e-commerce, which is
characterized by crossing borders (European People’s Party Group, 2017).
Among the objectives pursued by these alternatives, there is the one associated with
the protection of consumers that have been damaged by online companies, particularly
when the damages are of low economic value and that the dispute has transnational
focus. Additionally, they aim to promote the expansion of e-commerce, especially
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regarding small and medium companies, providing simpler mechanisms for dispute
resolution (Gonzalez, 2012).
Another aspect that needs to be considered when pursuing the safeguard of online
consumer rights is the one associated with the portability of people’s digital life, which
involves the possibility to demand the release or transfer of anything under consumer
ownership, from mobile phone number to the data provided to a particular online
platform. Then, the consumers do not get attached to the services of one single provider
and can always rely on the freedom to choose different online products and/or services
offered by several providers.
Also, it is worth demanding fair commerce practices in the new digital environment.
Some of them, according to the OECD recommendations, are associated with not
distorting or hiding contractual terms and conditions that could affect the decision
of buying or trying to hide identity or location. Those practices should not result in
deceptive practices related to the compilation or use of personal data, including not
specifically informing that the service is provided in exchange for a compensation
which escapes the traditional monetary.
Besides, special care must be taken in the marketing activities directed to children
or other vulnerable consumers, such as seniors. Another example is associated with
looking for safe products online since many countries have online those who have been
declared unsafe in offline market. Therefore, those who operate in the digital market
should cooperate along with government agencies to prevent those practices from
spreading (OECD, 2016, p. 10-12).
Likewise, new products and/or services available to users, such as IoT devices,
demand a strict compliance with the duty of information from providers, who should
be aware of consumers’ need to better understand the features and limitations of these
new products. In this respect, the United Kingdom Information Economy Council has
elaborated a voluntary recommendations framework designed to consumers, in order
to respond to user’s expectations and provide them with appropriate information about
their rights and obligations on IoT ecosystem (BT, 2014) (OECD, 2015).
Another example of the duty to inform in this context is providing clear information
about the conditions related to the acquisition and the use of digital content such as
online music and movies, which are often sold with legal or technical limitations of use
(Koopman, Mitchell, & Thierer, 2015).
Finally, it is worth mentioning a model that has provided power to the consumer
in terms of e-commerce, the reputational feedback mechanisms, those that provide
the user an opinion agency. This tool has such an importance that a great number
of brands that operate in this digital ecosystem rely on it to establish trust among
providers and consumers.
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3_FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The behavior of consumers goes hand in hand with the actions and growth of the
private sector, and it is necessary for their mutual rights and obligations to find fair
balance for both, bearing in consideration the fact that digital economy benefits both
users and providers, so their development and success rely on a digital market where
security and trust between actors generate greater advantages for the Information Society.
_REFERENCES
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2013). La Economía
digital para el cambio estructural y la igualdad. p. 99. Retrieved from <http://www.
cepal.org/ilpes/noticias/paginas/3/54303/Economia_digital_para_cambio.pdf>
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2016). La nueva
revolución digital: De la Internet del consumo a la Internet de la producción. eLAC 2018
La revolución digital. Santiago. p. 95. Retrieved from <http://repositorio.cepal.org/
bitstream/handle/11362/38604/4/S1600780_es.pdf>
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Koopman, C., Mitchell, M., & Thierer, A. (2015). The Sharing Economy and Consumer
Protection Regulation: The Case for Policy Change. 8 J. Bus. Entrepreneurship & L. 529.
p. 541. Retrieved from <http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/jbel/vol8/iss2/4>
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A FIELD OF LAW TO
INTERNET GOVERNANCE
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_THEMATIC
Digital rights
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
As a young lawyer, I decided to get involved with Computer Law almost from the
middle of my university career. The articles I have written and the ideas I have had
arisen from the perspective of this field of Law. The subjects related to the Internet were
not an exception since Computer Law always seemed to fill the methodological needs
of my analyses.
This time, I share a reflection that came from a recent questioning: What right is
required for Internet governance?
The Internet brings challenges that should not be ignored or minimized by the
Legal science. Computer Law does not ignore but minimizes those challenges when
considering them in the same field related to computing and technology in general.
As a first idea, I would say that the issues pertaining to the Internet and its
governance should be addressed from the perspective of an exclusive field of Law.
This should not be taken as a hyperbole, due to the wide range of challenges derived
from the expansion and growth of the Internet, and its relevance as the main driver of
innovation and development today.
Notably, the social reality arising from the socialization of the Internet is complex.
From a legal perspective, its study is not filled by using any of the existing fields of Law,
since none of them fulfill the degree of specialization demanded by topics pertaining to
Internet governance.
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lie exclusively in the action of a computer, but also in the decisions made by people.
In this context, the term Computer Law is imprecise, since it strictly refers only to
information processed by computers, but not to the accumulation of human actions
that shape the development of the Internet as the primary technological tool of this era.
Computer Law, in fact, is a very general field of Law for the study of issues related
to the governance of the Internet. Recall that the Computer Law was born to respond,
from the legal field, to a social reality built by the irruption of computers. Why not think
that, with the emergence of the Internet, a new field of Law is required to give answers
to the social reality built up to now?
Recently, I had the opportunity to read an excellent article by Dr. Pablo García Mexía,
entitled “Internet Law.” In that article, Internet Law is designated as a very new, global,
quickly adaptable, highly specialized and expansive field, an option that legal science
offers to solve the most persistent issues related to the Internet (García Mexía, 2016).
The author, similarly, alludes to a fascinating reason why it would be worth adopting
Internet Law: those who exercise it should be highly familiar, from a multidisciplinary
perspective, with the digital world, so that the norm that they propose, the defense they
channel or the sentence that they emit can reach a minimum technological sense: in a
word, they could just ‘work’ (as in engineering the machine is required) when applied to
a technical reality (a search engine, a link, an algorithm, etc.) (García Mexía, 2016, p. 28).
From a broad view, thinking within Computer Law about the challenges that the
Internet brings could result in decisions with little or no “minimum technological
sense”, which could threaten the development and evolution of the Internet, turning it
inoperative due to the very nature of the network. Therefore, it would be worth thinking
about a specialized Internet law.
While it is true that in the article by Dr. Pablo García, there is no reference to the
value of Internet Law for Internet governance, the truth is that there is, while the degree
of specialization forces those who exercise it to know the technical characteristics of
the Internet and the aspects of social, economic and political development that it keeps.
In effect, the analyses carried out by lawyers specializing in Internet Law should be
closely related to the broad approach of Internet governance.
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3_CONCLUSION
The Internet Law appears as the answer that best suits the needs of Internet
governance. Other legal fields, such as Computer Law, are imprecise and leave aside the
specialization required in the study of topics about the Internet.
It would be worthwhile to rethink the intersection of Law with the Internet and
be aware that their meeting point is complicated and will continue to increase in
complexity, as long as the Internet continues to be the central column of innovation
and development. Furthermore, the challenges arising from the social reality built by
the Internet make clear the need for a specialized field of Law to take charge of them.
Internet governance will hardly be sustained if those who are committed to it lack
the specialization that the Internet demands. This applies to those lawyers and youths
who seek to contribute to the development of the Internet as a means to promote
technological innovation and strengthen human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
_REFERENCES
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DIGITAL CROWDFUNDING
AS AN EXAMPLE FOR THE
CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL
CAPITAL AND THE GROWTH OF
COMMUNITIES
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
The participation in the nations growth lies in the collaboration that people make
for people (Fukuyama, 1996); you cannot demand something you do not know or you
have not lived. It is not fortuitous that democracy is “the power of the people”, and
that people are needed to bring about efficiency in governments. Thus, what makes
democracy work is precisely community life (National Electoral Institute [INE], 2014.
p.84), and this can only be achieved through the union of people.
Given the deepness of the network connection made from computers linked together
as nodes, one of the most rational ways that this paper considers when connecting
people with the community in a process of instigating an action is through the Internet.
The vote of confidence granted from people to a figure of governmental power seems
to be extinguished, causing impotence and frustration, resulting in the demanding of
other forms of communal support or pursuit for a better living situation. In a world
with many needs and where most of the people live submerged behind a screen, the
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present paper proposes right there a reborn of the sense of community. According to
Lipovetsky and Serroy (2009, p. 269) the current and tomorrow individual, permanently
connected by mobile and laptop, with these screens is in the center of a reticulated
tissue whose amplitude determines their daily life activities. Could the screen that
holds captive looks an intermediary for the communities to reform? An example of
this is in the economic sustainability network that nowadays has a great boom, better
known as crowdfunding.
Since everything happens through the Internet, the operation works at a meager
cost; the platforms that disseminate the project will only charge a percentage of the
monetary “goal” finally obtained. In case the project does not reach the total collection
of the economic objective, neither the beneficiary nor the platform gets money, and
the proceeds are returned to the grantees. Recently, some of them charge a higher
percentage (9% vs. 5% of others) for granting the beneficiary the money collected, even
if it is not the amount that his goal established. The transaction is secure, and the
interested party has a good chance of receiving the amount he needs (Steinberg, 2012).
The crowdfunding became popular with the rock bands of the British and American
independent scene that had followers but were not commercial enough for a record
label to bet on them. In 1997, the British neo-progressive rock group Marillion1 was the
pioneer of this initiative: when they found themselves in financial straits, they wrote
an email addressed to the database of their fans, asking them if they would agree to pay
a copy in advance of his new album. The response was unexpected and decisive: they
1 The Virgin record label dedicates an article in its magazine about it. This is the league where
you can consult: “How Marillion pioneered crowdfunding in music” <https://www.virgin.com/
music/how-marillion-pioneered-crowdfunding-in-music>
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received 12,000 orders for a disc that was just beginning to be planned. Since it was paid
by the people, the band did not have to submit to the creative pressure of a record label,
nor did they have to assign copyright or lose utility points in paying a third party for the
promotion and distribution of the material.
Unlike the crowdfunding of Marillion, the way in which this practice currently
operates in a digital format is more sophisticated and no longer necessarily depends
on the possession of a database, but a good promotion strategy. Digital funding
platforms are nothing else but well-made web pages in large servers that allow hosting
information and act as intermediaries in a closed economic transaction through online
payment services, such as PayPal, and digital payments by credit card. The most famous
platform of them is Kickstarter.
Although the rapid and constant evolution of the Internet makes us believe that the
network of networks has always existed and has evolved as slowly as the other media;
it’s not like that, and Kickstarter proves it. The idea was born in 2002 within the head of
Perry Chen, who was looking for ways to bring innovative shows to cities that are not so
popular (and which apparently are not included in concert schedules), looking for fans
to pay in advance for bringing the artists. When trying to implement it so that a famous
jazz duet went to New Orleans, it did not work. But the failure left a very fixed question
in his head: What would happen if there was a space to upload proposals in search of
people to support them? Chen looked for Yancey Strickler (programmer) and Charles
Adler (designer), and the three gave life to the first online crowdfunding platform in
20092: Kickstarter, which has gone through all kinds of projects where several of them
have reached and have even raised a million dollars.
The Internet does not discover new things, it merely magnifies and massifies them.
The popularity of Amanda Palmer and her band, Dresden Dolls, grew analogous and
digital to the point of being “discovered” by a record company that offered to record and
distribute their first commercial material. The dream ended almost as soon as it began:
her contract was rescinded because the material did not sell as expected, even though,
according to the band, it raised more than what could have been expected in life (Palmer,
2 The story is told by Strickler on the fifth anniversary of Kickstarter, here: <https://youtu.be/
qcR_UHV0tKE>
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In practical terms, the Internet functions as the largest intermediary that connects
individuals in a large multinodal source4; but, finally, they are the ones who decide
if they are involved with a cause or not. Crowdfunding is not charity, as some want
to think, stated Amanda Palmer; adding that her “supporters” were buying a product
(Palmer, 2014 p. 237). In the case of Amanda Palmer, the monetary results coincided
with the number of followers in her database and social networks; it was they who
contributed the money because there was a direct relationship with the project: the
interest to support a new material of the artist. Finally, the network or platform is not
the one that generates trust, but the people.
Although successful, Amanda Palmer’s project was not immune from public
mistrust and the thousands of trolls that questioned for what would she use the money
for. Her social networks and blog were flooded with complaints and insults, questions
about how to manage a project, speculation about their lifestyle and other issues. The
detractors did not really understand that the proceeds would leave little use (economic)
for the artist: everything would go to the rewards offered and to develop the product that
was already prepaid. In the face of criticism, Palmer argued that effective crowdfunding
is not about trusting the goodness of strangers, it’s about trusting in the goodness of our
own people (Palmer, 2014 p. 224).
Mexico is known at first sight as a generous country. And we are, yes, when
“giving” implies doing it only once and for particular and ephemeral events: natural
disasters, possible economic difficulties of someone close to us, temporary situations
3 The full story is told by Amanda Palmer in one of the TED Talks with the highest number of
visits: <https://youtu.be/xMj_P_6H69g>
4 I use the term “node” as Castells coined it to name people who relate to the Internet.
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In Mexico, it is a reality that solidarity and the spirit of help are manifested in
a disjointed manner and with limited impact, as stated by Layton & Moreno (2010,
p.14). It is not by chance that this happens. From the time of the conquest until our
days we have lived with the idea that “others”, mainly the government or the church,
are the ones who should take charge of the less wealthy. Also, corruption and impunity
undermine confidence. Culturally we confuse “philanthropy”, understanding it as
the love for the human race that is expressed in a constructive way in the altruistic
help to those who need it more than oneself, without expecting something in return,
says Layton & Moreno (2010, p. 15). It may be expressed with charity, an obligatory
help within a religious vision offered to orphans, widows and sick people, considered
“helpless”, or with assistance, which is a temporary relief to solve a need; philanthropy
focuses on, according to Zúñiga (2005, p .7), proposing and developing acts that improve
the quality of life of a person or a group, and promote works that benefit the community
rather than helping isolated individuals. The Mexican citizen does not have the habit of
helping in the long term; it seems that the contribution should be only occasional and
with an undeniable impact so that it does not diminish their trust (Layton, & Moreno,
2010). In this context — of a country deeply hurt by corruption, that does not have a
cultural sense of the donation and does not know the difference between a recurrent
project of social empowerment and giving eventual alms to a person — it was born in
2011 Fondeadora, the first digital Mexican crowdfunding platform (Ramsey, 2013).
The platform was well received, even though in Mexico only 57.4% of the population
has access to an Internet connection (Excelsior, 2016) and there is a likely resistance of
Mexicans to online payment to the point that they implemented payment terminals in
the convenience store “OXXO” so that those interested could contribute without needing
5 Translator’s note: The habit of rounding values in Mexican street commerce due the lack of
coins is controversial, as some sellers promise to distribute the amount that the consumer paid
more to charity projects, but many do not prove that.
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a credit card or having to face the fear of registering it on the Internet (Ramsey, 2013).
Today Fondeadora has delivered more than 5 million pesos to those who have achieved
their goals6.
But, like the case of Amanda Palmer, reaching the goal is not random and, contrary
to what is thought, dissemination does not always help the social health of the project.
Being part of the network in the convergence of the community with new technologies
gives you exposure, but also leaves you vulnerable. However, as we stated, the operation
of digital networks to find funds that result in social projects can result in actions that
benefit in the construction of the social fabric, that encourage citizen participation and
that strengthen societies through called “social capital.” In the words of Robert Putnam,
associative life is one of the characteristics of social capital, not only because through
organizations and associations social links and networks are established, or work is
carried out under common objectives or interests, but also because, through them,
they develop norms of reciprocity and trust, as well as patterns of cooperative behavior
(Putnam apud Layton & Moreno, 2010, p 113).
In this regard, it is worth emphasizing that, although the lack of participation and
mistrust of the Mexican is proven and evident, it should also be considered that it can
be changed, since there are elements that demonstrate it, such as the fact that there are
more than 50,000 Mexican Civil Society Organizations contributing to the reconstruction
of the social fabric in the country from their different altruistic activities. Layton and
Moreno show that the land is not arid, as social capital has continued to operate in the
rural sectors of the country.
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Thus, it is clear that, although the Mexican situation is complicated, it is not an arid
land that cannot be rescued through collaborative work and mass funding, such as the
one proposed by crowdfunding.
The key is to assimilate that this integrated society that evolves is built from citizens.
Participation has already been spoken of as the fundamental axis for democracies to
establish, strengthen and grow; the governmental institution is consolidated from
society. In this regard, what must be worked on is the engagement of citizens in Mexico
to understand that government is not everything, it is not the everlasting problem
solver, nor should it bear the full responsibility of a nation (it is important to stress that
this do not make government immune from its responsibilities and duties as the head
of a country). The point is: to sustains itself, a country depends on the collective work
between its people and its institutions, the participation of the people who collaborate
FOR the people, and the strengthening of the networks of the social fabric.
4_CONCLUSIONS
“The way we think and feel determines the way we act. And
changes in individual behavior and collective action undoubtedly
influence and gradually modify the rules and institutions that
structure social practices”7
(Castells, 2009, p. 393)
7 Translator’s note: originally in Spanish, the sentence is “La forma en que pensamos y
sentimos determina la forma en que actuamos. Y los cambios en la conducta individual y la
acción colectiva sin duda influyen y modifican de forma gradual las normas e instituciones que
estructuran las prácticas sociales”.
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Throughout this work, it has been explained the importance of the social capital
as a fundamental ingredient for the construction and consolidation of societies
growth. Social capital is developed based on the participation of people in and for their
communities, in the search for benefits for all. Community social action activates
the interest and knowledge of local issues and the search for a collective work or the
requirement for government institutions to solve them. Castells points out in his book
“Communication and Power” (“Comunicación y Poder”) that for a population to assume
a cause it must live it. Likewise, it is indicated several authors’ analysis on the Mexicans
inherent distrust, which is provided mainly by the corruption that has predominated
in the country for several years; the uncertainty caused by the changeable party system
of government that oversees its own interests; and the cultural vice that one has with
respect to the other: in Mexico, people, among themselves, are not considered reliable.
In this regard, there is much to work. Starting from the idea that the road for
the construction of social capital is in the communities, they have to assume the
responsibility of building social trust through transparent activities and resources that,
following the logic already analyzed in this work, sooner or later will carry the society
to a search of transparency mechanisms in every sector.
_REFERENCES
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Díaz, M. (2015). ¿Qué tan influyente eres? El capital social en la era de Internet.
Hipertextual. Retrieved from <https://hipertextual.com/2015/09/capital-social-internet>
Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (1997). The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us
About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny. New York: Broadway Books.
Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2000). Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group.
National Electoral Institute, & Mexico School (Instituto Nacional Electoral, & Colegio de
México) (2014). Informe País sobre la Calidad de la Ciudadanía en México. Mexico City:
INE.
Layton, M., & Moreno, A. (2010). Filantropía y Sociedad Civil en México. Mexico D.C.:
ITAM.
Martínez, D. (2014). El porqué de las dudas con el Teletón. Sin Embargo. Retrieved from
<http://www.sinembargo.mx/08-12-2014/1186509>
Palmer, A. (2014). The Art of Asking. New York, United States of America: Hachette Book
Group.
Steinberg, S. (2012). The Crowdfunding Bible: how to raise money for any startup, video
game or Project. United States. Overload Entertainment, LLC. Read.Me
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
Ackerman and Sandoval (2015) show that the right to information evolved by
extending the power to freedom of opinion and expression, recognized in Article 19 of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in Article 19 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and in Article 13 of the American Convention
on Human Rights or Pact of San Jose (ACHR). Furthermore, Cendejas (2007) states that it
is the freedom of expression that broadens its scope to perfect itself, to define faculties
that really make it useful and incorporate the scientific and cultural evolution of our
days and that are indispensable to consider; as well as to guarantee society truthful and
timely information as an essential element in the democratic and plural State.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in its most recent work of interpreting the
first amendment, established that freedom of expression entails the freedom to listen
and the prohibition on the State to limit the information to which the public can appeal
(Ackerman, & Sandoval, 2015, p.14).
It is important to note that one of the pioneering countries in the matter is surely
South Africa, by marking in section 32 of its Constitution that “everyone has the right
of access to a) any information held by the state; and b) any information that is held
by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights”
(Ackerman, & Sandoval, 2015, p. 23).
Within the universal platform, it is clear in article 27.2 of the UDHR the protection of
the creators of original works and the call to the member countries to promote, respect,
protect and guarantee these prerogatives. Dismembering the international corpus iure,
the authors have an additional recognition in article 15, clause c) of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), in the Berne Convention, the
WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and in other international treaties administered by the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); as well as in the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) conducted by the World Trade Organization.
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By the inter-American regional sphere, stand out numeral 14.1, clause c), of the
Protocol of San Salvador, the Inter-American Convention on the Rights of the Author
in Literary, Scientific and Artistic Works. Endorsing this imperative commitment, its
justiciability was recognized in the Palamara Iribarne v. Chile case of 2005, as it is evident
by Dr. Eduardo de la Parra Trujillo (2015), in paragraphs 102, 103 and 107, referring to the
fact that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights makes a progressive interpretation,
linking the copyright with the private property, the freedom of thought and expression
recognized in the Pact of San Jose.
As is well known, the tensions between the rights theme of the present incident
are not new, but because of the length of this paper we will not go into the substantive
study of the endless weighing of the right to information and copyright. So, this paper
only intends to be illustrative for the reader.
The issue arises when illegitimate reproductions are made on the web, or worse,
marketed in it, without the authorization of the author or the owner and due payment
to the creators. The holders of the copyright argue that this act of reproduction and
communication to the public severely harms their interests, primarily economic. On
the other hand, users are protected under the protection of the right to information,
culture, and education.
In the previous conflict, some proposals have arisen to give the proper harmonizing
treatment of the interests in collision. Dr. José Manuel Magaña Rufino (2013), according
to articles 9.2 of the Berne Convention and article 13 of the TRIPS Agreement, points out
the well-known rule of three steps of cumulative nature, which grants some exceptions
to copyright such as the citation of texts, when it comes to current events, a private
copy, a security backup and an anthology. However, the exceptions only cover the
complete reproduction of the work in some cases.
With the intention of protecting online works, rightsholders have had to use
technological protection measures based on the provisions of the WCP and the
WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), a situation that has led to the
mobilization of several sectors, especially librarians and educational institutions. The
Connector Foundation and Open Connection have tried to reconcile, suggesting that the
information is delivered confidentially and said sectors could deactivate the protection
measure in case of digital preservation, private copy or when it passes into the public
domain. Also, Kenneth Crews (2008) proposes that in virtual or distance education, the
works are granted with the provisions that allow easy manipulation by students (open
formats), warning them that these actions should not extend beyond the community-
academic, nor should they be subject to any distribution or commercialization.
2 The term copyleft began to be used in the 70s as a humorous deformation of copyright,
alluding to the vindication of freedom against it.
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Changing the topic, it is important to analyze the legal policies driven by websites
such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. At first, the user is the owner of the contents
uploaded to the platform, but once they do it, they can grant websites an international,
non-exclusive, accessible and free license4 with sub-license rights, transferable so that
others can use, reproduce, modify or distribute them, even for commercial purposes.
However, these websites recognize and respect the intellectual property rights of third
parties. Therefore, they reserve the right to remove content that allegedly infringes
intellectual property rights, in its sole discretion, without prior notice and any
compensation to themselves (except for safe harbor).
Before beginning a process to remove illegal content from the Internet, Professor
Gerardo Muñoz de Cote (2016) suggests that the jurisdiction and the applicable law, the
complainant and the defendant, the infringed content, the costs and times, as well as the
action for dissemination (the Streisand effect5) should be analyzed strategically. Then,
a similar process, contained in the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act6) begins 1)
The content owner sends a warning to the ISP (Internet service provider); 2) ISP disables
the content; 3) ISP warns the alleged infringer of the claim; 4) The presumed offender
may send a counter notification (counter cleaner) to the ISP; 5) ISP restores access to the
content; 6) The owner starts a lawsuit claiming permanent disabling of the content; 7)
Legal action is sent to the ISP, which must permanently disable the content.
5 Reviewer’s note: The “Streisand Effect” is an Internet phenomenon that happens when an
attempt to censor or remove some content from the web ends up having the opposite effect,
resulting in its vast replication and access. It was designated by Mike Masnick in 2003, after a case
involving actress and singer Barbra Streisand. Alleging privacy concerns, she sued for 50 million
dollars a photographer and a website for them to remove an aerial photography on the Internet in
which her mansion on the California coast was visible. The news caused an expressive increase of
accesses to the photography, quickly taking an inverse proportion to the one the artist wanted.
6 United States Act that, among other matters, establishes limitations on the responsibility of
ISPs (Internet service providers)
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2_EPILOGUE
a. One of the most acclaimed requests is undoubtedly what that the library sector,
the archives, and educational institutions carry out every day. It is important
to point out that these entities do not intend to ignore copyright at all, much
less infringe the law; however, what they seek is a harmonization of wills on
the part of the legislator, so that it may legally grant them better exceptions,
and thus they can fulfill their noble work of spreading information, culture,
and education, especially virtually or remotely.
To illustrate the previous point, Magaña (2015) highlights the decision of the Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit of the United States in the Viacom v. YouTube. After the
interpretations made of article 512, clause c, of the DMCA, the Court ruled that the ISP
could not invoke the safe harbor exception since it did not react immediately to remove
or prevent access to the material. Likewise, the Court applied to the case, although with
certain limitations, the doctrine of voluntary blindness.
c. One of the challenges the rightsholders must face is determining the applicable
law and the competent court. In this purpose, Dr. Antonio Hidalgo Ballina (2013)
points out that the decentralized operation of the network of networks makes
it almost impossible today to apply and regulate human actions expressed by
the network itself, that is, the difficulty in applying the laws in the physical
territories. Fortunately, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Grand
Chamber), in the case Google Spain, SL, Google Inc. v. Spanish Agency for Data
Protection (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos), Mario Costeja González
(Magaña, 2015), claimed that although it is true that the case is a matter of
data protection and this jurisprudence is not binding on non-member States, it
could serve as soft law, since another issue in the litigation was precisely the
resolution of the competence and the jurisdiction towards the ISP. Therefore,
the Court decided that
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Mexico did the same with another matter of protection of personal data, in file
PPD.0094/14 against Google Mexico, S. de R.L. of C.V.7 (Google Mexico), resolved by the
then-named Federal Institute for Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data
(Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos Personales, IFAI in its
initials in Spanish)8. An individual wanted to make effective his right of opposition and
cancellation of personal data. Google Mexico argued in its defense that it is not the legal
entity that lends, or manages the operation of the search engine service “Google”, thus
directed the owner to go to Google International LLC and Google Inc., whose address is
in California, USA. However, the Mexican guarantor body did not consider this defense
valid and evidenced that according to the notarial instrument No. 38,627, Google Mexico,
S. de R.L. de C.V., is integrated by the partners Google International LLC and Google Inc.,
and also that in the instrument mentioned it is indicated the commercialization and
sale of online advertising and products and services of direct marketing, in Mexico or
abroad, on their own behalf or by third parties, as well as the provision of all types of
services through electronic means, including without limitation, services search engine
[emphasis added], instant messaging, email, storage, reproduction and retransmission
of data and similar services attached and related.
About the preceding, the then-named IFAI, revoked the response of Google Mexico,
requiring that the rights of opposition and cancellation of the owner must be turned
active and demanding the beginning of the procedure
for the imposition of sanctions. IFAI confirmed, then,
its competence and jurisdiction over the famous
NOR ARE THE RIGHTS search engine.
TO INFORMATION,
EDUCATION Concerning what was previously described
AND CULTURE and paraphrasing Dr. Federico Pablo Vibes (2015),
NECESSARILY innovation has brought new benefits that have
QUARRELED WITH contributed to information and communication.
However, if the intellectual property of third parties
COPYRIGHT
over contents is not respected, this means less
income for the rightsholders and, consequently, less
investment for the creation of new works.
Finally, it is worth saying that technology is not good or bad; it depends on the
use given to it; nor are the rights to information, education and culture necessarily
quarreled with copyright. Merely the former is conditioned in some cases that if a
protected work is to be used, it is necessary to have the permission of the rightsholder,
8 After the constitutional reform of 2014, the guarantor body was given full autonomy and it was
transformed into the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data
Protection (INAI).
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since they invest time, effort and even money to create their works. Therefore, it is
fair that their effort be acknowledged, asking previously for authorizations to use the
work for free or paying when appropriate, reiterating that the need for a right balance
between intellectual property and the free flow of information is undeniable.
_REFERENCES
Conector Foundation, & Open Connection. (2016). Texto de observaciones del sector
bibliotecario nacional al proyecto de ley por la cual se modifica la ley 23 de 1982 y se
adiciona la legislación nacional en materia de derecho de autor y conexos. Retrieved
from <www.conector.co>
Fernández, C., & Chaves, J. (2010). Excepciones al derecho de autor en beneficio de las
bibliotecas: situación de América Latina y el Caribe. Chile: IFLA; Retrieved from <http://
www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2010/121-molina-es.pdf>
Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) In Case C‑131/12 (2014). Retrieved from <http://
curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=152065&doclang=EN>
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137
CONTENTS AND CULTURAL GOODS _ SILVANA CRISTINA RIVERO
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN
THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
In this era, when the digital economy has a preponderant role, Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) are essential for economic development. Among the
goods deployed and disseminated through these means, are the intellectual property
works, which face this scenario of new challenges.
The companies have several mechanisms for the appropriation and protection of the
results that their investments in research and development generate. At the lawmaking
level, with the variations that exist in each nation, it is possible to identify a regime of
patents, utility models, industrial designs, copyrights and trade secrets.
On the other hand, it can be considered that at the global level, there is currently an
asymmetry about the use of intellectual property mechanisms in developing countries
and those used in developed countries, the latter being higher. This circumstance is
linked to the capacities to innovate and generate products and/or technological services
in the different regions (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean,
[ECLAC], 2016).
1 Cloud Computing: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the United States
and its information technology laboratory defined this new concept as a model to enable convenient
access on demand to a shared set of configurable computer resources, such as networks, servers,
storage, applications and services, which can be quickly provisioned and released with a minimum
effort of administration or interaction with the service provider (Mell, & Grance, 2011).
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as the phenomenon provided by the Internet of Things devices2 and the services over-
the-top (OTT)3.
Another issue to be resolved is the fact that the exercise of rights and exceptions on
the Internet, as it has been proposed up to now in traditional media, loses its meaning.
A clear example is the use and distribution of intellectual property work in digital
format, which generates challenges to what, until now, has been considered the right
of reproduction and the right of public execution.
We must identify the advantages that the digital economy may generate for works
under intellectual property, such as the diffusion and scalability of the use of intangibles
through ICT. At the same time, intellectual property, exercised within the scope legally
provided, is an additional mechanism to encourage development and innovation in the
Information Society.
Among the products, and/or services that can be protected by the intellectual property
regime in the digital environment are all those that contain music, photographs,
software, industrial designs, trademarks, domain names, among others. These goods
can be found in software, networks, websites, platforms, applications and any other
means that allows access to the work.
Currently, the value of those intangibles owned by companies is such that it exceeds
the relevance of their tangible products. This situation means that the importance of
protecting the results of developments is even more significant.
2 Internet of Things, or IoT, includes everyday things that connect to the Internet. In this way,
objects previously connected by closed circuit, such as communicators, cameras, sensors, among
others, may globally communicate through the Internet.
3 Services over-the-top (OTT) is an online service with the potential of substitute traditional
telecommunications and audiovisual services that are supported over the Internet, such as voice
telephony, SMS and television, and that uses TCP/IP protocol for operation.
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Some regimes are suitable at the national level, so that before the need to
enforce them outside the boundaries of a given sovereignty there is a burden on the
rightsholder, which implies carrying out the necessary procedures and registrations
in those jurisdictions where they seek to assert the action; in this case, of trademarks
and patents, except for the cases in which the Madrid Agreement Concerning the
International Registration of Marks (World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO],
1989) and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the International Patent System (WIPO,
2017), are applicable. Other regulatory regimes, such as the case of copyright, are protected
globally, beyond the place where the work is registered, when the Berne Convention
applies. This circumstance is linked to the fact that registration in some instances is
constitutive of rights, while sometimes it is required for evidentiary purposes.
In summary, the issues regarding jurisdiction and applicable law generate that
some intangibles have only territorial protection, so their distribution through the
Internet creates a need to define rules and flexible mechanisms to achieve protection
in other jurisdictions.
For its part, the Universal Copyright Convention adopted in Article III, a formula
consisting of the inclusion of
The fulfillment of such a formula has the effect of replacing any formality required
by domestic law in those countries that ratified the convention.
Currently, reigns Article 50 of the Berne Convention (WIPO, 1979), which eliminates
the effects of any formality required by national law concerning foreign works, in those
countries to which both agreements apply.
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Although the Paris Convention, as the Berne Convention, covers aspects of the
problem, its objective is, first and foremost, to codify substantive norms. For its part,
the TRIPS Agreement (World Trade Organization, 1994) created a wide-ranging system
for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Notwithstanding this, when this
agreement was approved, the Internet had its first manifestations in the trade field and
e-commerce, as it is known today, was not foreseen. Since the mid-90s, the Internet
has undergone constant development and has created new issues to traditional
mechanisms of compliance with intellectual property rights (WIPO, 2000, p. 31).
One such issue raised on the protection of intellectual property at the jurisdictional
level is the online content/application blocking. This type of blocking is usual when
it comes to accessing content across borders, due to territorial restrictions linked to
the intellectual property regime. In effect, geo-blocking practices include the refusal
of a state’s consumers to access the contents of websites based in other states. These
practices may affect access to the content. The situation described should be considered
in order to take actions to mitigate or prevent unjustified geo-blocking; then, this leads
to debate on the effects generated by the exclusive territorial authorization and, in this
sense, the obstacles the industry can generate.
In this line, there are instant compliance mechanisms, which include the
generation of frameworks that instruct fast compliance by Internet service providers. At
present, we can identify the notification and take down provisions provided in the United
States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (WIPO, 2000, p. 32). This mechanism
has generated controversies regarding the guarantees that must be respected and the
competent body that must ensure them.
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contact between supplier and consumer, the trademark is what identifies the product
and/or service and, in this sense, what attracts the online user. For this reason, the
situation described causes the diffusion of these intangibles in a broader market and,
at the same time, generates greater relevance regarding the function they accomplish.
All the assumptions previously mentioned and many others that have not been
analyzed in this article due to its brief nature, together with their issues and advantages,
show the need to introduce the debate on the intellectual property regime intended to
be safeguarded against a space in which the digital reigns.
3_FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Another instrument that may be useful to achieve a delimitation of the rights and
duties at stake around intellectual property is the establishment of a limit to the liability
of intermediaries for third-party content. This is intended to provide legal certainty on
the mechanism used by providers to give rise to the rights claimed by the owners of
works, but at the same time, it contemplates those guarantees that must be protected,
such as the freedom of expression.
Another way to facilitate the use and proper exercise of intellectual property on
online works is to establish good compliance or specific standards both for those who
are users and for those who upload and/or manage content. This helps to prevent
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illegitimate uses, as well as possible abuses, in the exercise of such intellectual property
rights by the rightsholders.
_REFERENCES
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2016). Ciencia, tecnología
e innovación en la economía digital: La situación de América Latina y el Caribe.
Segunda reunión de la Conferencia de Ciencia, Innovación y TIC de la CEPAL. Santiago.
p. 29-30. Retrieved from <http://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/40530/3/
S1600833_es.pdf>
Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing. National Institute
of Standards and Technology. U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST Special Publication,
800-145.
Núñez, J. F. Contenidos y límites del derecho marcario. Ed. Thomson Reuters. Cita
Online: 0003/007503.
World Intellectual Property Organization (1883). Paris Convention for the Protection of
Industrial Property. Retrieved from <http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/treaties/text.
jsp?file_id=288514>
World Intellectual Property Organization (1979). Berne Convention for the Protection of
Literary and Artistic Works. Retrieved from <http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.
jsp?file_id=283698>
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CONTENTS AND CULTURAL GOODS _ SILVANA CRISTINA RIVERO
World Intellectual Property Organization (2017). PCT – The International Patent System.
Retrieved from <http://www.wipo.int/pct/en>
146
INNOVATION
AND
TECNOLOGICAL
TRAINING
INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ MARTHA CISNEROS + DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
INNOVATION POLICIES
TO ENHANCE USE
OF TECHNOLOGY BY
IMMIGRANT POPULATION
MARTHA CISNEROS
M.S. Information Science and Knowledge Management, ITESM 2012.
martha.cisneros@baruchmail.cuny.edu
Mexico
DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
M.A. in Society, Science and Technology, European Master’s
Programme.
damarisccl@gmail.com
Mexico
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ MARTHA CISNEROS + DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
_THEMATIC
Digital inclusion
Innovation and tecnological training
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
Policy makers have an important role in society since they contribute to the
formulation of some of the rules that need to be followed by all people to live in peace
and harmony. Political discussions are concerned with giving priority to issues that
society considers the most important. As Bruno Latour (2013) manifests, politicians
are key players in the negotiation process of reordering such priorities, granting the
opportunity of inclusion to those entities that were excluded in the construction of the
collective1. For this reason, policy makers have an outstanding responsibility to even the
odds out to grant the same opportunities to all individuals. Certainly, in the matter of
use and access to technology, innovation policies are not excluded.
National Innovation Systems (NIS) (cf. Lundvall et al., 2009) are defined in great
measure by policies and the government’s digital agenda to encourage technological
development and research. The approach that innovation policies take towards social
development would allow the different actors in the NIS to address not only subjects in the
matter of economic growth and productivity but also other problems that could affect or
prevent the progress and consolidation of the innovation system itself. Some examples of
1 Bruno Latour (2013) uses the word “collective” as the ensemble of humans and non-humans
that conform our existence. In his book, he stresses that the environmental issues and nature
in general, would be considered as part of the reality in the measure that the different actors
– among which there are the politicians – use their powers to incorporate, negotiate, and
institutionalize the new entities into the so called collective.
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Income inequality is mostly present in the studies that explore the negative effects
that inequality has on the capacity to innovate in certain country or region. This may be
explained by the fact that poverty is directly related to poor education and unfavorable
conditions for getting a well-payed job. In this sense, Arocena and Sutz (2009) talk about
the vicious circles that are present in these conditions of social disparities. They point
out that inequality affects not only the capacity to innovate but also the level of use
and consumption of high-technology products. When the access to technology is not
guaranteed for everybody, only a few people would enjoy the benefits of innovative
solutions in terms of productivity and quality of life. Only a few would be able to
consume it and to participate in the development of new features. Hence, unequal
access to technology is an obstacle that needs to be addressed to ensure the desired
progress in the capacity to innovate.
According to Cozzens and Kaplinsky (2009), there are two different types of
inequalities: vertical inequality and horizontal inequality. The former is characterized
by a disproportionate distribution of a valued good among the population (overall
income distribution for a nation, for example). The latter is also an unequal share
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ MARTHA CISNEROS + DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
Arocena and Sutz (2003) expose the existence of learning divides in the global
knowledge-based economy. These divides accentuate the differences between countries
and individuals and hamper the opportunities to participate in knowledge-demanding
tasks. For the authors, learning societies are characterized by the participation of a
reasonable proportion of the population in activities where “knowledge is shared,
exchanged, and created” (Arocena & Sutz, 2003). However, to participate in these
activities certain skills are needed. That is where the need for technological training
arises and puts in evidence, the divide between certain groups of individuals that have
access to technology and the others who don’t.
In front of these uneven conditions, it is important to recall the fact that the existing
policies and regulations that are mainly concerned in boosting the innovative capacity
of countries and regions, help not only to strengthen economic growth (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development, [OECD], 2015) but also to enhance the
processes of technological learning (Cimoli, Dosi, Nelson, & Stiglitz, 2009). Yet most of
the time the development of skills that are essential to participate in a knowledge-
based economy is expected to be part of the formal education system. For that reason,
the majority of the institutions that constitute the Innovation System fail to correctly
attend to the lack of opportunities that the people outside formal education have
regarding their technological training.
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By providing not only technological tools but also the right training to use them for
people living under unfavorable conditions, governments could abate inequalities that
impact societies.
Cornelius (2004) states that the motives of migration mobility, its causes, and effects
are carried out on two poles. From the pole of expulsion, the causes of emigration are
the rapid demographic growth, the persistent deterioration of the environment, the
diminution of the levels of economic and social well-being, and the impact of political
phenomena like the 5 turbulences of irregular and violent changes of Government,
religious persecution, among others. From the receiving pole, constituted by mainly
developed countries, the consequences as mentioned above will have an impact on
labor markets, communication security and social and educational services.
On the one side, the receiving pole is mainly constituted by developed economies
such as US, Germany, or France. The challenges that immigration represent for these
host countries’ are well known and have been documented for quite many centuries:
how many immigrants to accept, what rights and special services to provide them,
and how to control undocumented immigration. Moreover, according to Cornelius
(2004), modern democracies such as Australia and Netherlands now all face the same
questions.
Nonetheless, the United States of America, for example, a country that was
founded by immigrants around 300 years ago, continues to thrive and to deal with the
phenomenon of immigration from different angles. Political, economic, and education
topics are some of the main issues modern democracies have to deal with as part
of the results of the arrival of immigrants from all over the world. The creation of a
multicultural environment in the local labor market and communities has been part of
this immigration phenomenon since its inception.
On the other side, the problems that countries in the pole of expulsion are facing,
are also part of this immigration phenomenon. These countries usually have an
underdeveloped economy, and even though it has changed throughout the years
due to the rise of a shared economy and a digital information revolution that is
“empowering potential usage of new technologies, and with the complex mix of
strategies, policies, investments, and actions, they might be able to create digital
opportunities for their emigrants” (G8 Information Center, 2001). Although there
are social programs for immigrants in their local community within their new
residence country, enabled by the home country, digital literacy programs are far
from being implemented as part of these social initiatives. There are social programs
supporting health and educational components.
For instance, México, according to the Women National Institute (2013) — INMUJERES
by its initials in Spanish —, through the organization and different governmental
agencies promotes 77 programs that provide care and guidance on issues related to
education, employment, financing, and investment, protection of Mexican people
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On the other side of the ocean, the Syrian refugees that have migrated to countries
with a different language and culture than their own, such as Turkey and Germany, have
been using smartphone applications to navigate their new life in a new political system.
Gherbtna is a good example, a smartphone application created on 2016 by a Syrian refugee
living in Turkey. It has proven success according to its statistics: over 40,000 downloads,
90,000 likes on Facebook, and an average of 3,000 daily page views of the website. It contains
four services per the news tech portal Mashable (Lopez, O., 2016): Information, relating to
asylum procedures and broadcast via infographics and animation; News; Opportunities,
which advertises apartments and jobs legally suitable for refugees; and Help Me, where
refugees can ask questions about health, education and other legal services.
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The rapid growth of mobile technologies and their adoption has facilitated access
to new tools and new forms of communication among vulnerable populations.
Immigrants as part of these populations, base their digital communication with their
governments and family through their mobiles devices. Access to a computer could be
at their fingertips through social programs of interaction with the technology of both
the receiving and the emitting pole or as a product of collaboration between them. The
cost of formal or alternative education for high technology could be an obstacle for
governments to improve their digital contact strategy for their co-nationals.
To certify the access to mobile devices and its usage, a statistic on Latinos mobile use
in the city of New York in United States has been considered for this research. The data
presented is based on a 12th month study adult National Consumer Study (NCS/NHCS)
from the Summer 2015 (Late July 2014 – Early September 2015) gathered throughout the
Simmons OneViewTarget system2. The results stated that 24.5% (683,356) of the Latino
population that is living in New York use Internet3. They mostly use mobile phones
(99%) (Figure 1) and social media (75%). They often access social sharing/networking
websites from different devices (91%). They visit a social media website 3 or more times
a day and 58% of them use Facebook.
Figure 1
80
77%
70% 70%
60
51%
40 47%
34%
29%
20
22%
0
E-Reader Game Mobile PC
Magazines MP3 Newspapers Radio Tablet Television
Console Phone at Work
Source: Self production with information of Pew Research (Lopez, M., Lopez, G., Brown, 2016).
2 Simmons OneViewTarget system contains data from the National Consumer Study, an annual
survey of U.S. consumers’ buying and media habits.
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a landline phone where only a cell phone is available and to access the internet from a
mobile device. Even when the immigrant population has spread throughout the world,
the Hispanic population in America is part of Pew Research to illustrate the impact of
the Internet usage throughout mobile devices.
Two of the core development issues for the adoption of Internet-based solutions in
immigrant-majority populations are the digital divide and the lack of an educational
support system that promotes digital citizenship.
First, the gap between people with effective access to digital and information
technology and those with very limited or no access at all is mainly known as the
Digital Divide. The disparity in both access to Internet and the resources to build up
education and skills required to adequately collaborate with the information society
as an active digital citizen are two of the main roadblocks on the way to reduce the
digital divide worldwide. On the one hand the physical access to technology, including
Internet, has improved significantly due to the enablement of social and non-
governmental initiatives (cf. OECD, 2017) through international Institutions such as
World Bank, empowering ICT connectivity in South Africa, as a specific example, the
continuous collaboration to promote projects that expand e-government capabilities.
Corporate responsibility programs that promote Internet affordable access such as the
Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative (cf. Microsoft, 2017), have played a substantial
role in reducing the Internet accessibility gap. Nonetheless, the challenges for having
complete and equal access to technology around the world have proved to be enormous.
For instance, according to the ICT Facts and Figures report published by the International
Telecommunication Union (2016), by the end of 2016 around of 53 percent of the world’s
population still lacks Internet access. In that same report is also possible to see the
difference between regions: while Europe has around 79 percent of its population
connected, Africa has only 35 percent. This proves the huge disparities of opportunities
that exist for people living in different countries around the globe.
Second, there is a lack of educational and innovation policies that endorse digital
citizenship as a main part of the curriculum and as a priority for vocational and social
programs that promote awareness of what it means to be a citizen in the cyberspace.
Digital citizenship is the ability to participate in society online, according to the MIT
Press (2006). Digital citizenship is crucial for social inclusion (Warschauer, 2003) as it
ensures the access, use, adaptation and production of knowledge. To promote digital
citizenship participation, Mike Ribble (2015), an ISTE4 author, proposes nine core elements
that students should know to help them navigate the Internet: (1) Literacy, Rights &
Responsibilities, (2) Etiquette, (3) Access, (4) Commerce, (5) Security, (6) Communication,
(7) Law, (8) Health and (9) Wellness. These core elements, one way or another have
been implemented in America’s formal education, but the lack of policies that promote
this curriculum and the accessibility to this information in a non-formal learning
4 International Society for Technology in Education is a NGO in the field of education technology.
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environment that focuses on vulnerable populations throughout the world is still a goal
to reach. Without a clear understanding of what does it mean to actively participate as
a citizen in a digital society, we will continue to face issues such as cyberbullying, data
breaches, security risks, etc. At this point is important to remember that education is
key to opportunity and prosperity.
5_CONCLUSIONS
Innovation studies have addressed for some time now the harm that social
inequalities can do to the innovative capacity of a certain country or region. As it was
stressed in this essay, these inequalities often relate to income distribution and the
lack of opportunities to participate in activities that are knowledge-demanding. The
phenomenon of immigration is causing a reconfiguration in societies and, if it is not
correctly addressed, it may give birth to new types of inequalities.
Although there are some statistics on the use of technology in some countries,
we recognize that further analysis is needed to fully understand the impact that
technological devices and the use of online platforms have to provide services for
immigrant populations. To have a better appreciation of the level of access and actual
use of online services and other technological tools could help to design policies and
regulations directed to support and strengthen social inclusion.
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_REFERENCES
Arocena, R., & Sutz, J. (2003). Inequality and innovation as seen from the South.
Technology in Society, 25, 171–182.
Arocena, R., & Sutz, J. (2009). Sistemas de innovación e inclusión social. Pensamiento
Iberoamericano, 5, 101-120.
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Lundvall, B.-A., et al. (2009). Handbook of Innovation Systems and Developing Countries:
Building Domestic Capabilities in a Global Setting. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ MARTHA CISNEROS + DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
MARTHA CISNEROS
Martha Cisneros is an IT engineer with 6
years of experience in the private and public
sector, currently pursuing a Master of Public
Administration at Marxe School of Public of
International Affairs- Baruch College in New
York. Her research focuses in educational
technology, immigration advocacy and
Internet policy analysis. She’s an Internet
Society Next Generation Leader from the
December 2015 cohort.
DÁMARIS CONTRERAS-LUZANILLA
Dámaris Contreras is a former Software
Engineer with more than five years of
experience in IT industry. She owns a
master’s degree in History and Philosophy
of Science by the University of Strasbourg
and is accredited by the European
Master’s Programme on Society, Science
and Technology for her specialization in
Economics and Management of Innovation.
Her research is focused on innovation
policy, social innovation, inequality and
development.
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TOWARDS A DIGITAL
ENLIGHTENMENT:
HOW TO BUILD CRITICAL
THINKERS IN THE DIGITAL ERA?
FERNANDO A. MORA
Ph.D. in Ethics, visiting researcher at the Iberoamerican Institute
in Berlin, Germany
feromd@gmail.com
Mexico
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ FERNANDO A. MORA
_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ FERNANDO A. MORA
The 2014 Oscar-winning film for Best Original Screenplay Her, tells the story of a man
who falls in love with a computer operating system (Samantha). The plot unfolds in a
near future, not-so-fictional-world where society is used to performing all its activities
through technology. The film poses a scenario where people have created such a symbiosis
with technological tools that users and gadgets begin to develop relationships commonly
considered exclusive of human beings, such as friendship and love.
This article does not attempt to make an absurd and unsuccessful effort to advocate
for a ‘des-technologized’ humanity or, to point out a devilish side of technology. After
all, technology is amoral; it is independent of ideas such as good and evil, and only the
uses that people make of it are subject to the scrutiny of ethics.
The intention lies in the educational project that society must address now to build
citizens who make responsible use of technology, and specifically, in digital technology.
Marc Prensky, the expert in education, points out today’s youth are the first
generation formed in the new technological advances, which they have them embraced
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ FERNANDO A. MORA
by immersion, since young people have always been surrounded by computers, videos,
video games, digital music, cell phones, and other gadgets (Prensky, 2012).
Nowadays, there is the belief that every problem can be solved through the mere
presence of technology. There is an obsession with creating apps for every problem.
But, is it truly digital technology a tool for raising better human beings and, as a
consequence, better societies? Now that the Internet is cohabiting our daily lives; do we
have a generation of young people who use technology to be more involved in politics,
to be more informed citizens or to improve their lives and in turn, their community? Or
perhaps, are these tools mainly used only for leisure and personal enjoyment?
Alessandro Baricco, the famous contemporary Italian writer, has pointed out the
disruptive nature of millennials who breathe through the gills of Google and value
velocity over deepness (Baricco, 2008). He calls millennials as ‘barbarians’ because
they are ‘destroying’ or reshaping the traditional and old ways of being civilized. By no
means, it is a cry of nostalgia where old times were better; on the contrary, it is a reality
check that new generations are rashly changing society’s values due to the accelerated
revamping of technology.
It is true that Internet started an information revolution never before seen since
the Gutenberg Press: the so-called information era, where people have access to a vast
world of content, and to connect with the global
population. However, just as in the fifteenth
century the invention of printing was not per se
NOW THAT THE
cause of a society turned to Enlightenment, but a
INTERNET IS
tremendous opportunity for people to have access
COHABITING OUR
to knowledge that was once exclusive to the elites.
DAILY LIVES; DO WE
HAVE A GENERATION In the 21st century, it is necessary to rethink
OF YOUNG in the appropriate skills that our societies
PEOPLE WHO USE require, to have the greatest benefits from the
TECHNOLOGY TO BE technological advances.
MORE INVOLVED IN Immanuel Kant, in his essay What is
POLITICS, TO BE MORE Enlightenment? Summarizes the spirit of
INFORMED CITIZENS Enlightenment in the famous Latin locution
OR TO IMPROVE THEIR sapere aude! Or dare to think for yourself! (Kant,
LIVES AND IN TURN, [1784] 1979). The German philosopher notes the
THEIR COMMUNITY? urgency of societies constituted by independent,
and free-thinking persons responsible for both
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INNOVATION AND TECNOLOGICAL TRAINING _ FERNANDO A. MORA
himself and his society. That is to say, Kant stresses that the Enlightenment means
forming individuals who are capable of generating their decisions, are critical of their
reality and respectful of the laws that allow the common good.
In this way, making reference to the Kantian idea, the real educational challenge
aims at generating in the young, and in the new generations, tools, and skills inserted
in a ‘digital enlightenment.’ Persons immersed in the digital world that are capable
of using technological tools through critical thinking; responsible citizens who are
focused on the full development of themselves and the society to which they belong.
Some educational trends are striving towards educational innovation and making a
particular emphasis on the inclusion of technology knowledge in academic programs.
In this vein, there are courses in disciplines such as History, Mathematics, Finance,
Psychology, Literature, etc. where the use of smartphones, tablets, and apps has become
the hallmark of innovation. However, the mere inclusion of technology in the course
of any discipline should not be thought of as a way to innovative education. Innovation
would be that technological tools open new opportunities for students to enrich,
manipulate, transform, and apply the knowledge that each discipline offers.
Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, divided practical virtues into two levels
(Aristotle, 1983). The first one, and the lowest refer to the technique (techné). This virtue
is oriented to production, and gives an answer to the question, how can something be
produced? It refers to the possession of skills and knowledge that enables the person
to transform a thing into something else, for example, the technique of a carpenter to
change raw wood into a fine piece of furniture. In the second level, there is the virtue of
prudence (phrónesis), which Aristotle defines as that practical wisdom that allows the
individual to deliberate and choose what suits him best in his life as a whole. In this way,
the possession of this virtue enables a person to achieve happiness and fulfillment. This
virtue gives an answer to the question, what is best for me? Unlike technique, prudence
transforms the person himself through the individual actions that he unfolds in his
life. For example, this prudence or practical wisdom is a balance between knowledge
and skills that allow a person to decide how many chocolates should he eat to enjoy
them moderately without risking his health.
Under this understanding, prudence or practical wisdom has more weight in the
development of people, because it is through the knowledge associated with this virtue
that the individual grows and approaches to a state of wellbeing. That is, through the
technique, a shoemaker will master the art of producing better shoes, but it will be
through practical wisdom that the shoemaker would be able to make the best decisions
for his life, and thus achieve wellbeing.
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Having tech-knowledge is good; there is no doubt about that. For example, nowadays,
knowing how to code is a valuable skill, which is highly treasured by many companies.
However, knowing how can I use coding to make my life and people’s life better is a
heightened knowledge that is not merely related to the technique, but with practical
wisdom. This latter knowledge is not acquired through the domain of technology, but
through critical thinking, which allows people to use available technology to solve problems.
Horkheimer and Adorno point out that the promise of technological reason to
attain a state of well-being was a deception of enlightened reason. The crisis of the
Enlightenment project lies on the idea that knowledge should be more technical than
critical. The fear of these Germans philosophers was that the mysterious willingness of
the technologically educated masses to fall under the spell of any despotism, due to the
absence of critical thinking.
The Korean philosopher, Han Byung-Chul, recovers this idea and speaks of the fatigue
society. He denounces that people today have opted for submission, and have done so in
exchange for a barely interesting way of life, almost of pure survival. In return for this
kind of life, people have given up their sovereignty and their freedom. In the past, external
agents like slavery or feudal systems exploited people. Now, in a neoliberal model, people
have become exploiters of themselves. In neoliberalism, work is synonymous of personal
fulfillment or personal optimization, until person’s collapse. The society of fatigue is a
society of self-exploitation performance; man has become an “executioner and victim of
himself”, thrown into a terrible abyss: failure (Byung-Chul, 2012).
The constant presence of digital tools in our daily lives encourages and intensifies
this self-exploitation. Smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets have made it possible.
In this respect, it is somewhat ironic that the emblematic smartphone of the company
RIM has opted for the name Blackberry, because, during slavery times in the United
States, ‘blackberry’ was one of the names of the iron ball chained to black slaves’ feet.
The strong emphasis and pursuit of technical knowledge leads to a society destined
for frustration and failure. A society absent of tools to allow people to give life’s
meaning. Society becomes a conglomerate of automata embedded in the work-life
without intentions or dreams to realize.
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how we construct identity. Hence, we should start asking ourselves, what type of society
are we building if it is grounded on digital copies of ourselves?
For this reason, the proposal is educational models return to the original principles
of the Enlightenment outlined by Kant and adapt them to the millennial generation
immersed in technological advancement. Consequently, to educate on innovation should
aim to build people with skills and capacities that allow them to use technological tools
for the benefit of their person and society.
In this sense, education can be understood as in the German concept of Bildung, which
includes a holistic formation: religions, arts, moral conscience, and the processes of
social production and reproduction. The idea of Bildung indicates an active and dynamic
process aimed at the transformation of reality. In this way, the philosopher Johann G.
Herder defined it as an intellectual process of formation, education, and realization of
human plenitude linked to the concept of Aufklärung, that is enlightenment understood
as the awakening of rational consciousness (Subirats, 2013).
The educational innovation specialist, Tony Wagner, affirms the most important
skills to be developed in students are seven: critical thinking and problem solving,
networking collaboration and influence leadership,
agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurship,
effective communication – both oral and written – access
EDUCATIONAL
and analyze of information, curiosity, and imagination
(Wagner, 2010).
MODELS,
WHILE THEY
The first skill, critical thinking and problem-solving, MUST INCLUDE
refers to the ability to be curious and wonder why things TECHNOLOGICAL
are and simultaneously think about why something is INNOVATION,
important. While the idea of critical thinking is a phrase MUST NOT
that has recently become fashionable in the world of
LOSE SIGHT OF
education, it should not be overlooked that the intent to
THE FACT THAT
develop this skill refers to individuals having a broader
THEIR PRIMARY
understanding of ongoing problems. That is, they can
see beyond the present, think about the future and think
MISSION IS TO
systematically to be able to connect the points. It is a less ENABLE PEOPLE
linear way of thinking where people can conceptualize TO DEVELOP AS
but also synthesize a large amount of information INDIVIDUALS
(Wagner, 2010).
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The second skill Tony Wagner refers to the ability to work collaboratively. It is
recognition of the current context where individuals who can engage in networks of
people across borders and different cultures have become an essential requirement
for multinational companies (Wagner, 2010). The skill resonates with the idea already
announced by Manuel Castells: “Networks constitute the new social morphology of our
societies and the diffusion of network logic substantially modifies the functioning and
results in production processes, experience, power and Culture” (Castells, 2001). Although
the form of social organization through networks has already existed in other times
and places, the new paradigm of technology provides a basis for its wide expansion in
any social structure. Hence, the ability to collaborate in networks is an essential ability
to adapt to the contemporary world.
Parallel, given the vast speed of changes – social, economic, and technological – in the
current context, the capacity for agility and adaptability is fundamental. The ability to
respond to disruptive shifts and the passion to adhere to new ideas has become essential.
A fourth skill refers to those individuals who can take the initiative and be
entrepreneurs as they seek out new opportunities, ideas, and strategies for improvement.
Due to the rapid pace of change, individuals with the greatest opportunities will be
those who are highly adaptable and grasp new opportunities.
The mentioned skills turn out void whether there is no real ability to communicate
in written or oral form effectively. Currently, many working young people have
difficulty being clear and concise; they are unable to express their thoughts effectively.
Technology has made this capacity even more complex; now it is necessary to effectively
communicate through presentations, video conferences, email, text messages, in
addition to traditional forms. So now, the key to this ability lies not only in being able
to communicate thoughts in a clear and concise way but also the capacity to create a
focus, as well as to transmit it with energy and passion.
The sixth skill mentioned by Wagner refers to the ability to find and analyze
information, a fundamental skill in a digital world. Due to the exorbitant amount of
information that people have to handle both in their jobs and in their daily lives, today,
being an active and informed citizen, is not limited to being able to read newspapers.
Now, a person should be able to find and evaluate information from many different
sources; discriminating news from authentic or false, fact-based or mere opinion. A
skill linked to critical thinking.
Finally, having a capacity for curiosity and imagination are essential to developing
in young people. Creativity and innovation are key factors not only for problem-solving
but also in the development of products, services, and ideas (Wagner, 2010). Besides, this
ability gives a more human element to the world that tends towards automation in all
its dimensions and sees workers as replaceable components.
Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie, is a classic parody of the dehumanized
worker due to technology. As an assembly-line worker, Chaplin’s character is always
getting into trouble with the bosses and ends up getting caught in the cogs of the
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Instrumental reason becomes palpable in the practices of the market, where the ads
of different products exist exclusively to sell more and to generate more utilities, which is
not pernicious at first instance, as this is the goal of any company. However, the danger
lies when these practices begin to ‘colonize’ – in Habermas’s words – other aspects of
the world. For example, when companies dedicated to producing and selling refreshing
beverages are advertised as companies generating ‘happiness’ and a ‘healthy life.’
Habermas says humanity forgot the other half of the project of the Enlightenment.
Although the instrumental reason for progress has been exploited, on the other hand,
the cultural dimension of modernity has been forgotten. Rationality consists not only
in possessing a particular knowledge but also in how individuals capable of speaking
and acting, acquire and use that knowledge (Habermas, 1999).
With jobs being automated and knowledge being devalued, humans need to
rediscover flexible thinking. That starts in schools. Charlotte Blease explains that:
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The proposal of Digital Enlightenment rests on the intention, on the one hand, to
build in people capacities and abilities that allow them to adapt to the digital world.
On the other hand, it also means that people would be able to reflect on the goals of
their lives, aware of the responsible use of technology and able to collaborate in the
development of their communities; mindful of the fact that the project of modernity
can become pathological when money and power colonize the world of life (Habermas,
1999).
While critical thinking is vital to teaching and knowledge, the approach given in
recent years to this ability has pushed a generation that admires disbelief as a sign of
intelligence. Taking a quick look at Twitter and Facebook timelines finds that cynicism
and sarcasm are the new symbols of cleverness, belittling the value of wonder and
ignorance that accompanies the doubt. Cynicism distances people from listening and
dialogue, and from collaborative participation. If today we keep raising cynical young
people, incapable of recognizing self-ignorance without fear, in the future, we will have
unempathetic grown-ups incapable of putting themselves in each other’s position.
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realize that the future will not be of the technicians able to manipulate the technology,
but of those people with the tools and the understanding to give the answers to the
questions ‘What to do with technology? And, where to direct it?’
Sherry Turkle explain the opportunity we have to shape our societies in a positive
way where technology is an ally and not a threat:
In the Digital Enlightenment, the educational model for millennials and digital
natives should build people and citizens who, in addition to knowing how to use new
technologies, have an ethical criterion of directing it towards the best purposes. In
addition, to assume a responsibility of including marginalized young people of the digital
age. That is, embrace the commitment to bring those who, due to different factors, have
not benefited yet from technological advances. And finally, that the Kantian sentence
of daring to use our own reason, is not only oriented to the modern vision of progress
or to the laws of the market, but also is directed to finding new and better solutions for
the development of our personal lives as for our communities. If technological advances
drive us to this, we will be closer to recognizing ourselves as an enlightened society.
_REFERENCES
Aristotle (1983). Ética Nicomaquea (A. G. Robledo, Trans. 2a ed.). México: Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México.
Baricco, A. (2008). Los bárbaros: ensayo sobre la mutación (X. González Rovira, Trans.).
Barcelona: Anagrama.
Blease, C. (2017). Philosophy can teach children what Google can’t. The Guardian.
Retrieved from <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/
philosophy-teach-children-schools-ireland>
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Castells, M. (2001). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and
Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment (E. Jephcott, Trans.).
Stanford, USA: Stanford University Press.
Kant, I. ([1784] 1979). ¿Qué es la Ilustración? (E. Ímaz, Trans.) 2a ed, México: FCE.
Newberger Goldstein, R. (2014). What Would Plato Tweet. Retrieved from <opinator.
blogs.nytimes.com>
Prensky, M. (2012). From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom. London, UK: Corwin.
Roth, M. S. (2014). Young Minds in Critical Condition. The New York Times. Retrieved
from <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/young-minds-in-critical-
condition/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_
type=blogs&ref=opinion&_r=2&>
Turkle, S. (2012). Alone Together: Why We Expect more from Technology and Less from
Each Other. New York: Basic Books.
Wagner, T. (2010). The Global Achievement Gap. New York: Basic Books.
FERNANDO A. MORA
Ph.D. in Ethics from Tecnológico de
Monterrey Mexico City Campus, and
now he is a visiting researcher at the
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin,
Germany. He has implemented educational
technologies strategies and seeks to prepare
young people to answer the questions that
aren’t googleable. His professional experience
and academic background intersect the
areas of Ethics, Education, and Democracy.
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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Papacharissi (2002), Freelon (2010), Bennett & Segerberg (2013) support the premise
that the web allows the promotion of public debate. The Internet is a space that
mediates between the State and the citizens; a new kind of public sphere with no
restrictions that created new ways of neutral and free interaction among both. But,
for the average user, the virtual space is not so neutral and not so free given that
governments and corporations monitor our online actions and gather all our data,
measuring our behaviour online. The first does it for national security reasons, the
latter, for commercial interests.
The online space is rule by private entities that owned the online platforms where
users spend most of their time online. These companies make a lot of profits from
user’s online behaviour data. Advertising’s revenues changed the Internet’s dynamics
creating giant multinational technology corporations. Decisions made by algorithms
limit the neutrality and access to information. Those algorithms and companies’ terms
and conditions filter the information billions of people around the world read and share
daily. The Big Five tech corporations: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft
are the biggest winners of the Internet era, and they dominate the digital life. On their
platforms and devices users search, shop, and socialize.
These companies are turning more indispensable. Their platforms and devices are
where everyone is and it is unthinkable for new generations to imagine their lives without
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The consumption obsession intertwines with our online behaviour, and the
corporations know it well. The profits they are making around social behaviour online
are enormous. In 2016, the Big Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft)
ended up among the top 10 most valuable American companies of any kind (Manjoo,
2016). According to the Internet Trends Report, in 2015 .75 cents of every dollar spent on
online advertising went to Google or Facebook (Meeker, 2015). Smaller companies lost
market share, and analysts suggest they are predestined to stay on the sideline of the
dominant players. To this large concentration of market power, we can add the capacity
of this ‘duopoly’ to establish the rules of the sector. They are transforming the whole
industry and impacting the way in which we interact and behave online. Everything
happens on the same platforms, around the same people, on the same devices. Users
are becoming passive consumers of information and products.
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democracy (Habermas, 1981). We saw some of this during the U.S. presidential election
of 2016. Polarization took over social media.
Eli Pariser exposed the negative aspect of this new medium; he addressed the
problem of filter bubbles, which appeared due to the personalized allocation of content
based on user’s previous searches and online behaviour. He points out how filter
bubbles arise as result of tailor-made algorithms in social media platforms, such as
Facebook and search engines, like Google, to make it easier for users to navigate the
digital information space by offering curated advertising and news (Pariser, 2011). This
personalization tools can limit our exposure to opposing points of view and also narrow
the range of information users see (Papacharissi, 2002). This filter emphasizes our
information bias and isolates users from having a constructive debate with others.
The level of targeting Facebook and Google offer for the advertising campaigns run
on their platforms is so detailed that, anyone who has the money can send campaign
adverts to specific groups based on demography, interests and in some countries, like in
the U.S., race and religion. In general terms, the algorithms allocate information based
on paid campaigns and organic interaction; if something is “fake” but had a lot of clicks,
comments, and shares, users see it on their news feeds. Content can be viral by organic
methods or deliberate manipulation, when someone pays to put that message across
our news feed. In the Facebook news feed, all ideas look the same, even if they are lies.
The online advertising combinations are infinite; as a company you have the
possibility of targeting almost anyone. For example, women, in their mid 20’s who like
yoga and healthy eating. At the same time, as a party or as an advocacy group, it is possible
to target white men, in their mid 40’s, who support the National Rifle Association, and live
in Wyoming (the state where Donald Trump got 70% of the votes in 20161).
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It is fundamental to be aware that every choice made online, every click, turns into
a commercial decision. There is an automated decision-making process behind every
ads or video showed on our walls based on our previous searches and online activity.
In a way, this allocation of content impacts people’s ideas and beliefs. If a 25-year-
old woman in Bangladesh googles the term “freedom,” she will see something entirely
different from a 50-year-old man, living in New York, who googles the same term. Filter
bubbles (Pariser, 2011) personalized search, and social media feeds to show us more of
what “they” think we want to see.
Facebook and Google, as private entities, follow a market logic and take strategic
decisions towards profit making. In consequence, the driver behind their actions is a
business model that allows advertisers and the platform automated editors to set the
agenda. The editor role of these platforms should no longer be seen merely as “business
decisions” because these are fragmenting our societies and encroaching on democratic
values. The reality changed and the role of social media, search, and tech platforms has
evolved. Thus, we need to pay attention to the way in which these companies manage
our online lives.
The fact that these platforms have strict rules on who can access their data raises
many questions. To whom are they accountable? How can governments set limits
to these corporations without threatening innovation? Are users responsible for
demanding more transparency? How do we let them get this far? To whom are they
selling their services? To whom are they selling our data? Sometimes the terms and
conditions of these technology platforms are not clear for the users.
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Collaboration across sectors is needed. The solutions are a process rather than a
single action because of the complexities involved in each case. Cross-sector cooperation
between governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations allows
the sum of wisdom and capacities of each stakeholder to achieve the best possible
solution. Additionally, these collaboration agreements act as an accountability tool for
participants to oversight each other.
Today, more than ever, governments are looking at these platforms to solve social
problems. Users need to interfere as citizens in how the big technology firms manage
information, regulate content, and commercialize online activities. Technology can be
empowering or disempowering, a way to guarantee a democratic model to oversight its
development is through cross-sector collaboration. Strengthening and fostering more
and better relationships between technology companies, civil society organizations and
governments in specific contexts might be a good way of guaranteeing transparency and
accountability. This process allows ongoing communication, monitoring, exchange of
ideas, and evaluation (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015). Participation of more stakeholders
from diverse sectors is necessary to safeguard democracy online.
There are a lot of examples of how civil society organizations, corporations, and
young people are changing communities with the use of technology; fighting corruption,
guaranteeing access to government information or improving public services. This
is evidence that not everything is doomed. But the benefits need to be broader and
guaranteed for all. If all online interactions are happening on the same five platforms,
we are risking the competition and feeding corporative monsters that could shrink the
government and swallow its citizens. The Leviathan has some competition, and at the
moment, it is looking weaker than the new kids on the block.
After the U.S. presidential elections, public shaming and media pressure achieved
Facebook’s recognition of companies, politicians, and civil society cooperation to solve
social challenges together. Users need to recover their citizen power and join the action.
Passive consumers do not change the world, active citizens could.
In the case of the Big Five technology companies, they are not going to stop the
marketization of the digital world on their own. Therefore, interdisciplinary groups
need to work together to understand what we are dealing with and promote the
necessary modifications. When monopolies damage society values we must raise our
voice for the government to intervene.
As single individuals, we might not have agency about it, but civil society as a
stakeholder can demand more transparency from these tech giants. The government
requires establishing clearer legal, technical, and political parameters to manage
these companies’ influence. Under a multistakeholder approach, young people should
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_REFERENCES
Aldrich, J. et al. (2015). Getting out the vote in the social media era: Are digital tools
changing the extent, nature, and impact of party contacting in elections? Party
Politics, 22(2): 165-178.
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and
the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bryson, J., Crosby, B., & Stone, M. (2015). Design and Implementation of Cross-Sector
Collaboration Framework for Understanding Cross-Sector Collaborations. Public
Administration Review, 75(5), 647-663.
Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. 1st ed. Somerset: Wiley.
Freelon, D.G. (2010). Analyzing Online Political Discussion Using Three Models of
Democratic Communication. New Media & Society, 12 (7): 1172- 1190.
Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into
a category of Bourgeois Society, Sixth Printing Edition.
Manjoo, F. (2016). Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future.
The New York Times. Retrieved from <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/technology/
techs-frightful-5-will-dominate-digital-life-for-foreseeable-future.html?_r=0>
Meeker, M. (2015). Internet Trends 2015. Code Conference, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers. Retrieved from <http://www.kpcb.com/blog/2015-internet-trends>
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Papacharissi, Z. (2002). The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere. New Media
& Society, 4(1): 9-27.
Sandel, M. J. (2012). What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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LEANDRO RACUIA
Student at the School of Economics, Administration and Account-
ing (University of São Paulo)
leandro.racuia@gmail.com
Brazil
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
The great computer revolution of the 1980s and 1990s dramatically altered previous
communication paradigms. Prior to this period, the media was centralized, dispersing
information from the few to many, and focused mainly on mass media such as
newspapers, books, and television channels. Today, most information flows through
the Internet from many to many and is theoretically decentralized in nature.
Most of the members of the academic community in the 1990s and 2000s posited
that the decentralized model of the end-to-end Internet connection would create
a new perspective on the discussion of ideas. Lévy (1999) states that three principles
would compose new perspective, which he calls “Cyberculture”: the interconnection,
the creation of virtual communities, and the collective intelligence. Interconnection
describes the Internet’s structure as decentralized and formed over an accessible end-
to-end logic; any point on the Internet is able to reach any other point without the
influence of an intermediary. Virtual communities, the second principle, as Lévy (1999,
p. 127) states, are formed from affinities of interests, knowledge and mutual projects in
a process of cooperation and exchange. Finally, collective intelligence describes a type
of shared intelligence that emerges from the collaboration of individuals of all parts
of the Internet, their knowledge and diversities. As Lévy describes (1999, p. 212), it is an
intelligence distributed everywhere, in which all knowledge resides in humanity, since
no one knows everything but everyone knows something.
Similarly, Benkler (2006) argues that the Internet creates new methods of
information economics. He calls this phenomenon the “Networked Information
Economy”. These new methods enable the occurrence of self-organized communities
with weak and decentralized hierarchies in which market logic stays in second place.
From this configuration, a social production of knowledge based on sharing and
cooperation is created. One example of such social production is coordinated political
action, spontaneously and individually headed by the community.
Two key words emerge in these authors theories and discussion: sharing and
cooperation. Together, they create new forms of political organization and open up
more room for political debate and consensus building among Internet agents. Such
a phenomenon is only possible with a decentralized Internet structure that allows
each actor to express themselves and listen to others. However, the current state of the
Internet appears to differ from what these authors predicted.
This contradiction raises some questions: how have we reached this point? Why
do the scenarios of collective knowledge construction and cooperation between the
different visions described by Lévy (1999) and Benkler (2006) not apply to our current
networks within the Internet? And finally, what are the cognitive and educational
impact of these existing networks? This article seeks to answer these questions through
a literature review of academic papers related to the topic.
First, we will analyze how the oligopoly of technology companies took control of
the functional Internet structure by exploiting its prior decentralized nature. Then, the
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Power concentration on the Internet must be assessed to understand how the flow
of information within the network currently widely connects with large technology
companies. These companies, after all, control a significant segment of the Internet
flow, which they use to facilitate economic benefits for themselves. In doing so, these
companies compromise the decentralized nature of the network. Using highly complex
algorithms designed to identify behaviors, these companies possess powerful inputs
that enable the creation of artificially produced environments for users’ convenience.
This scenario is a feature of the so-called “filter bubbles” phenomenon, which is
discussed in detail in the next section.
The most important aspect in the formation of “filter bubbles” is the influence they
wield on search engines and social networks, since these two tools constitute the core
of typical current user activities on the Internet. A large part of the world’s population
has access to these two types of service via a few giant Internet companies.
Among search engine services, Google has a market share of 89.72 %, according
to Statista portal (2016a). Its largest rival, Bing, has a market share of just 4.2 %, and
Yahoo!, 3,37 % (Statista, (2016e). No wonder it’s impossible to imagine a world without
Google, or better yet, a world without Chrome for online research.
Among social networks, Facebook reigns supreme. In the United Kingdom, for
example, Facebook represents 78 % of the social media market (Statista, 2016b), a market
share probably similar in many other countries. In 2015, Facebook’s monthly active users
reached 1.654 billion users, while the total global number of social media users was 2.34
billion users (Statista, 2016c). In 2016, Facebook boasted the greatest number of active
users, with 1.7 billion worldwide. It is followed by WhatsApp, with 1 billion users, QQ
Chat, with 899 million, and several positions below, Instagram (500 million), Twitter (313
million) and Snapchat (200 million) (Statista, 2016d). In Brazil, Facebook’s penetration rate
is practically double that of any other social media platform in the country.
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When it was just as a student project on the Harvard University campus, Facebook
illustrated how economically important it is for technology companies to influence the
content available to each user. According to Ries (2011), Facebook’s business model was, at
first, modest and plagued by an uncertain revenue source. The only important premises
were what the Ries classifies as the hypothesis of value and growth, respectively:
the more attention you can retain from users, the more advertising agencies will be
interested in advertising on the platform; and how many customers visited the platform
more than once a day. Zuckerberg understood that the more attention (buzz) he fostered
on his platform, the more advertising agencies would be interested in advertising on
the platform, but he wasn’t sure how much they would be willing to pay for an ad.
Focusing on these two premises — fostering buzz around the platform and prompting
users to visit it more than twice per day — Facebook has created an interesting scenario: the
need to create a pleasant virtual user environment to keep users engaged on the platform
for as long as possible. Wolton (UnBTV, 2014) views the Internet as a demand media, in
which the user searches for content and topics of interest according to their own needs,
creating a participation system that characterizes a community media – users share
the same interests but not necessarily understand each other. Facebook, as an Internet-
based social network, must align with this framework of environmental demands by
programming an environment that meets users’ needs. Therefore, for Facebook, the
“filter bubble” theory made sense both economically – it retained users for greater lengths
of time and drew greater attention from advertising agencies – and ideologically – by
meeting the Internet user’s implicit demand for the information they seek.
A critical look at the US presidential campaign may clarify the nefarious roles social
media “filter bubbles” can play within democratic systems. A plethora of fake news
stories flooded social networks throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. The sharing
of seemingly serious, but incorrect, web articles was a reality during this election,
and Facebook, as an important communication vehicle, was extensively involved in
spreading this type of news. Candidate Donald Trump relied on a nonsense strategy
and instigated biased information based on racist and xenophobic precepts to improve
his image in the eyes of his supporters. Facebook was unable to control this kind of
information and the proliferation of falsehoods that were shared – and diffused – by
the people themselves. These events illustrate why Facebook is a precarious tool for
sharing information—a particularly serious problem—as the platform fosters a culture
of uncertainty even for basic issues. So, the question remains: when “filter bubbles” –
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ignored by most users – are added to the fallacies of the environment, to what dangers
do social networks expose democracy?
Giant Internet companies have won significant influence over societal events – as
can be seen on Facebook during the US presidential campaign. However, how these
companies managed to attain such great power remains unclear. Zuboff (2015) has
sought to address this situation by debating Surveillance Capitalism. She defines it
as a new market wave of Internet companies focused on the “obsessive” collection
of data to meet the ultimate goal of expanding their own free services. By collecting
data – all available data, from affinities to personal finances – organizations can build
a dossier for each user. Although this data is not treated in a discriminatory way—
the information is not attached to profiles—these companies’ algorithms are able to
identify each user for the creation of specific ads.
Internet companies employ Big Data at a generalized level and make money by buying
and selling data. While this article won’t consider the ethical problems related to this
method for obtaining data, new forms of contracts,
customization, or continuous experiments, it is
worth mentioning the recurrent law infringement
while searching for profit; any possible expenses
THERE IS EVIDENCE
will be mere details for exorbitant returns. That’s OF A “BUBBLE
how surveillance assets are built, and they are the FILTER” EFFECT THAT
source of generous economic analysis. Critically, TENDS TO POLARIZE
most users are not aware of this practice, and as a DIVERGENT
result, a new power order not openly known to the OPINIONS AND
public has arisen. INSTIGATE ECHO
CHAMBERS
It is under this shadow that empires like Facebook
have been erected and are only now beginning to
WITHIN THE
be confronted by other major media institutions, SOCIAL NETWORKS
such as Washington Post and Le Monde. Facebook, THROUGH WHICH WE
for example, employs such abusive data collection ARE INFORMED
methods not to directly benefit economically, but
instead to build its social network algorithm. With
this precise algorithm, it can then understand each user’s particularities and make
its platform more pleasant according to individual preferences. The more convenient
the platform, the more effectively Facebook can engage users for significant lengths of
time, which ultimately results in increased profits.
Surveillance Capitalism logic gives substance to “filter bubbles”, making this model
economically interesting. This happens because it feeds the algorithm responsible for
creating “filter bubbles” with a huge amount of data, improving both the “filter bubble”
environment – even nicer – and the accuracy of Facebook ads. However, this analysis is
also valid for other technology companies. When platforms are more convenient and can
better meet a specific demand and users’ preferences, they are more likely to satisfy those
users. And when users are satisfied, they are more willing to provide data and less willing
to seek out other alternatives, because their current platform is already convenient.
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In this scenario, it makes sense to consider the two currents trends of communication:
ideologists who confuse communication with technical performance and markets, and
opponents who enjoy communication in favor of elitist radicalism and sales logic.
Technology companies employ a rather instrumental perspective of communication,
a characteristic of the universe of these two currents trends that diminish the role of
communication dialogue and cohabitation (Wolton, 2006).
Wolton (2006) also posited that without the promotion of social bonds to the general
public through previous mass media technologies – TV, radio, etc. – society risks
neglecting discussion of issues of public interest. This neglect may eventually lead to the
collapse of society itself into cultural and/or religious ghettos. In other words, the total
freedom of choice of content offered over the Internet – as a demand media – favors the
creation of closed communities and can generate non-communication, mistrust, and
violence. When, in fact, the essence of communication is the issues of the others. As a
result, the concept of communication must be redefined as a revolution of cohabitation
and dialogue (Wolton, 2006). And to do so, Internet communication must be discussed.
In the same way, brain-machines have been designed to amplify mental abilities,
especially memory and processing abilities. These machines, which we call computers,
absorb, translate, handle and transform every sign, allowing information to circulate
globally and promoting a multidirectional telematic culture. The best-known medium
for this diffusion is the Internet, a network that connects millions of people around
the diverse subjects, from business to art and entertainment (Santaella, 2000). Just as
muscle and sensory machines have become inherent in human life, so to have brain-
machines as they increasingly expand our cognitive universe. There is little space to
coexist in the contemporary world without the presence of brain-machines, as every
day they become more intrinsic to our tasks. We all benefit from brain-machines to
some degree. We all “must” use them.
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Because power within the Internet has become so concentrated, and because of
the network’s civil impact and our increasing need for brain-machines, it has become
crucial that we deepen the discussion of Internet “filter bubbles”. After all, human
spheres of knowledge, such as politics and communication, are present in this game of
capitalist logic.
3_FILTER BUBBLES
The term “filter bubble” refers not only to content display wanted by the user but
also to the isolation of other materials they supposedly do not want to see. One of the
problems in building these bubble is the lack of clarity in how the “filter bubble” process is
conducted. After all, filter algorithms are guarded as business secrets, since the presence
of this customization is the differential in targeting ads made by these platforms. Pariser
considers this lack of algorithmic transparency dangerous since it solely places the
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selection of information presented to the user in the hands of an Internet company that
subtly filters what the user sees and does not see for economic profit.
A study published by Facebook researchers (Adamic, Bakshy, & Messing, 2015) revealed
data proving the creation of echo chamber as a result of “filter bubble” mechanisms. The
study followed 10 million people from the United States who openly declared themselves
either conservative or liberal. Their shared news was monitored for six months (from
July 2014 to January 2015). The study’s authors identified content that was shared on a
large scale by self-declared liberal users as liberal content and vice versa.
The following chart (Figure 2) illustrates one of the study’s conclusions. It shows the
percentage of cross-cutting content (“political content opposite to the one informed by
the user”) accessed by liberals and conservatives and the four channels through which
this access occurred. These channels outlined by the research methodology and the
service that Facebook offers must be understood to recognize the significance of the
study’s findings. First, Random is an exposure of a random sample of all news related
to democracy (a category researchers call “hard news”) in a scenario where everyone
could observe content shared by everyone else. The study found that liberals could see,
on average, only 45 % of conservative content, and conservatives could see only 40 % of
liberal content. The second channel, potential from network, the network in which the
user is located is considered. In this case, the percentage considers how much content
contrary to the user’s stated political ideology could potentially be seen because it was
shared by the user’s friends. In this case, conservatives could watch 35 % of liberal
content, while liberals could see only around 23 % of conservative content. Exposed,
the third channel, was most relevant in the study because it showed the content
actually displayed in the users’ news feed. The real measure of the “filter bubble” is
the difference between what could potentially be displayed in the network and what
is shown in practice. As the researchers explain, this difference is 5 % in those who
identify as conservative and 8 % in those who identify as liberal.
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Figure 2
40% Liberal
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
Random Potential from network Exposed Selected
These studies show there is evidence of a “bubble filter” effect that tends to polarize
divergent opinions and instigate echo chambers within the social networks through
which we are informed. The results of this process are extremely bad, as they inhibit
the plurality of opinions and open gaps for extremism that can threaten freedom of
speech and opinion, one of the key requisite pillars for the exercise of democracy.
The damaging effects of echo chambers only worsen after analysis of the ways
social movements are organized in the digital era. With greater speed and accessibility
at a relatively low price, every citizen can access and communicate any information
through the Internet. To some extent, this development has broken the mass media’s
information monopoly. To this end, each individual has acquired greater freedom to
express and reach different status quo agreements and is better able to identify and join
individuals with similar ways of thinking (Assange, 2013).
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This process made the countries more susceptible to protests and dissent, which
can be more easily organized through social networks (Garret, 2006). Castells (2013)
presents a more specific analysis, arguing that this change generated a type of
organization different from previous social movements, one the author calls “networked
movements” (Castells, 2013, p. 129). One of the main features of this new organizational
structure is its decentralized form of action. Without permanent leadership, networked
movements are instead guided by debates, coordination and deliberation within the
networks in which social movements were formed. Even though the main struggle and
pressure force of such movements lies in the occupation of physical public spaces, their
only primary platforms of existence and continuous construction are contemporary
technologies, such as the Internet and smartphones, which ensure access from nearly
any location (ibid.). This fusion between cyberspace and urban space has given rise to
a third space, one Castells calls “the space of autonomy”. According to the author, this
space provides the capacity of a social actor to become a subject by defining its action
around projects constructed independently of the institutions of society, according to
the values and interests of the social actor (Castells, 2013, p. 135).
Analyzing all that was considered, we see that social networks and new ways of
communication directly influence this new form of social movement organization. As
the author says, in our time, digital, multimodal networks of horizontal communication
are the fastest and most autonomous, interactive, reprogrammable and amplifying
vehicles in history. The features of the communication processes between individuals
engaged in social movements determine the organizational features of the movement:
the more interactive and self-configurable the communication, the less hierarchical
the organization and the more participatory the movement. That’s why the social
movements in the digital age represent a new species (Castells, 2013, p. 26).
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It’s important to point out specifically that the features of the process of
communication between individuals determine the features of the movement itself.
When one considers that most of these networks were created and maintained
through large Internet corporations, we can recognize that these movements have
been constructed beside and within the logic of “filter bubbles”: polarization and not a
plurality of ideas.
Together, not only are communication processes relevant in analyzing how new
movements are formed, but also how content is shared. In the Facebook survey
previously discussed, content was labeled liberal or conservative news based on the
correlation of the content shared by the users who identified as one of the two political
positions. Only so-called hard news – news that had keywords related to economics or
politics, was labeled as such. However, researchers did not semantically analyze which
emotions this news content aroused in users, emotions that play a key role in whether
a content is shared.
As Berger and Milkman (2012) describe, emotions play a key role in the transmission
of ideas. According to them, behavioral psychology studies (Smith, & Ellsworth, 1985;
Barrett, & Russel, 1998) indicate that emotions either stimulate or discourage the
execution or transmission of a thought, action or idea. Emotions with high activation
levels, either positive (as admiration) or negative (hate and anxiety), wield a greater
capacity to trigger a stimulus that leads to individual action, while emotions with low
activation levels (sadness or fear) discourage such action.
Based on this logic, Berger and Milkman (2012) analyzed the news content of The
New York Times over one year, noting their levels of engagement, clicks, and shares.
Based on this data, the newspaper evaluated the most relevant news of the week and
distributed these stories to subscribers in the newspaper’s newsletter. Analysis of the
news content found that those stories containing ideas expressing some form of hatred
were most likely (34 %) to be inside the newsletter, followed by admiration (29 %). This
finding confirmed the psychology studies referenced above: hatred and admiration lead
to a greater engagement and, therefore, a higher chance of being viewed and propagated.
From these two studies, we can conclude that the viral phenomenon of hate is
exceptional compared to other emotions. First, hate, as an emotion with a high level of
activation of social transmission, causes individuals to respond to this stimulus. This
characteristic increases, in probabilistic terms, the viral phenomenon of hate, since the
user who reads the news responds to the hate stimulus.
“The medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan (1969). According to Mcluhan (1969),
the impact caused by the medium is much bigger than the “content” passing through it.
According to him, the “content” itself, like a TV show, exhibits side effects on users. The
information that circulates in the medium is irrelevant, and in fact, “content” plays a
key role in sharing information of common interest. Real social and cognitive change,
however, is the result of the medium. The medium creates a cognitive tool responsible
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for shaping both our culture and our experiences in order to change our perception. So,
McLuhan said, “the medium is the massage”. Two aspects were explored by him: the
first tells that the medium massages the brain, prompting it to feel in a new way and
perceive differing stimuli; the second aspect says that the medium is now for the mass
society (Mass Age).
The brain-machines are a giant medium of impact on our society’s standards, and
people are increasingly required to use them as resources. They are really products that
have altered the conceptions of society. Mainly, how the medium made possible the
creation of another medium, the Internet. From its construction and architecture, the
Internet constitutes a new medium in and of itself. The way in which the Internet has
become the basis for our society and transformed the flow of information and users’
perceptions – as individuals and as groups – characterizes a paradigmatic rupture
within contemporary society, entering the paradigm of complexity. There’s no more
room for solitary ideas. A systemic, subjective look and participant observation becomes
imperative in the scenario of accessibility and fluidity of the network.
Castells’ argument (2013) reveals the middle tone of the Internet by highlighting
its potential towards society, as seen in, for example, social mobilization through the
Internet that culminated in the Arab Spring. The shared indignation that facilitated this
social upheaval, followed by hope and struggle, was only possible due to the existence
of the Internet. Therefore, the interactions between things and subjects, the new
perception of reality, the scale, the cadence and the patterns, all together took on a new
level that carved the culture of contemporary society.
So, the Internet is the medium. It constitutes a new modus operandi for civilization.
Now, the issues surrounding the Internet as a medium become extremely indispensable.
What are the assumptions imposed by the Internet as a medium? How can one remain
outside this structure? Where are powers perceived, and who are the medium masters?
In any case, the charm of this medium is immediately apparent, and most of the
population has submitted to its assumptions. Currently, few understand the reality
of the Internet, and the great majority are in the middle, without knowledge of the
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powers that surround them. But what is the relationship between the assumptions of
the medium and the spread of hatred and the growing wave of polarization between
opposite or different opinion groups? What is the role of “filter” bubbles in this context?
The posture that “filter bubbles” algorithmically impose on users is, in short, “love
who’s similar and hate who’s opposite.” Each user’s opinion reverberates, and each
user is induced to reject differing opinions. Thus, by remaining complacent with their
predisposition of current education, users fulfill the monetary interests of Internet
companies. The artificial environments created by “filter bubbles” encourage young
people to willingly use social networks because they create positive feelings and foster
senses of belonging.
Thereby, the Internet acts as both the medium and the instructor. But it is important
to seek for alternatives to “filter bubbles”. Wikipedia and Linux, for example, offer
another conception, the conception of cooperation, but a requirement of this article
is to offer options to the users. There are indeed alternatives, such as the adoption of
postures to confuse the algorithm or showing interest in pages that have no relation
to the user’s profile. But these actions are only possible when users are aware of the
situation inside the “filter bubble”. Society must foster a culture of tolerance and
diversity, not only to accept/understand, but also to highlight potential improvements
espoused by those with different perspectives. In any case, user awareness is the first,
key step. Only after awareness can we collectively take the second step towards the
creation of a new culture.
This article, however, seeks to warn about the nefarious logic of “filter bubbles” that
fulfill capitalist ideas and create bias on the Internet. Studies that present ways to boost
user awareness of these filters and their consequences are still needed. Future studies
may also seek to explain how cultures of tolerance and diversity can be promoted or
analyze alternatives capable of popping the “filter bubbles”.
6_CONCLUSIONS
Considering the above-mentioned information, one may note that the Internet
imagined by Lévy (1999) and Benkler (2006) as a medium of sharing and cooperation
is still present in the network’s decentralized nature – from many to many – but this
structure is threatened by the logic of Surveillance Capitalism.
Technology companies, driven by the need to increase profits and collect power,
have created a nefarious scenario for the ideals of sharing and cooperation. The path
chosen by these companies to achieve economic goals and attain world influence is not
only based on Surveillance Capitalism, the intensive collection of users’ data through
potential abusive means, but also the creation of artificially produced environments
sensitive to the interactions of users on each platform, the so-called “filter bubbles”.
Although “filter bubbles” have several benefits, including convenience and ease of
access to topics of interest, they mask a perverse side effect of user enclosure around
their beliefs via two means: positive reinforcement in their own posts and creation of
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negative feelings toward opposing opinions. Thus, users end up not interacting and
receiving the complexity of information available, calling into question the validity of
the platform itself. This phenomenon can be seen in studies of The Washington Post and
Facebook during US presidential elections.
The reason for this bias is precisely the propitiation of more user-friendly
experiences that retain entertained users for longer period of times and increase profits
for those companies. This is particularly serious, especially when one considers that,
currently, only a few technology companies monopolize the Internet and much of the
flow of information. We must question what dangers this reality can pose to users and
even democratic countries.
_REFERENCES
Adamic, L, Bakshy, E., & Messing, S. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and
opinion on Facebook. Michigan University, United States.
Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. (1998). Independence and Bipolarity in the Structure of
Current Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets
and Freedom. Yale University Press.
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. (2012). What Makes Online Content Viral? Journal of
Marketing Research.
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Kallas, P. (2016). Social Networking sites market share. Dream Grow. Retrieved from
<http://www.dreamgrow.com/top-10-social-networking-sites-by-market-share-of-
visits-august-2016/>
Lévy, P. (2007). Inteligência coletiva: para uma antropologia do ciberespaço. São Paulo:
Loyola.
McLuhan, M. (1969). O meio é a mensagem (Trans. Ivan Pedro de Martins). Ed. Record.
Parisier, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York:
Penguin Books.
Parisier, E. (2015). Did Facebook’s Big New Study Kill My Filter Bubble Thesis? Wired.
Retrieved from: <https://www.wired.com/2015/05/did-facebooks-big-study-kill-my-
filter-bubble-thesis>
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup: How today’s Entrepreneurs use continuous innovation
to create radically successful business. New York: Crown Business.
Santaella, L. (2000). Novos desafios da comunicação. Cultura das Mídias. 3. ed. São
Paulo.
Statista (2016b). Market share held by the leading social networks in the United Kingdom
(UK) as of October 2016. Retrieved from: <https://www.Statista.com/statistics/280295/
market-share-held-by-the-leading-social-networks-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/>
Statista (2016c). Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 3rd quarter
2016 (in millions). Retrieved from: <https://www.Statista.com/statistics/264810/
number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/>
Statista (2016d). Number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2020 (in billions).
Retrieved from: <https://www.Statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-
social-network-users/>
Statista (2016e). World Wide Market Share of Search Engines. Retrieved from: <https://
www.Statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/>
UnBTV (2014, September 25). Palestra: Dominique Wolton [Video file]. Retrieved from:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_omtVarLnrQ>
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LEANDRO RACUIA
Student of Administration at University of São
Paulo (USP) and fascinated by entrepreneurship,
innovation and social impact. He worked for
the Brazilian Social Finance Task Force (Força
Tarefa Brasileira de Finanças Sociais) and has
built social knowledge by contributing to the
study Mapping of resources available to social
policies. He is interested in developing content
related to the creation of new social businesses,
capacity building on creative group processes
and culture in the startup universe.
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DEFENSE OF COMPETITION
AND ONLINE PLATFORMS IN
THE BIG DATA ERA
PALOMA SZERMAN
Specialized Lawyer in law and information and communication
technologies policy
paloma.szerman@gmail.com
Argentina
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_THEMATIC
_ABSTRACT
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1_INTRODUCTION
1 The version of August 25, 2016, can be accessed at <http://bit.ly/2qBUZ6t> Retrieved in February
27, 2017.
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As we can all imagine, this phenomenon has effects in multiple spheres of our
lives. That is why national regulators as transnational organizations begin to research
the possible application of rules and principles of defense of competition in matters
related to big data and the use of personal data. Here, in particular, we will look at
how the possible effects of massive data processing on economic competition could
be analyzed. Therefore, without exhausting the universe of possibilities, we present
some appreciations.
About the analysis of datasets as an input, the European Data Protection Supervisor
has considered that personal data has become the invisible payment method for what
it has named “free online services”, which includes social networks, email services,
among others (European Data Protection Supervisor, 2014). Consequently, the large
collection of personal data should be reflected in the new definitions of what, from the
right of competition, is called “the relevant market”2 For example, a relevant market
analysis today should examine new business models and evaluate the value of datasets
as an intangible asset within the “market of free online services”.
While social networks, search engines, and other free services can have a
considerable portion of the market with their limited offers of services, the markets
themselves are, at least, bilateral – and the side that generates more profits is the
advertising. This is characterized by fierce competition, with powerful counterparts
and a constant evaluation of the performance of the different advertising sellers. That
is why, for these cases, traditional concerns regarding abusive behavior, such as prices
below marginal cost or sale in packages of different products, are not applicable here,
and in fact can even benefit the competition and consumers. Without prejudice to
this, companies with large amounts of data, can carry out anti-competitive behavior,
as well as use mergers and/or acquisitions to accumulate enough market power to
manipulate prices and squeeze their competitors’ businesses. When this happens, the
competition agencies must intervene, and the laws in this matter must contemplate
these issues (Kennedy, 2017).
2 “Relevant market” is the concept used in the defense of competition to delimit products and
firms among which there is a close competition. Usually, to do so, the substitutability of products
or services is usually analyzed, both from consumers and the companies that offer them. For
this, the “hypothetical monopolist test” is usually applied, according to which if a hypothetical
monopolist carried out a small but significant and non-transitory increase in prices (between 5%
to 10%) and as a result, consumers choose other products, they are those that define the relevant
market. Without prejudice to this, the applicability of this test about services linked to the digital
ecosystem is discussed.
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Besides, the European Commission has just approved the acquisition of LinkedIn
by Microsoft, despite strong opposition from its competitors, especially Salesforce – a
company that competes with Microsoft in the cloud computing market. Microsoft’s
rivals have made public their concerns about access to data held by LinkedIn and its
future commercial exploitation. To accelerate the approval of the operation, Microsoft
has offered concessions of all kinds: that the developers of rival companies have
access to specific Outlook tools – a software to manage email, calendar, contacts,
among others – with the final result that profiles of rival social networks may appear
in Outlook (Motta, 2016).
5 Competition Law and Data, Report by the Bundeskartellamt and the Autorité de la Concurrence,
May 10th 2016, p. 24.
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compete with each other for this factor. In this case, the Commission concluded that
privacy is an essential parameter of competition between professional social networks
in the market, which could have negatively affected the transaction, although this is
not the case in this acquisition (European Commission, 2016).
Despite this, Salesforce pointed out that it is impossible for any external entity
to have unlimited access and/or reproduce the information in the hands of LinkedIn
(Motta, 2016). Meanwhile, Microsoft argued that much of the data is available on
Facebook, which should be considered part of the same market. The truth is that in the
center of the scene is a question of business opportunity, in which both Microsoft and
many other talented players, understanding the direction that the new “data economy”
is taking, are willing to invest much money.
Some public bodies have begun to investigate whether when a dominant actor
takes advantage of that position to deny users the access to personal information or
to implement deceptive terms of service, not only it is violating rules of protection of
personal data but is also performing anti competitive practices that generate direct
damages to the consumer.
This is the basis for the research initiated by the competition defense agencies
in Germany (Bundeskartellamt [BKA], 2016) and Italy (Sisto, & Binnie, 2016) against
Facebook. Taking in some way the adverse reactions caused by the abrupt change in
WhatsApp’s terms of service, these agencies consider that the possible illegitimate
use of the terms and conditions by Facebook could imply an abusive imposition for
its users. These agencies have a huge challenge: to test whether there is indeed a
connection between the possible abuse of the company’s dominant position and the use
of contractual clauses and abusive terms of privacy.
2_CONCLUSIONS
From all of the above, it can be concluded that there is a growing consensus in
Europe that, as we move towards a digital economy based on data and information,
competition law will have a growing role in preventing activities connected to the
collection and use of data that restrict or avoid competition in any market. In this
regard, taking into account the various issues identified throughout this article, we can
highlight some nuclear considerations that should be taken into account by regulatory
agencies, companies, and users when considering matters relating to personal data
from the perspective of the defense of the competition.
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The data collection has generated benefits for the competition and for the users,
given that the online service providers use them to improve their services and monetize
them effectively, generating services that are offered at subsidized prices, even free,
in monetary terms. Consequently, online service providers are in a better position
to compete with each other and provide a better quality of services. However, the
companies that collect data need to take into account how they will use that data,
considering the regulatory risks of competition defense that they may involve.
It seems that the national agencies – in Europe – are taking the lead in understanding
the effects of data collection and big data on the competition in general, while the
European Commission has focused on the revision of market mergers. Nothing indicates
that the Commission will open a new front concerning data collection and the use of big
data and possible anti competitive behavior. However, except for the actions initiated
by Germany and Italy against Facebook, national agencies have not carried out any
specific procedure regarding abuses of dominant positions through the use of personal
data. Even so, if the tendency to collect data to accelerate business continues – and
everything seems to indicate that it will – it is only a matter of time before competition
authorities are forced to get involved in the matter, and even demand the compliance
with certain regulatory issues.
European authorities and national agencies need to find the right balance between
identifying when a dominant actor is using its market power towards adjacent
markets and the gains in efficiency that arise from the targeting of transactions. In
other words, the collection and use of data, when analyzed from the perspective of
competition, should prevent the restrictive effects on competition, but also stimulate
its pro-competitive and pro-consumer benefits.
The use and collection of data have implications in a much broader spectrum of
industries and markets than search engines, online advertising and social networks,
especially with the arrival and advance of the Internet of Things. In a not so distant
future, all industry sectors will elaborate their business models based on data
collection and intelligence, and therefore they should consider this business model
not only from the perspective of protection but also from the risks and compliance
with competition law.
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There is a consensus that, in general, the protection of privacy falls outside the
scope of competition law. In this sense, it must be taken into account that the defense of
competition is a discipline whose purpose serves the purpose of defending competition,
not protecting privacy. However, some agencies have identified terms and policies of
services and privacy of some services that could be considered abusive if such policies
violate the regulation of personal data protection and affect competition, primarily
when they are carried out by dominant actors.
The criticisms Facebook received when the terms and conditions of WhatsApp
changed and the BKA’s investigation of that company are based on this. Even so, two
issues must be taken into account in this regard: (i) BKA has the difficult task of proving
a causal link between non-compliance with personal data protection legislation,
dominance and the acting of abusive behavior according to the law of the competition;
(ii) even if BKA manages to prove this causal link, and even if the companies, in fact,
abuse their dominant position using opaque privacy policies, this does not mean that
the right of competition must include within its objectives the protection of privacy. On
the other hand, BKA, and any other competition defense agency in this regard, should
gradually reevaluate its institutional interaction with data protection agencies, to avoid
jurisdictional overlap and improve user protection.
_REFERENCES
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Federal Trade Comission (2014). FTC Notifies Facebook, WhatsApp of Privacy Obligations
in Light of Proposed Acquisition. News & Events. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2r2q438>
Hern, A. (2016). Facebook ‘pauses’ WhatsApp data sharing after ICO intervention. The
Guardian. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2fAsQ6i>
Oreskovic, A. (2014). Privacy groups ask regulators to halt Facebook’s $19 billion
WhatsApp deal. Reuters Technology News. Retrieved from <http://reut.rs/2qcwfAB>
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2016). Big Data: Bringing
Competition Policy to the Digital Era. p. 7-8. Retrieved from <https://one.oecd.org/
document/DAF/COMP(2016)14/en/pdf>
Sisto, A., & Binnie, I. (2016). Italy antitrust agency probes WhatsApp messaging service.
Reuters Canada. Retrieved from <http://bit.ly/2pHHRIN>
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PALOMA SZERMAN
Paloma Szerman is a lawyer, graduated
from the University of Buenos Aires, with
a degree in Public Law. After completing a
semester at NYU, she graduated in Internet
Law and Communications Technologies
at the University of San Andrés and is
currently studying law and economics at the
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She has over
six years of experience as a consultant in law,
regulation and public policies of information
and communication technologies, both
in the public and private sectors, advising
companies, public bodies, and international
organizations, while participating in
numerous academic initiatives and research
groups on the subject.
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