Since 1988, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has released an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” for every country in the world. The intention is to classify countries that either encourage or turn a blind eye to intellectual property piracy and countries can be put on a “Watch List” or “Priority Watch List”. This designation can then be used to pressure countries during trade negotiations.

Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh, recently noticed that the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has been lobbying US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to designate countries that have mandated the use of free software (specifically, Brazil, Indonesia and India) to be placed on the Special 301 Watch List. The IIPA is a private sector coalition of trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); these names are familiar to digital freedom supporters as cartels hell-bent on using their power to suffocate internet freedoms and to change the course of humanity’s path towards information-based societies in the interest of their enormous profiteering.

The assertion that a country’s choice to use free software is equivalent to illegal piracy is an absurdity and a desperate response to the the free software revolution happening throughout the world. In the 498-page Special 301 report released by the IIPA, they attack Brazil’s policy of mandating the use of free software on page 183 as a reason to keep it on the watchlist:

“Government software procurement: The Brazilian Government should be encouraged to continue its efforts to implement effective software asset management practices in its public ministries and agencies, while avoiding mandates for procurement of software based on the model of development or the business model of the developer.”

On page 170, the IIPA clarifies its demands of the Brazilian government:

“Avoid legislation on the mandatory use of open source software by government agencies and government controlled companies.”

Then, the IIPA takes us to Indonesia. Starting on page 79, they attempt to form a coherent argument about how mandating a switch to open source software is somehow an act against US trade interests:

“[I]n March 2009, the Ministry of Administrative Reform (MenPAN) issued Circular Letter No. 1 of 2009 to all central and provincial government offices including State-owned enterprises, endorsing the use and adoption of open source software within government organizations. While the government issued this circular in part with the stated goal to ‘reduc[e] software copyright violation[s],’ in fact, by denying technology choice, the measure will create additional trade barriers and deny fair and equitable market access to software companies.”

Huh? It’s as if the IIPA forgot that plenty of US companies sell open source software — a fact that they probably “forgot” because no open source software company is paying them off. Why is this form of institutionalized bribery accepted? The IIPA goes on to demand that Indonesia rescind this order on page 80:

“IIPA requests that the government of Indonesia take the following actions, which would result in the most significant near term commercial benefits to the copyright industries: […] Rescind March 2009 MenPAN circular letter endorsing the use and adoption of open source software […]”

The IIPA’s war against the free software revolution then takes us to the Philippines on page 148:

“IIPA was concerned regarding reports of consideration of a Free Open Source Software bill which would require government offices to use open source software. Passage of that bill would deny technology choice regarding software usage and ultimately would stunt the growth of the IT industry in the Philippines.”

Thailand’s commitment to open source is attacked on page 353:

“Among other market access restrictions to be addressed, reverse proposed policy mandating use of open source software, and, e.g., requiring bundling of government funded computers and computers for schools with open source software; maintain neutral policies with respect to technology choice.”

Vietnam is instructed to avoid open source on page 396: “Cease government-endorsed open source preference policy which is limiting technology choice in Vietnam.”

And, Ecuador is also cited for dangerously choosing open source software on page 453: “Most of USTR’s concerns were directed at patent issues, but one major copyright problem highlighted involved a poorly drafted provision in the Education Law which appears to allow free software to educational institutions. Due to their concerns, USTR moved Ecuador back to the Watch List […]”

The IIPA Report makes a few things very clear. First, although this is already well-known, the software industry is scared to death of open source software and must resort to strong-arming as it’s only means of competing with it. Second, free software is spreading like wildfire all over the world as the smart defense against the proprietary software industry. And, finally, we can see why free software for taxpayers is not gaining traction in the United States, where industry lobby groups have a much easier time bribing decision-makers.

On January 25th, SourceForge.net published a post on their official blog explaining that they were denying SourceForge services and site access to users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited people from those countries from accessing their website but they only began enforcing the condition a week before posting the blog entry.

Part of their justification reads: “Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place.”

Although, many users have posted comments criticizing SourceForge’s decision. Some, such as afsharm, who has contributed to projects hosted on SourceForge and can no longer access his work now: “I am an Iranian (an innocent one) and I am not responsible for what ever my government is doing. As nawwark mentioned I’ve sometimes have contributions in SF.NET projects, so why you are denying me from my own works? It’s against freedom and against FOSS.”

Others, like yemeth, could not understand how a project based in another country can be considered a US product: “I seriously can’t understand this. I’m Spanish, and my technology isn’t northamerican. It has nothing to do with the United States except that is hosted here. I can’t understand why said government has anything to say about my will to share my code with EVERYONE. I have no personal embargo against Cuba, nor does my country.”

And there were those, like pmarkiewicz, who pointed out the easier solution: “Folks, if you visit http://www.torproject.org and install tor, then SourceForge can not determine your country of origin. If you happen to traverse through an exit node that is not in an ‘axis of evil’ country, then there is no reason you would be denied that code. Senator Clinton even endorsed efforts to provide these tools to dissenters.”

The comment makes reference to Secretary of State Clinton’s request to Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown during the election protests in Iran, so that Iranian users could access and use the website (seemingly putting Twitter at legal risk, following the logic used by SourceForge). At the time, she said: “And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people.”

Two weeks later, SourceForge posted another entry on their blog, announcing a change in their decision. Now, they have removed the block and added a feature that allows project owners to ban access to the sanctioned countries:

Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we’ve ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month’s change.

While this was a positive change in the eyes of some, there are still many unanswered questions from SF users, especially those from outside of the US. They don’t understand the US laws and are not sure if they will be in some kind of trouble by choosing to freely distribute their software.

To be fair, SourceForge.net is not the only web service to block users from the sanctioned countries. NXS News reported on this before when it was noticed that Google was blocking access to users based on the country they were surfing from. The consensus being floated around the FOSS community is to start choosing hosts outside the US for their projects, where restrictions on internet use are not so strict. A good option would be Launchpad.net in the UK, used by MySQL and Ubuntu. Either way, the US Government’s arguments about standing up for freedom (remember, “they hate us for our freedom”) is certainly diluted by their own efforts to restrict the individual freedom of people to freely use the internet, regardless of where in the world they happen to be when using it.

The Public Software is an initiative from Brazil’s government to provide free software as a public service to the society. It is a portal for communities of free softwares developed by the government and the private sector. All of the solutions are used in production sites inside of the major public institutions of Brazil and in the private sector.

In February 2009, at Havana, Cuba, was launched the project to internationalize the Free Software Portal, an initiative to help other countries to implement free software in their government adopting the Brazilian model. Cuba was the first one to join it, and they will choose one of the free softwares in the portal to be translated to Spanish and used in different sectors of the Cuban society.

After that other governments has shown desire to join the project such like Paraguay, Trinidad e Tobago, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. Now Brazil started to visit countries around Latin America to present the Public Software Portal. Uruguay was the first one to be visited, the goal with these meetings is to present the experience of the Public Software in Brazil.

The internationalization process is an attempt to share the solutions with other countries and also to involve them on the development of those free softwares communities. The process will involve the translation of the solutions as well as the creation of a special portal translated to other languages which will host communities of free softwares from other countries.

The First Public Software Meeting will happen this year on Octuber during the Latinoware Conference at Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná. It will be historic and will greatly enhance the process of adoption of free software by Latin America governments.

In many ways, the FISL Week represents the great achievements in Latin America over the last decade: countries that had spent decades under the repressive control of military dictatorships are now experiencing a historically unprecedented re-birth and the culture of information freedom that we write about on this news website is representative of what could be called the new “open source societies” all over Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, only one military coup was attempted in Latin America — in Venezuela in 2002 — and that coup was defeated as millions of Venezuelans poured into the streets demanding that their democratically-elected president be returned to power.

Unfortunately, one day after the closing ceremonies at FISL, on a day when Honduran people were expecting to participate in a non-binding election regarding constitutional reforms, a small group of soldiers from the Honduran military kidnapped the democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, declared martial law and installed a new, unelected president in his place. All flights in and out of Honduras have been canceled by order of the military and normal television and radio news outlets have been shut down at gunpoint. However, there are some things that are known:

• The mayor of San Pedro Sula has been kidnapped at gunpoint by masked members of the military. His whereabouts are unknown but his wife was visiting family at the time in another city and is deeply concerned about her children, who were with their father.
• Martial law is in full effect in Honduras, at this hour: Many other members of the government are being “arrested” by the military. The national media is off the air and the state-run TV station has been shut down. Radio stations have been raided and shut down. The national telephone system has been shut down and electricity has been cut off to many parts of the country. The military has set up checkpoints throughout the country to restrict travel. Many citizens who had volunteered to help the constitutional reform effort have either been detained or they are in hiding.
• The installed president has announced that a nation-wide curfew is in effect, requiring all Hondurans to be in their homes between the hours of 9PM and 6AM.
• One by one, the countries who are members of the Organization of the American States have condemned the illegal military coup, refused to recognize the military-installed regime and insisted that President Zelaya be returned to power. Globally, nations and international organizations have rushed to condemn the military coup that is taking place, including the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Antigua, Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, Belize, Barbados, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Spain, El Salvador, the European Union, the UN General Assembly, as well as the entire 35-country membership of the Organization of American States, who held an emergency session once news of the coup came out.

Currently, the world is demanding that the democratically-elected president be returned to power, martial law be ended and democracy be restored in Honduras. People in the United States and elsewhere are being asked to contact the Department of State, Honduran embassies and their congressperson to insist that democracy be restored in Honduras. While it may seem like the world is lining up to condemn the situation in Honduras, if they feel like no one cares, they may not apply the pressure needed to change things. To allow this type of military coup to succeed in Honduras would be rolling back the advances made in the Americas by 30 years. At NXS, we work with Latin America on a daily basis and we could not, in good conscience, allow this military coup to proceed without saying something.

1. State Department: 202-647-4000 or 1-800-877-8339
2. White House: Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414
3. Contact your elected representative!
4. Honduran embassies around the world

Elastix is a complete GNU/Linux distribution with Asterisk, DHADI, Openfire, Postfix and many other free software packages. It has a user-friendly interface that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based PBXs, as well as its own set of utilities which allows the creation of third party modules. The software was created by PaloSanto Solutions, an IT company from Ecuador, and released to the public for the first time in March 2006. Elastix has a good support for telephony hardware … you can see the complete list at their hardware compatibility list. Elastix was used during the last presidential elections in Ecuador and what they have to say about it is very interesting:

… it was decided to optimize the communication system in all the locations where the voting counting was taking place to help monitor the process. Elastix was chosen as the communication platform because of the technical and economic benefits it offered for this project. […] Elastix was able to provide smooth communication between more than eighty (80) locations involved in the vote counting process. Thanks to Elastix it was possible to implement a communication system of this size all over the country in only two (2) weeks!

Elastix made life easier for those who are looking for a VOIP solution, proven out by its rapid popularity growth. The project has been nominated in various categories for Source Forge’s Community Choice Awards (CCAA) in the years of 2007 and 2008. This year they are recommending that the votes go for the following categories:

• Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything
• Best Project for the Enterprise
• Best Project

If you want to help this amazing project to win for the first time Sourge Forge CCAA, vote for them at this link (you can select multiple categories). Remember that Friday, May 29, is the last day to vote for nominations!