Once a year, about 300 people from over 50 countries come together to celebrate and strategise around a free Internet for all.

Leaders of the Creative Commons, free software, open education and access to knowledge communities talk about their vision for the future and discuss strategies for building a free global culture that is rich - both in terms of economic viability and geographic diversity.

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Una vez al año, casi 300 personas de más de 50 países se reúnen a celebrar y a armar estrategias acerca de una Internet libre para todos.

Líderes de los Creative Commons, del software libre, educación abierta y comunidades de acceso al conocimiento conversan respecto de su visión del futuro y discuten estrategias para constrir una cultura libre global que se enriquece en términos de viabilidad económica y diversidad geográfica.

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, is now accepting project proposals for the first round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, and podcasting on their own.

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Voces Alzándose, la rama de promoción y alcance comunitario de Global Voices (Voces Globales), está ahora aceptando propuestas de proyectos para la primera ronda de microbecas de hasta $5000 (USD) para proyectos de promoción y alcance comunitario a través de los nuevos medios. Los solicitantes ideales presentarán propuestas detalladas e innovadoras para enseñar técnicas de medios de comunicación ciudadana a comunidades pobremente posicionadas para descubrir y aprovechar por sus propios medios herramientas como los blogs, video blogs y “podcasts” o archivos digitales de distribución automática.

The Global Information Society Watch 2007 report - the first in a series of annual reports- looks at state of the field of information and communication technology (ICT) policy at local and global levels and particularly how policy impacts on the lives of people living in developing countries.

Studies of the ICT policy situation in twenty-two countries from four regions are featured: Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda); Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines); Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru); and Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), with one report from a Western European country (Spain).

The report concludes that when it comes to ICTs for development, there are some conspicuous similarities between the countries. Excluding Spain, the other twenty-one countries each show obvious evidence of the “digital divide” which impacts on the majority of people negatively. According to Brazilian authors RITS, the absence of a people-orientated policy framework in Brazil runs the risk of condemning the vast majority of people to “eternal disconnection.” The report also includes provocative, analytical essays on five international institutions (including ICANN and the World Intellectual Property Organisation) questioning the extent to which they allow all stake-holders to participate in their processes. There is a special section on how to measure progress.

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El informe 2007 de GISW –primero de una serie de informes anuales- observa el estado de situación de las políticas de tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) tanto en el ámbito local como mundial, y sobre todo analiza cómo impacta una política determinada en la vida de los/as habitantes del mundo en desarrollo.

Los informes sobre la situación de las políticas TIC que se presentan en el estudio incluyen 22 países de cuatro regiones: África (Egipto, Etiopía, Kenya, Nigeria, República Democrática de Congo, Sudáfrica y Uganda); América Latina (Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, México y Perú); Asia (Bangladesh, Filipinas, India y Pakistán); y Europa oriental (Bosnia y Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croacia y Rumania); además de un país de Europa occidental (España).

La conclusión del trabajo es que, cuando se trata de TIC para el desarrollo, existen notorias similitudes entre los países. Con excepción de España, los restantes 21 países muestran pruebas de una “brecha digital” que impacta negativamente en la mayoría de las personas. Según RITS, organización brasileña miembro de APC, la carencia de un marco político orientado hacia las personas hace que se corra el riesgo en Brasil de condenar a la amplia mayoría de la población a una “desconexión eterna”.

El informe incluye también informes provocativos y analíticos sobre cinco instituciones internacionales (entre ellos la Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones – UIT-, ICANN y la Organización Mundial sobre la Propiedad Intelectual –OMPI) en los que cuestiona hasta dónde permiten la participación de los sectores en sus procesos. Asimismo hay una sección especial sobre cómo medir los avances.

We are told that we live in the ‘digital revolution’ era and that we can communicate across the globe as we never could before. In fact, restrictive copyright laws still act as a serious barrier to sharing and learning from each other. This is particularly true in countries of the South where three quarters of the population live.

To read more, get a copy of the 208-page Copy/South Dossier produced in May 2006 by the Copy South Research Group after more than 18 months of research. Available at no charge, this unique dossier contains more than 50 articles examining many dimensions of the issue across the global South, such as access, culture, economics, libraries, education, software, the Internet, the public domain, and resistance. It is available at no charge.

As part of the research project "Mobile Opportunities: Poverty and Telephony Access in Latin America and the Caribbean", DIRSI presents its background papers.

Our background research has identified the importance of mobile access to the poor, its process of growth as well as a series of regulatory and market barriers for increased mobile telephony access and use by the poor. Yet empirical studies of the social and economic implications of mobile use in the region based on demand analysis are rare.

The main goal of this research project is to understand the strategies employed by the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean to access and use mobile telephony services, and identify the major market and regulatory barriers to increased penetration and usage as well as business opportunities for the "bottom of the pyramid" users. We also seek to understand how mobile telephony access contributes to social and economic development- what we call mobile opportunities. A set of recommendations for policymakers and key stakeholders to help remove major access barriers, including identification of best-practice solutions to delivering mobile services to the "bottom of the pyramid" users, is a key project deliverable.

El proyecto 1@+tú=1€ consiste en una iniciativa del Principado de Asturias que, a través de la Fundación CTIC, pretende apoyar la ejecución de una serie de Proyectos de Cooperación al Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información (CDSI) de ámbito internacional. Queremos acercar la Sociedad de la Información a grupos que no tienen un fácil acceso a la misma, como medio para difundir la cultura y el conocimiento a todos los ciudadanos del mundo.

The report, "Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies: A Survey" produced by the Geneva Net Dialogue, an open, international association whose mission is to lend its support to the operation of human rights in the information society, recommends that UNESCO support open standards and protocols that are generated through democratic processes not dominated by large corporations. The use of OpenDocument Format and other open formats is also encouraged as they help mitigate lock-in to certain technologies.

The Winter 2006 issue of Information Technology and International Development (ITID) journal features macro and micro perpectives on wireless technologies in Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. The articles in the journal provide a critical assessment of the high hopes associated with the use of wireless technologies in developing nations. The issue brings together five perspectives on the role wireless technologies can play in the deployment of communication infrastructures and services throughout developing regions.

Cyber Security has proved to be an elusive goal that now requires a radical shift in the mental models of IT practitioners. The first issue stems from the idealised concept of security with the implicit belief that a system can be made invulnerable to attack. This is an unattainable goal if we are dealing with any complex IT System, and by complex I mean any network containing more than 2 computers to which human users have access.

Our current version of capitalism—the corporate, globalized version 2.0—is rapidly squandering our shared inheritances. Now, Peter Barnes offers a solution: protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers.

Barnes shows how capitalism—like a computer—is run by an operating system. Our current operating system gives too much power to profit-maximizing corporations that devour our commons and distribute most of their profit to a sliver of the population. And government—which in theory should defend our commons—is all too often a tool of those very corporations.

Barnes proposes a revised operating system—Capitalism 3.0—that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust—a market-based entity with the power to limit use of scarce commons, charge rent, and pay dividends to everyone.

Capitalism 3.0 offers a practical alternative to our current flawed economic system. It points the way to a future in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices.