Stanford Center for Internet and Society

As the year comes to an end I thought it would be nice to recapitulate a few of the most important events in the technology field in Colombia this year:

1. Free trade agreement between the US and Colombia: This was by far the most important news in this area in Colombia. Negotiations ended officially in February, but agreement on the text itself took until the midyear. The agreement covers extensively all fields of intellectual property, and imposes the obligation on Colombia to incorporate into national law many of the provisions that have been so controversial in the US. The agreement must be ratified by the Congress of both countries before coming into force. It’s definitely going to be very interesting for all of us to see and participate in the discussion in Congress. Stay tuned!

This is the first time that I'm blogging so please be patient :). It is very hard to make even a small contribution to the issues studied at CIS when you are among such an amazing group of researchers, all making cutting edge analysis of all tech related matters. So I thought that my best shot was to keep it simple and try to approach IP and technology issues from my perspective, that is the perspective of someone who lives in a developing and somewhat troubled country. Are we facing the same issues? Should they be resolved just as they are being resolved in the US or Europe? What are the differences? What's going on in developing countries that other countries are not seeing?