[FSFLA-Traductores] boletín nro. 14 para traducir

[Beatriz Busaniche]

Buenos días

Les paso el boletín que tendría que salir el viernes 1 de agosto.
La editorial está originalmente escrita en inglés, pero el resto está en
español.

También lo subo al wiki

Boletín Nro 14

Novedades en FSFLA
Boletín #14
1 de Septiembre de 2006

1. Editorial - La constitución brasileña quiere software libre en el
gobierno
2. Campaña de lucha contra DRM
3. FSFLA en Medios de Comunicación
4. Eventos
5. Participa en FSFLA



1. Editorial:  Brazil's Constitution wants Free Software in the
Government

The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul was one of the pioneers in
legislating for Free Software adoption in the public administration,
with law number 11871 [LAW] passed in December 19, 2002.  The law
established that the public administration ought to use preferentially
software that is open, free from proprietary restrictions to its
cession, modification and distribution.

The law is being challenged in court as unconstitutional [INI], with
support from Amici Curiæ that have historically sided with proprietary
software in Brazil [AC1], and the law was suspended in a federal court
in spite of Union's legal advice that shot down all of the arguments
[AGU].

FSFLA is now trying to join the case as Amicus Curiæ as well, with
help from organizations already established in Brazil, to correct some
mispresented arguments as to what Free Software means, to point out
actual problems in the law related with its definition of `open
software', and to argue that the Brazilian Constitution already grants
Free Software, even if implicitly, the preference by the public
administration that the law grants explicitly.

Since most of the constitutional principles used in our arguments are
mainly common-sense principles for the public administration, we
expect them to be available in many other legal systems, which is why
we've translated the paper, in an attempt to reach a wider audience.

The law
-------

The law defines open software according to the 4 freedoms of the Free
Software definition, except for a minor but very significant mistake:
it states that no restriction whatsoever must be imposed to the
exercise of the freedoms.  This unfortunately fails to grant
preference to most of the existing Free Software, since even the most
liberal licenses do impose restrictions such as keeping the copyright
notice intact, or using the same license for distribution of derived
works.  As long as people keep following the spirit of the law,
granting it preference even where the law fails to do so, this
shouldn't be a major problem.

It is worth pointing out that there are cases in which the law permits
non-Free Software, with justifications such as that the non-Free
Software has well known advantages over competing programs, yielding a
better return of investment for the public administration; and when
the use of the Free program causes incompatibilities with other
programs used by the administration.

The attack
----------

As it turns out, this law is being challenged in court as
unconstitutional, under case number 3059/03.  The arguments presented
in the initial filing [INI] are that state laws cannot regulate public
tenders, since such regulation is reserved for the Union; that the law
failed to respect the principle of isonomy (equal distribution of
rights and privileges) towards licitants; that the adoption of Free
Software would infringe on the principles of efficiency and economy;
and that such laws could only be proposed by the Executive power,
never by the Legislative power.

Even though the Union's legal counsel advised that all of the
arguments were faulty [AGU], a primary injuntion was granted by the
federal Court where such cases are handled, and the law is currently
suspended.

Meanwhile, ABES (Brazilian Association of Software Businesses) and
ASSESPRO (Association of Brazilian Busineses on Information
Technology, Software and Internet), the organizations behind most
campaigns against unauthorized software copying (software piracy
[SPI], as they put it) in Brazil, and have been on record against Free
Software, filed a petition [AC1] to be accepted as Amicus Curiæ for
this case.

Their arguments against the law start by presenting what they
mistakenly claim to be fundamental differences of nature between
proprietary and Free Software, stating that the former is intended for
commerce, have closed sources and are protected by copyright, whereas
the latter have academic origins, open sources and permit
modification, reproduction and free distribution, thus mingling
together two orthogonal dimensions: proprietary vs. free and
commercial vs. non-commercial.

Then they go on to argue about the lack of warranty for Free Software,
as if commercial transactions involving Free Software didn't impose
legal requirements identical to those involving any other kind of
software; and many other fallacies against Free Software that I'm sure
you've heard before.  They wrap up by repeating arguments that support
3 out of the 4 claims in the initial filing.

Our response
------------

FSFLA, with support from entities already established in Brazil, is
working to file a balancing Amicus Curiæ petition.  To such end, we
wrote a position paper [FSF] in which we argue that the Brazilian
Constitution already establishes principles that are more than enough
to grant Free Software the preference given by the suspended law, and
that, if the law is at fault, it's not because of the arguments
presented by its opponents, but because its Free Software definition
is flawed.  This does not make the law unconstitutional: it just makes
the law inoperant, although in practice it still accomplished its
stated mission when its spirit was followed.

Our arguments are based on the four freedoms of the Free Software
definition:

(#0) to run the software for any purpose,

(#1) to study it and adapt it to your needs (requires source code),

(#2) to redistribute the software the way you received it, and

(#3) to distribute modifications to it (requires source code);

and on the following constitutional principles:

- sovereignty: defend the country's and citizens' interests without
being submissive to foreign interests;

- impersonality: no undue favoring of individuals or businesses in
similar conditions;

- morality: not using a public position for personal advantage;

- publicity: mainly transparency, enabling the society to exert
control over the government;

- efficiency: making the best use of the limited available resources;

- economy: spending only when the expected payoff is reasonable;

A few other economic principles stated in the Constitution were also
used: free market competition, consumer's defense, reduction of
regional and social inequalities, seek for complete employment and
favorable treatment for small businesses constituted under Brazilian
law with head quarters in the country.

The arguments are presented below in an extremely shortened version
that assumes some familiarity with the Free Software business models.
The full article [FSF] goes into far more detail in both explaining
the various Free Software business models, with clarification on some
common incorrect assumptions, and detailing the arguments and how they
relate with the constitutional principles.

It's easy to see that the freedom to use the software, especially when
combined with the freedom to redistribute it, contributes to economy
and efficiency, in that it enables a single investment to benefit all
of the public administration and even all of the citizens, and it
often saves the entire cost of public tenders for software licensing.
Without the freedom to study and adapt the software, sovereignty is at
risk, since you can't tell what the program does, thus violating
transparency, since you can't share with citizens what programs do, or
how their information is handled or encoded.

The freedoms to study and adapt the program, to redistribute it, and to
distribute modified versions, combined, also contribute to economy and
sovereignty, in that they enable the government to hire
third parties to maintain software that a vendor abandoned or failed
to maintain satisfactorily.  This in turn favors impersonality, since
otherwise a choice for a software platform would favor its vendor for
as long as it was still in use (which is why morality is often tempted
at the time of such choices), and the free market, since it makes room
for competition for services that only the original vendor could offer
otherwise.  This can be used to favor local small businesses, which
increases employment, and to reduce inequalities, since Free
Software makes monopolies harder to build.

Warranties that must be offered to consumers per Brazilian law also
apply to software transactions, but proprietary software warranties
generally only cover the media; Free Software vendors, inasmuch as
they offer software services, must thus offer real warranties,
improving customer protection.

Conclusion
----------

Since we are not legally established in Brazil yet, we depend on third
parties to be our proxy as Amicus Curiæ.  We hope the court will
accept the petition, if it is filed in time, such that our paper can
have a chance to dispute the misconceptions presented in the original
filing and in the first Amicus Curiæ petition, and make sure the term
Free Software is not poisoned in Brazilian's legal system.

As explained above and with more detail in the paper, it doesn't
matter much if the law is kept or shot down.  Even though we don't see
constitutional grounds to shoot it down, we'd really like the
definition of the software class it privileges to be improved such
that it matches the spirit of the law, already supported by the
Constitution.

Even though we realize such a lawsuit is not the proper forum to
rephrase the law, in the paper, we offer an alternate definition, that
explains why certain limitations to the freedoms are acceptable, such
as those to ensure that similar freedoms are granted to third parties
when the software is redistributed (copyleft), to ensure that credit
to the authors is preserved (not removing copyright notices), and
others that might serve a useful purpose without effectively limiting
the exercise of the freedoms (say, requiring the inclusion of a
certain sentence in advertising material).

Although we oppose the current law, in that it is innocuous and it
creates some confusion as to what Free Software means (even if it uses
a different term), we hope the law is maintained and fixed, such that
not everybody has to become an expert in Free Software market dynamics
to realize why the four freedoms are necessary to comply with all
aforementioned constitutional principles.


[LAW] Fully cited in [AGU].

[INI] http://www.kcp.com.br/diversos/adin_rs/inicial.pdf

[AGU] http://www.kcp.com.br/diversos/adin_rs/AGU.pdf

[SPI] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html

[AC1] http://www.kcp.com.br/diversos/adin_rs/amicus.zip
(FIXME: needs replacement with a single PDF)

[FSF] http://www.fsfla.org/???FIXME???




2.  Campaña de Lucha contra DRM

El equipo de campaña contra los DRM en América Latina sigue trabajando
para definir estrategias y difundir detalles sobre qué son los DRM,
cuáles son los derechos que violan y cuál es la implicancia política y
jurídica de los mecanismos técnicos de restricción de acceso y copia a
contenidos digitalizados. 

En estos momentos, el equipo está definiendo los detalles para montar la
página web de la campaña, para luego continuar con otros mecanismos de
divulgación, especialmente la campaña de spots radiales que realizará FM
La Tribu de Argentina, emisora que se ha sumado a nuestro trabajo en
defensa de la libertad en entornos digitales. 

El equipo de campaña sobre DRM se nuclea alrededor de la lista de
correos, accesible en 
http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/anti-drm 

El documento de posición sobre DRM elaborado por FSFLA también está
disponible en http://www.fsfla.org/?q=es/node/99 

3. FSFLA en Medios de Comunicación 

Durante las últimas semanas, FSFLA tuvo numerosas apariciones en medios
de comunicación.  

El portal de tecnologías Canal-ar de Argentina realizó varias notas
relacionadas al trabajo de nuestra organización.  Beatriz Busaniche
participó de un video donde explicó qué es el software libre, qué
impacto tiene en los proyectos de inclusión digital y cuál es su rol
estratégico en nuestras sociedades para WebTV de Canal-ar.  

Por su parte, el periodista Sebastián Premici publicó una nota titulada
"La amenaza de los DRM", con una entrevista a Beatriz Busaniche, donde
explica la naturaleza de estos dispositivos y los derechos ciudadanos
que ponen en riesgo, la nota está disponible en
http://www.canal-ar.com.ar/Noticias/Noticiamuestra.asp?Id=3479

El periodista Matías Aizpurúa del mismo medio, escribió un artículo
completo sobre los mecanismos de monitoreo de los sistemas operativos
privativos disponible en
http://www.canal-ar.com.ar/Noticias/NoticiaMuestra.asp?Id=3494 . El
texto cita gran parte del trabajo del matemático Pedro Rezende, miembro
de FSFLA, sobre WGA, disponible en español y portugués en
http://wiki.fsfla.org/wiki/index.php/Wga_es . La nota cuenta además con
una columna de opinión escrita por Federico Heinz y numerosas citas a
trabajos publicados por Richard M. Stallman.    

Durante el mes de Agosto, FSFLA también participó del boletín del
Sistema de Información Universitaria InfoSiu,  con un artículo escrito
por Beatriz Busaniche sobre ética hacker y sistemas de licencia libres
para documentación y software. 
El texto completo del artículo está disponible en el sitio de SIU en
http://www.siu.edu.ar/InfoSIU/&edicion=16&nota=93

Por su parte,  VivaLinux publicó el artículo titulado "La FSFLA inicia
campaña contra los DRM". Allí, este portal dedicó una nota completa a la
campaña en la que está trabajando el equipo anti-DRM, tanto en su lista
de correos como en el wiki de recursos de campaña.  La cobertura de
VivaLinux está disponible en
http://www.vivalinux.com.ar/eventos/fsfla-vs-drm.html 

En tanto, el miércoles 23 de agosto, Beatriz Busaniche, participó del
programa "La mar en coche", en el horario central de la mañana de FM La
Tribu en Argentina.  Desde ese espacio pudimos conversar con periodistas
y oyentes sobre la campaña de FSFLA contra DRM,  contribuyendo así a la
difusión pública de los peligros y amenazas que implican las tecnologías
de restricción digital de acceso y copia de contenidos.  


4. Eventos

Beatriz Busaniche y Enrique Chaparro participaron de Consol 2006, el
Congreso Nacional de Software Libre, realizado desde el 15 al 18 de
agosto en el Distrito Federal de México. Allí, ofrecieron al menos siete
conferencias en las que abordaron temas tanto técnicos como políticos,
en particular cuestiones relacionadas a Patentes, DRM, licenciamiento de
Software y las amenazas vigentes a la libertad y la privacidad en
entornos digitales. Además, participaron de una mesa redonda y una
charla informal sobre las amenazas de multas que los mexicanos están
recibiendo públicamente por el uso de redes P2P.  Desde FSFLA
agradecemos la gentil invitación de los organizadores de Consol y
esperamos compartir Consol 2007!

Federico Heinz estuvo en Montevideo, Uruguay, invitado por el grupo de
usuarios de software libre de ese país (Uylug). Federico participó con
una ponencia en las Jornadas de Informática en la Administración Pública
y ofreció una conferencia sobre DRM en el marco del DebianDay realizado
en Montevideo.  

Alexandre Oliva estuvo en Bahia, Brasil, donde participó del III Forum
de Software Libre con sus ponencias  "As Ações Mais Legais da FSFLA:
Fundação Software Livre América Latina" y "O Poder Liberdador do Segundo
Dedo".

Entre el 4 y el 8 de Septiembre, Beatriz Busaniche visitará Oruro,
Bolivia, donde participará del VI Congreso Nacional de Software Libre
con una ponencia sobre los avances en el proceso de actualización de la
licencia GPLv3.  

Por su parte, la Asociación de Bibliotecarios de la ciudad de Rosario,
Argentina, invitó a Beatriz Busaniche a participar de sus  VII Jornadas
Regionales y V Provinciales de Bibliotecarios, a realizarse en esa
ciudad los días 15, 16, y 17 de septiembre. En ese marco, trataremos
temas relacionados a Software Libre y acceso y difusión del
conocimiento, junto con los bibliotecarios que participen del
encuentro.  

Federico Heinz y Fernanda Weiden participarán del IV Wizards Of Os que
se realizará este año del 14 al 16 de septiembre en Berlín, Alemania.
http://www.wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=63&L=3  En su gira alemana,
Federico participará además de varios eventos invitado por la Fundación
Heinrich Boell.  

5. Participa en FSFLA

FSFLA necesita tu ayuda. Si te interesa contribuir en algún equipo de
trabajo, sumarte a las actividades de FSFLA y formar parte de las
acciones en marcha, no dudes en participar del equipo de tu preferencia.
La lista completa de equipos y formas de participación está publicada
en 
nuestra sección  ¿Cómo participar? http://www.fsfla.org/?q=es/node/78 



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