Carlos Correa Loyola, UTPL's Director of the Information Technology Department.

One of the local leaders helping to make the event possible is Carlos Correa Loyola, who is the UTPL's Director of the Information Technology Department. However, he is also a blogger [es] and avid user of social media networks like Twitter (username @calu). Correa has already been featured on numerous occasions on Global Voices, including the articles on blogs in his homeland of Loja and when Creative Commons Ecuador was launched.

During a conversation via Skype, Correa said that the UTPL's ultimate goal is to “become the premier technology university in the country,” and for the institution to ultimately transform itself into being the “premier [technology university] in Latin America. To accomplish this, we are working with 20 PhD technology students, with 5 graduating in 2010, 10 graduating in 2011, and the rest will graduate later.”

He has met interesting people during his travels around the world, which has helped him outline the upcoming I Congress Campus with the theme “Building Common Spaces in Higher Education.” According to Correa, the work began as a small team or “four cats in a room,” a commonly used saying in Loja, and the event is becoming a reality thanks to the support of Luis Miguel Romero, PhD, the current President of UTPL and who is also the current President of the OUI-IOHE.

By following the 6 strategic goals set by the technical university, a larger team of 70 people along with the Centers for Research, Technology Transfer, Extension, and Services (CITTES for their initials in Spanish) have been organizing the Campus Connect. The entire university is taking a role in planning the event, and he feels strongly that this process should take into consideration the ideas of not just one person or small group, but all participants, which something that Correa prefers to call “universitology.”

Technical University of Loja's Campus - Photo used under Creative Commons license by UTPL VIA Comunicaciones

The meeting scheduled to begin on November 25th has three components: The Congress Campus, the Latin American regional meeting of Creative Commons, and the iSummit 2009 and will take place while “respecting their identities at the same time,” said Correa. In addition, a BarCamp will follow the official events over the 3 days.

Creative Commons

The 2nd gathering of the Creative Commons representatives from Latin American will take place in Loja, which follows the previous one held year in Santiago, Chile (.pdf format). The UTPL has had a large role in bringing the use of Creative Commons licenses in Ecuador. Correa says, “We [UTPL] are the counterpart of the organization in Ecuador. We focus on ccLearn in order to promote open content in education and higher education, especially.”

iSummit

During this event, there will also be Loxa iSummit 09, which, according to Correa will be an “annual technology conference, the first in Loja and organized by the UTPL. It focuses on four areas: Software Architecture, Knowledge Management via a differentiated Semantic and Social Web, Advanced Networks, and IT Entrepreneurship called Technology Valley that the university has been supporting and is under the direction of Alvaro Castillo.” With the iSummit we seek to “establish a collaborative space, linking different views and approaches to the role of IT in higher education and business.”

BarCamp Loxa 09

“And to close the formal parts of the event, after Wednesday workshops and other events, comes Saturday's BarCamp Loxa 09, which is nothing but organized chaos, a cycle of “unconferences” on technology and other topics,” said Correa. The Barcamp Loxa 09 is eagerly awaited by the Ecuadorian blogger community and will feature musician Riccardo Perotti. There are also plans for an after-BarCamp, which will be a place to continue the celebration. The Barcamp has its own presence on Twitter with hashtag #barcamploxa09 and also a Faceboook group.

Correa concludes and reflects on Loja's role on promoting technology in the country and in the region:

It is said that the misuse of technology adds to the digital divide. That may be happening in the U.S. and Europe, and indeed in Latin America. But we want to change that, many have laid eyes here, during these three intense days. The small towns can also work closely with large cities, so Loja being a small city, not just the university, but people are betting on a democratization of participation, thereby achieving that technology does not accumulate just in the major poles of development.

After a strange week of battling between Trafigura's lawyers from the firm Carter-Ruck and The Guardian, and a week of terrible publicity for the company, Trafigura finally gave in and said the preliminary report could be made public.

The draft study contains details of waste dumped in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in 2006 - and evidence of its chemical components, and their potential effect.

The injunction banned The Guardian from reproducing or reporting the Minton Report which was already available on Wikileaks.org and the Norwegian media (maybe elsewhere, too). The order was obtained by lawyers Carter-Ruck on behalf of its client Trafigura.

“No newspaper can reveal the contents of this report, but at least we can now say that it exists and has been rendered secret. The option of ‘publishing and be damned' is not available.” [The Guardian, 14.10.09]

But until last week no-one, except those it involved, knew that the injunction existed and that The Guardian could not report the order. Why? It's one of many existing secret injunctions, which not only ban reporting a story but also the existence of the ban itself.

The only reason we know about it now, is because of one British member of parliament (MP), Paul Farrelly. As Private Eye, a UK magazine famous for its investigative journalism and its disdain for Carter-Ruck, a leading media libel litigation firm, said this week on its website, Farrelly's “intention was to test this conspiracy of silence [i.e. secret 'super injunctions'] by asking questions about it in Parliament”.

How? Because MPs are protected under the Bill of Rights of 1689, which declares that “freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any place or court outside Parliament.”

Therefore an MP's comments can be published without fear of legal action (a fuller history at this link). But The Guardian knew that to reproduce Paul Farrelly's question (below, tabled in Parliament, see point ii.) would contravene the existing order. So it contacted Carter-Ruck to see if they could change the terms of the injunction. “We were advised by Carter-Ruck that publication would place us in contempt of court,” stated The Guardian.

Carter-Ruck meanwhile maintained that The Guardian's account was ‘misleading'. Its full statement can be found at this PDF link. The lawyers acting on behalf of Trafigura said they would take further instructions from their clients, but The Guardian published its article first.

A very comprehensive account of the extraordinary activity online can be found on the Online Journalism Blog but to sum it up:

• After the Guardian posted an account stating that it was not able to report a Parliamentary question that was publicly available without mentioning any details at all, an online frenzy whipped up, with several bloggers working out what the question in question was. The notion that journalists could not report Parliament shocked readers of The Guardian's article - both its critics and fans.
• Twitter users and blogs willfully ignored the injunction - if its possible to ignore a secret injunction - and passed on links and keywords connecting Trafigura and Carter-Ruck to Paul Farrelly's question, and even the Minton Report. At one point, for example, #Trafigura was the top trending topic on Twitter - globally.
• So although the Guardian had still not reported the question or broken the terms of the Order, all the information contained in Farrelly's question was out there. The Guardian intended to go to court to fight the Order, but Carter-Ruck said it would no longer try to prevent his publication reporting MP Paul Farrelly’s parliamentary question about Trafigura. “The parties have now agreed to an amendment to the existing Order so as to reflect that,” Carter-Ruck reported in its statement.
• The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, who tweeted sporadic updates, said the firm had “caved-in” and the paper finally reported Farrelly's question. The Guardian, and other mainstream media, praised social media for its role in applying pressure throughout the day.

Simply put - whether defiant online users were the reason Carter-Ruck agreed to vary the order or not - Paul Farrelly's question could not be suppressed online. And what's more, thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura now knew its name and its connection to a toxic waste scandal.

Then, later in the week  Carter-Ruck suggested debate could be blocked in Parliament by claiming that the secret injunction it had obtained is “sub judice,” ie. in active legal proceedings. If proved, it would prohibit any motion, debate or question concerning the matters going ahead, under Westminster rules.

A day later the Minton Report injunction was lifted in the British press.

Before, journalists could only say it existed, nothing more. And that's what was really controversial here.

Because the report is all to do with the dumping of waste in West Africa.

For background on the waste dump in the Côte d'Ivoire in 2006 please read this commentary on Journalism.co.uk: ‘The journalist and NGO collaboration to expose Ivory Coast toxic waste dump'. For more detailed information on events themselves, visit The Guardian's section on Trafigura and the Probo Koala.

Further information on the Trafigura-Guardian story can be found in the Journalism.co.uk blog updates at this link.