Chile’s First Bloggers Legal Workshop: Building a New Common Sense · Global Voices
Rosario Lizana

On 12 of November, the first ever Chilean “Taller Legal” (Legal workshop) took place in the brand new “Santiago Library”. More than 170 people attend the event, organized by Digital Rights Organization.
The event began with a round table discussion featuring Roberto Arancibia, Miguel Paz, Arturo Catalán, Manuel Contreras y Soledad Ferreiro; Christian Leal.
Roberto talked about the corporative Blogs and the opportunity they open to talk with people. From a journalistic point of view, Arturo Catalán said that   “Everyone can be reporter without studying in the university. It only depends upon you yourself, nobody else”, refers to the editors. “Journalists compete with the World”.
He speaks of the nanomedia Works with a scale economy that allow low cost, because of the smaller workforce.
Manuel Contreras spoke about how Blogs allow one to consider information that newspaper reporters are not used to consider. He also stated that media use more interpretation than information – and in that sense citizens’ Blogs can inform more than media news – and that Bloggers were the thermometer that let us know what the concerns of everyday people are.
Soledad talked about the rights of the author and the ethics of recognising authorship of the other. “This is a space of empowerment of the human being, about identity and community. Is not about the author’s right, is about the authority of the person”.
The event continued with 3 expositions about “Expression, Liberty and Right”,
“Author’s Rights and Creative Commons”, and finally “Laboral Issue of Privacy and the Internet”.
The first topic focused on the responsibility of penal issues in blogging, raising questions such as: what happens if someone comments about a illicit subject, e.g. child pornography; or what is the difference between the social media role and blogging.
“Author’s Rights and Creative Commons” detailed the practice of the author’s right to be respected in the content, and how Creative Commons work towards that goal. The final panel talked about the rights issues in Blogging activity at work; the criteria of blogging about one’s company and one’s rights should the company take action (say, dismissal) based upon this activity.
In Chile there are no particular laws governing these issues, instead generally the law of authors rights (that appears on the Free Trade Agreement with EEUU) is applied.  These talks aimed towards defining common criteria that could work for the network of Bloggers, embodying common sense.
The Santiago Library is the biggest public building in Chile, and was inaugurated last November. This exposition opened the auditorium. Regarding the event, organizer Daniel Alvarez said ”We think that Blogs are participation space and we hope they will transform on the public park and we think we have to give the tools to develop the best possible practices.”
This discussion aimed towards building a common sense understanding of Blogging activity on the internet today, as foundation for criteria it will need in the future.
Photos here