OPINION TEXTS
The Freezer
11
In the last years, some groups of citizens and universities have mentioned the issue of constructing in natural areas. The Van Der Hammen reserve is an important source of water and oxygen, it is habitat of wildlife, and also it is the connection between the east mountains and the Bogotá river. If the city protects this reserve we and the next generations will have a good future.
Currently, the world face the global warming and climate changes. Cities should adapt to the consequences of environmental problematics. Some cities around the world have begun introducing systems of net zero transportation like electric subways, electric cars and buses, and bicycles. Transmilenio is an obsolete system. Bogota should introduce a new efficient system of transportation. The new technologies in the cities will be net zero emissions of carbon. Cities will tend to protect and increase green areas and water fountains. Bogotá needs to work on solutions for all this problematics and It should promise a well being for its inhabitants.
While copyright is based on an economy concept, it serves to protect us from plagiarism and prevent some people to gain money with other’s work. However, I believe that the laws about this topic are structured only to protect the products and intellectual property of companies. In countries like Colombia there are legal voids to protect the ideas, methodologies and intangible creations, because for them artists or other creators of “intangible” stuff (a very subjective term) are not important.
When you go to register your ideas, methodologies or elements like characters and stories, you cannot do it. For example, If you are an illustrator or a writer and you go to the entity in charge of the copyright to protect your characters so that no one else uses them, you cannot, because for the entity in charge of Copyright those are not tangible “elements”. For this entity, your characters are just ideas. In contrast, if you go to register the trademark or name of a company or ingredients of a product or food, you can register them, despite these are not physical element either. Also, if you are a natural person and someone plagiarizes something of yours, if no one puts in a complaint, it could continue forward like nothing had happened. In contrast, if someone plagiarizes something from a company, the state can sue those people, even if the company still does not know it.
Besides, if you make something (material or not) while you are working on a company and you don’t ask your rights on this, the company could register it as owners of this. Then, you will have only the right over the authorship, but you will not have the economic and difusion rights of these. Those are just a few of the many problems that the artists and common people have with the copyright. In conclusion, I think that there are a lot of benefits for companies, while for the artists and common people the entities of copyright put more obstacles than benefits.
Bogotá has environmental problematics that the government isn’t dealing with. The pollution that the means of transportation, like Transmilenio, produce, are not controlled because the government of the city insists on using Transmilenio like the most important system of transportation. Other policy that will produce environmental problems in the city is the possible construction in natural reserves like the Van Der Hammen reserve and the construction in Bogotá’s savannah in a rural area on the other side of Bogotá river.
Copyright is not for artists and common people, it is only for companies.
By Leonardo Portuguez
More transmilenio and constructions in natural areas in Bogotá are bad ideas
By Camilo Andrés Ramírez