ICTlogy

Chairs: Raquel Xalabarder. Professor, School of Law and Political Science (UOC).

Ramon Casas Vallès. Professor of Intellectual Property at University of Barcelona.
Ten years of intellectual property on the Internet law reforms

The ancient Spanish Law of Intellectual Property (1979) was technologically neutral and thus could be applied in reality despite the many evolutions of technology.

But the new Law of 1987 had to face many issues: new technologies, European law, and the particularities of Spain.

The frontiers between what is public and private and between what is usage and what is delivering have blurred. What is now usage? What is now exploitation? Now, using can mean exploitation of affect those who are trying to benefit from exploitation.

On the other hand, the concept of reproduction has also changed. We now reproduce everytime we browse the Internet. Which does not mean it goes against intellectual property rights. But is there exploitation every time we distribute and/or communicate? Google Books is a good example of distribution without the aim of exploiting, as it is the information about the book what is exploited, despite the fact that the whole content is communicated.

The concept of distribution and public broadcasting are different in Europe and Spain.

There are several issues that relate to Spanish institutions and uses, such as piracy or “piracy”. The issue of piracy was addressed with the right to private copy and the right to compensation to the right holders.

As circumventing the former law became quite easy — both technically, both legally — the new (coming) law what directly does is trimming many user rights. On the other hand, the costs of exploitation or loss of benefits of exploitation of some intellectual property rights do not fall upon the users or potential users, but upon the costs of the whole citizenry, as they are supported by the State budgets.

In the new project of law, vicarious cooperation of induction to illegal use will also be punished, such as creating software to enable P2P file sharing.

Discussion

Francisco Jurado: how can we punish coding a technology that may enable illegal file sharing but also legal file sharing? Casas: there are two logics here. The technological one: if it can be done, so be it. And the legal one: if it can be done, let us think whether we want this to be. And the legal thinking on P2P file sharing should be whether we want that. And we want that depending on the majority use of such technology. If the 99% of uses is illegal, maybe we should ban a certain technology, despite its “it’s-possible-so-let’s-do-it” nature.

Q: intellectual property law is still focused on protection, and it seems that creation has been left aside. Is that it? Casas: intellectual property is not the origin, but the consequence of creation. And property is about the right to decide what the creator can do with her work. Do we need to foster creation because it is in the public benefit that there is more creation, etc, etc, etc? Right, but always respecting the particular decisions of the individual upon her creation.

Q: how long can we keep the regulation of copyright on a national basis, or we have to have an international (common) copyright law? Casas: It is impossible to protect intellectual property rights without international standards. It has always been so (the Bern agreement, the OMPI treatments, etc.) and we will see more of that.

Q: what happens with streaming? what happens with ebooks and used software? how can we compute the damage to right holders? Casas: it is very difficult to compute what is the damage to right holders. In the case of Spain, the calculations have been “how much am I (as the Government) willing to pay?”. Used software: does not apply in Spain. Streaming is public communication.

Chairs: Joan Balcells. Lecturer, School of Law and Political Science (UOC).

Helen Margetts. Director of the Oxford Internet Institute. Professor of Society and the Internet at the OII, University of Oxford.
Chaotic pluralism. Politics after a decade of social media

How has changing use of social media affected politics over the last decade? And what model of democracy, if any, has encapsulated what is going on?

Pluralism has surely been the winner in the bets: more competing elements in democracy, diversity of political institutions and policy-making, the existence a group for every interest, counter-mobilization undermining monopolistic exercise of power, etc.

In the last 10 years, more people have gone online, in the whole world. There has been a rapid growth of Internet penetration almost everywhere. And not only more people is online, but people is spending more and more time online too: especially on social media.

Tiny acts of action or collaboration on the Internet have been possible: micro-donations of money and time. The aggregation of these micro-donations are very important, but are causing a strong debate on whether this is politics, or clicktivism, slacktivism or what. But the think is that many people that would never participate in politics, now do. And this tiny participation can scale up to massive participation and engagement.

But these mobilizations are unstable, unpredictable. There is a new ecology of participation which we still do not know how it works. We know that much or e-petitions fail, but that it is not about the issue (which is not important), but about other aspects. On the other hand, we see many small changes and few large changes. We can see tipping points that, when reached, they position the petition above the threshold of success.

The dynamics of political participation:

• Exposition to social information, about the participation of others. On social media, you know, in real-time, what other people are doing, what are they voting or supporting.
• Visibility vs. anonymity. This duality influences the way you and/or your peers participate.
• Network effects.

Leadership without leaders: social media platforms provide ‘zero-touch’ co-ordination; rather thnn institutions, organizations; political action needs starters and followers to mobilize, but no necessarily leaders.

We are heading to chaotic pluralism: a pluralist pattern of competing interests, more disorganized but also much more active.

But chaotic pluralism offers us the means to understand it: every single act takes place in a digital environment, it leaves a trace, it generates big data, with natural science models, with experiments, etc.

Chaothic pluralism payoffs: social media provide a continuous flow of information between governors and government; social media as a barometer of public services, means of self improvement; government seeing like a citizen, rather than a state.

Chaotic pluralism challenges: natural science and social science having to work together, in multi-disciplinary teams; education and training to understand big data; reputational challenges of this research; new ethical frameworks.

Discussion

Q: to what extent can you trust people that there are no leaders? aren’t there leaders, even if there are informal ones? To what extent is it just rethorics that there are no leaders? Margetts: It is true that there is people that are at the core of mobilizations, or at organizing and promoting something. And it is true that these headless organizations have the risk of some people “taking over”, but there is too much chaos for the concept of “taking over” even applying to this kind of organization. Organizations are qualitatively different.

Mobile Learning Experience: mShools
Roser Cussó

• Improve learning with mobile technologies, encourage learning with mobile.
• Mobile learning awards: acknowledge didactic improvements applying mobile technologies in the classroom.
  
• Mobile history map.
• Visits to the Mobile World Centre.
• Responsible usage of mobile technology.
• Improve digital skills and promote digital enterpreneurship: a 105h course whose goal is building an app with App Inventor, collaboratively, mentored by tutors in the industry (Moodle with resources). Almost 6,000 students followed the course, +250 teachers, +250 centres, +200 mentors. The training of trainers will now be a MOOC.
• Build and open environment for mEducation.
• mSchools Market.
• mSchools Lab.
• mSchools Mobile4all

Round table on the Internet, Privacy and Education
Chairs: Genís Roca

Q: How can we approximate people that shaped their lives “the traditional way” (with books, with intimacy) in this new age? What happens with the digital divide? Sibilia: yes, there is a generational bias, but the market is approaching them (for profit purposes, of course) to get them in the new way of life. And, on the other hand, the connected self, the networked subjectivity is trendy, and valued by society, which also helps in bringing in outsiders. Camps: leapfrogging is possible in certain areas and this is also contributing to bridge some divides.

Q: What happens with the Internet creating new opportunities and spaces of freedom, but also causing a “panopticon effect” where everybody can be watched at, especially by governments, loss of intimacy, etc. Sibilia: not sure that this is the creation of the Internet, but more a strengthening of previous practices. What we are now living is more the consequence of some social fights and achievements of the past, especially those related with the libertarian ethos of 1968. But something went wrong or did not end totally well. A parallelism can be found in Latin America and their different revolutions and counter-revolutions: they also are the aim for a change, for achieving new roles, but with very different outcomes. But they all come from the same root. We are now having serious problems imagining an alternative to capitalism: the market also got networked, and got into some spaces whose entry was forbidden to it: the body, the school, etc.

Q: we have to vindicate a change of paradigm from learning to learning how to learn, how to manage knowledge, how to build one’s own network of people and resources. And this is the role that libraries have always performed and are nowadays focussing more in. Camps: we have to teach how to look for alternative sources of information.

Natàlia Cantó: what lies in between the walls vs. networks dichotomy? Is there a room in between for the urban landscape, for the city? Sibilia: yes, the Benjaminian approach of the flanneur is a very interesting one and it is part of the escape from the walled spaces. But maybe open spaces are the opposite to walled spaces, but what is the opposite, or the complement to the network? How do we scape (or disconnect) the network? Or can’t we? We sure have to thing about that. For instance, the different use of the Network is being done in different protests and demonstrations, which is not exactly the pattern of self-promotion, showing-up or lack of intimacy/privacy which seemed to be the (new) norm.

Victòria Camps
How to educate in an audiovisual environment?

When looking at cyberspace, we have to avoid being apocalyptic or integrated (à la Umberto Eco). It is “just” a different way to get information, to communicate, to buy, to engage people (in politics), etc. So, we cannot moralize over a world that is deeply and quickly changing from the point of view of an ancient regime that is fading away. We have to try and be objective. And the question is: is the Network a progress? Always?

The Internet has made some physical characteristics (race, gender…) irrelevant for discourse, has desacralized the centres of wisdom and creation of knowledge, has decentralized (or shifted) the centres of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge is increasingly vulnerable in the Information Society: being informed is not the same thing as knowing something.

The Internet has proven to be a revolution for political engagement, as it contributes in building community.

One of the most important rights in this new Internet-led age is the freedom of expression.

But every right of freedom has to have its limits, and the limits of freedom of expression are privacy and honour.

And what happens with the respect to one’s own privacy? That is, what happens when people do things on the Internet that they would never do offline. Are we losing intimacy? Is there a right to be forgotten?

Democracy can be deeply changed thanks to the Internet, but we need lots of good information so that we can decide on solid ground. But who certifies what is quality information? We need new professionals — or traditional professionals focussing on specific tasks — that filter and certify good information: journalists, teachers…

What happens with intellectual property? It is property as in the offline world.

On the Internet, we need self-regulation and self-regulation means education: formal education, education within the family.

Paula Sibilia, author of La intimidad como espectáculo
How social networks transform our intimacy?

We are living an age where our many technological devices — e.g. mobile phones — are pervasive and we “cannot live without them”, but this is happening because something had already happened, a change had already taken place decades ago. How is that we became “compatible” with our devices? Our ways of life accommodate to the devices, we made our lives compatible with our devices. And it’s both cause and consequence: we became compatible with our devices, but we built our devices because we aimed for a change.

During the modern era, and especially since the XIXth and XXth centuries, reading (especially fiction and novels) became a mainstream routine, and it was something that happened in silence and in isolation. Same happened when writing: both writing and reading was an intimate activity, something you did on your own. These activities required concentration, dedication. And even a specific place, a walled one — including schools.

This exercise of introspection was necessary to build one’s own subjectivity, one’s own identity, one’s own self. One’s own self compatible with the world that was being created since the Industrial revolution and all along the industrial era.

What changed in recent times?

We’re witnessing a shift from the intimate individual to the networked one. Which is changing the way to define our subjectivities, to deal with the world, to deal with others. We’re leaving behind the need of “a room of one’s own” (à la Virginia Woolf) for being and we’re moving towards a new paradigm of building one’s ego, one’s person, one’s subjectivity.

And this is of course radically changing education, we’re tearing down the walls we built for preserving our intimacy, much needed for building our selfs (¿Redes o paredes? La escuela en tiempos de dispersión).

Now, being visible, being online, being networked is the essence of time. And it shapes the essence of our own beings, our own self, our own identity and our own identity.

Our subjectivities are not alter-directed, instead of intro-directed or self-directed. We needed silence and intimacy, now we need crowds and openness. We were confined inside walls, we got rid of them, we became free… only to fall inside the network. Is that freedom? Is it not? It’s just different, much different indeed.

If we look at the school as a technology, the technology of a given age, the technology that we made compatible with a given age… it may now be the case that this technology, the school, if the age changed, it may well now be that the school became an incompatible technology for the new age.

So, it looks we got free, we unconfined ourselves. But. Can it be that the private sector could be capturing these free ones for their own profit? Could it be that the disclosure of the school is now being captured by the market? Is it possible that, in the quest for freedom we disclosed education for it to fall in the arms of private ownership?

We may agree that tearing down the walls of the school, disclosing education, is a much better scenario for knowledge to be created and transferred. But, instead, we may now need to create spaces for dialogue, for debate, for thoughtful exchange. We disclosed the spaces of knowledge, which is good, but we destroyed along the spaces for dialogue and debate, which is not.