Americas Quarterly - Winter 2009

The Digital Divide

of invited trading partners that have expressed interest in stronger IP enforcement tactics. Despite persistent calls from civil society groups, academics and firms in sectors that would be affected by the treaty to make working drafts available for more public review, the negotiating parties have insisted on near-total secrecy.

Prelude to an Unlikely Convergence? While conflicts around IP, net work access and innovation in the U. S. remain largely unresolved, in Brazil, the approach to these debates has shifted somewhat. The second Lula administration has proven less forceful in its knowledge-based development agenda, turning away from the more strident rhetoric employed by Amadeu and others. Nevertheless, the Lula government has persisted in its internal efforts to cultivate a domestic market for open access goods as well as for free and open source software.

As Lula enters the home stretch of his second term in office, Brazil’s efforts to use state funding and authority to promote access to informational resources should focus more on cultivating the domestic knowledge-based industry. In this regard, Brazilian innovators and regulators would do well to deepen the connections with high-technology sectors in North America and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the United States must confront the fact that its existing IP laws are hampering the emergence of new business models and technologies. During the U.S. presidential campaign and transition, President Barack Obama and his staff signaled that they intend to pursue a more innovation-oriented policy framework in knowledge-based industries by reforming IP regulations and promoting access to informational resources. ³ That said, the new administration must balance these aspirations with the powerful political forces in favor of strict IP enforcement. This includes the recording, film and pharmaceutical

WHERE SPEED DOESN’T MATTER

Venezuela, which has been keeping the Castro brothers’ Cuba afloat for several years, is now about to extend the island nation a digital lifeline as well. In a joint venture between Telecom Venezuela and Cuban Telecommunication Signals Transport Company, the state-owned telecoms plan to lay a 963-mile underwater fiber optics cable from Cuba to Venezuela.

But whether that will bring Cuba any further into the digital age is an open question. Cuba’s digital prospects are burdened as much by the weight of its restrictive communications policies as by its lack of access to high-speed Internet.

According to Carlos Orfila, the Venezuelan engineer in charge

of the project, the new cable will enable Cuba to circumvent the telecommunications restrictions placed on the island by the U.S. embargo, which has forced the island to rely on satellites to connect to the Web. Current Internet download speeds are 120 megabytes per second, but with the new connection Orfila claims that Cuban users will have access to a blistering 60 gigabytes per second. No one has provided an official cost estimate, but Venezuela Telecom claims the cable will be completed by 2010.

Unfortunately, for most Cubans speed doesn’t matter. According to a 2006 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Cuba has the lowest level of

Internet access in Latin America. The International Telecommunications Union estimates that out of 10. 5 million Cubans, only 95,000 are regular Internet users, or roughly nine-tenths of one per cent.

Yoani Sánchez, a prominent Cuban blogger, doubts the underwater cable will trigger any sort of telecommunications glasnost in her country. “It’s not a question of [technological] capacity, but of distribution, “ she says. “And our distribution is non-egalitarian…In Cuba we have six airports, but that doesn’t mean Cubans can travel abroad.”