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June 26th, 2006

   

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The State of Creative Commons in Latin America

A small portrait of the translator David Sasaki · 18:07 · Americas

Coauthored by Jose Murilo Junior and David Sasaki

Global Voices has become a supporter of Creative Commons licensing not due to ideology, but because our website depends on it. The translations we post, bridging bloggers from different languages and cultures, are modifications of original works, requiring either the author's permission or a Creative Commons license that allows for derivatives. All of the various CC licenses also allow our editors and contributors to freely share the photographs, images, and podcasts from everyday citizens across the globe without acquiring the written permission of each individual. Enabling bloggers, podcasters, musicians, academics, and artists to more easily disseminate their works to a global online audience is one of the primary objectives that brought an international group of cyberactivists to Rio de Janeiro for iSummit 2006.

Nearly a year ago Global Voices published an article on the state of “free culture” and Creative Commons in Latin America. At the time, Chile had just become the second Latin American country, after Brazil, to launch Creative Commons licenses and Argentina would soon follow. Much has changed in those brief eleven months and it is time once again to survey the progress of Creative Commons in Latin America through the blogs of the movement's main proponents and with the help of an informative booklet from the conference.

Brazil:

Launched in April 2004 , Creative Commons BR was the first fully functional regional CC affiliate. Inaugurated with the help of FGV law school's Center for Technology & Society (CTS), it has Ronaldo Lemos as its most vibrant executive. Free Culture, Open Business, and Overmundo are some of the new initiatives CC-BR is now participating and the hosting of iSummit06 is a display of the Brazilian movement's importance in global terms.

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Debate on women’s rights and freedom in the Bangla blogosphere

A small portrait of the translator Aparna Ray · 14:56 · South Asia

What do the terms ‘women’s rights’ or ‘women’s liberation’ really stand for in today's context? This age-old debate has again raised its head in the Bangla blogosphere.

It all started when Nasima expressed her discontent about how, even today, Bengali girls (including those who are University graduates) are unable to take decisions pertaining to their future. According to her, most families are still operating under belief that a girl should marry a well-to-do man of her family’s choice and settle down to be a housewife. Though she admits that some broad-minded families are taking their daughters’ desires and aspirations regarding career, life-partner into consideration, she says they are the exception rather than the rule. According to her, true liberation or freedom will see light of day only when a woman will have the full right to develop her full potential as a human being, make her own decisions and live by them.

Reacting to her post, Trivuz upheld the importance of the family over individual decision-making. He stated that most of the time ‘family knew best’ and their decisions were in the best interests of the youngster on whose behalf the decisions were made. Trivuz went on to discuss the different roles of men and women as defined by society; his view was that each role is different and one is in no way less respectable and important than the other. So a woman should not see her role as a mother and homemaker in poor light and seek to work merely to raise her self-esteem. According to him, this is a classic case of the grass being greener on the other side. Lastly he summed up his views by saying that since men are (more…)

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Voices from Zimbabwe and the Great Lakes

Zimpundit · 05:39 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Zimbabwe: The Interception of Communications Bill is having a pronounced toll on the Zimbabwean blogosphere. Posts from domestic bloggers have slowed down noticably over the last two weeks. Despite this tragic reality, several cyberactivists continue to chronicle the largely unheard Zimbabwean story.

The unceremonious death of Tichaona Jokonya, the minister of information is the biggest news out of Zimbabwe this weekend. Jokonya died in his hotel room Saturday morning. Describing Jokonya's death Zimpundit expresses reservations about late minister regarding his role with the Interception of Communications Bill,

Jokonya’s tenure at the helm of the ministry was clearly marked by a softening of the government’s stance on independent media practitioners. Jokonya was even rumoured to have been making benign attempts at “defrosting” relations between his ministry and the independent media establishment.

Lately, he appeared to have buckled down and had began singing along to ZANU-PF’s abuses of independent media. Addressing a press conference earlier last week, Jokonya described locally based correspondents of foreign media as “traitors” saying,

“You know what the end of a traitor is? The end of a traitor is always death. The unfortunate thing about a traitor is that you are killed by both your own people and the person whom you are serving,”

Further, even though it is yet unclear what role he played in instituting it, the repressive Interception of Communications Bill came into effect during Jokonya’s reign.

Still on the subject of death, the father of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC died this past week too. Zimbabwe's overenthusiastic police brazenly distrupted funeral proceedings calling on MDC supporters at the funeral to remove party regalia they had on. Said The Bearded Man

The police have overstepped the mark and I am horrified at the actions. A death in the family is hard enough, without Mugabe's heavy-handed tactics making it any harder. Morgan, I am so sorry for your loss. My sympathies to you and you family. May your father rest in peace.

The Bearded Man continues to do daily news roundups.
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