To Mario Brandão, Brazil has advanced little in bridging the digital divide

The President of the Brazilian Association of Digital Inclusion Center (ABCID), Mario Brandão, said this friday during fisl13 that "Brazil has advanced very little to bridge the current digital divide". According to him, what happened in these last few years was a modification in the forms of access. for example, many people that connected using lan houses now own a smartphone.

Accordingly, he said that "it doesn't mean that more people have access to the Internet". According to CGI.br (Brazilian Internet Committee) data presented by him, 98% of class A have home connection. In classes D and E this percent drops to 21%. "Interent can't be treated as a luxury, something we can marketize". Mario said that "everyone shall be able to use and benefit from the Internet".

In rio de Janeiro, his home town, Mario said that people use the Internet in lan houses to proceed the registration of their children in public schools. Advertiser João Carlos Caribé pointed out that "there are studies showing that the digital native people have different brain structures when compared to the non-native". As an example, he quoted his own story: "I'm in the Internet for 18 years now. I have an 18 years old son. The way he uses the Internet, his cognitive construction is much superior to mine. Because I am 48 years old and I joined the Internet when I was 30."

According to Caribé, data from the Centro de Estudos sobre as Tecnologias da Informação e da Comunicação (Cetic) point that in general Internet reaches 53% of the population. However, in rural areas, this numbers drops to 25%. He also blamed the price of the service as the culprit. "In the north region Internet access is a luxury item".

Both criticized the fact that the Nationl Broadband Plan (government initiative to provide free broadband access) have been transferred to big companies. "Somehow the government was convinced that universalization of the Internet access can be lead by the big companies", said Brandão. Caribé, in the other hand, argued that instead of big companies, schools and access centers should be responsible for the so called last mile of connection.

Written by: Pedro Faustini

E-mail: faustiniph@gmail.com

PIPA is eventually going to succeed

The Protect IP Act, known as PIPA, will become a reality someday. That's what Alberto J. Azevedo, security expert, believes. He gave a speech about PIPA yesterday, during fisl13. To him, "the industry is not going to give up so easy", because "people with power will always struggle to keep their power", and many profit related interests are at stake.

The project was progressing in the American Senate, but wasn't taken ahead. In January this year a series of protests and demonstrations against the project and another related project (SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, to be voted that month in the House of Representatives) that included Wikipedia, which remove for one day its english page in a protest. Basically, law projects, if approved, would allow for blocking of websites, including those who host third-party content (such as Facebook and Youtube), in case of copyright violation. Search websites such as Google and Yahoo would be forced to remove links to pages that display protected content without authorization.

"I saw people in Facebook saying "we won!". I thought, god, we didn't. I might have won a battle, but not the war". to support his argument, Azevedo said that "unfortunately, there are two pilars that rule the world: the first and most important is the money. Second is politics. But politics isn't done by idealistic people, but selfish, who worry about getting re-elected again and again". The phonographic industry is a sponsor of many American politics campaigns, which gives them strength to pass copyright laws. Therefore, he concluded that "sooner or later PIPA is going to be a reality".

Mobilization

In the end he said one of the best ways to oppose is by voting, researching the past actions of the candidate - he said this at the same time as he showed a slide with a picture of Darth Vader as a condidate in a voting booth, which took great laugh from the audience.

He also encouraged people to mobilize. "Use the power of the Internet, but let stuff just inside the Internet. Take it to the streets".

Written by Pedro Faustini

Social Inclusion was a subject of debate at FISL13

One of the debates to open the works in this evening was "Public policies of digital Inclusion: a look from the civil society". Beá Tibiriçá from the Coletivo Digital pointed out that this is an agenda pushed by the society, not only by the State, though the State sometimes wants to drive the discussion. According to Tibiriçá, state support is welcome, but it is the social movements around the subject are the real reasons why the policies do become real, such as the proliferation of Telecentros in the whole country.

The history of the construction of public policies such as the Telecentros.BR Program and so many others who are fundamental for the advancement in this area. Mauricio Serrano (Somos@Telecentros, the main organization representative of the digital inclusion programs in Latin America and Caribe; Vilmar Simon Nascimento, tech manager from CRC Gama-DF, in charge of the deployment and updating of free software solutions and computer refurbishing; Fabiano Flores, Silvana Lemos, education coordinator of the Polo Centro-Oeste de Telecentros; and Domingos Sávio de França - Coordinator of the Center for Computer Refurbishing (CRC).

written by Fernanda Quevedo

FLISOL organizers meet at FISL13

A meeting of the FLISOL promoters and organizers has just happened at fisl, featuring Luiz Augusto Machado, Thiago Paixão, Ronald Emerson Sherolt da Costa, Wellton Costa de Oliveira and Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana.

The Latin American Free Software Install Festival (FLISOL) is a big event of free software disclosure which happens cince 2005. It tries, as its main goal, to promote the use of free software, by introducing its philosophy, its reach, accomplishments and development to the general public.