Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
tion without royalty fee; and that don't limit its reutilization.
According to this definition, it is clear that not all the specifications published
on Internet are necessarily open standards. There is also a new approach for this
subject being discussed by the international community.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 5 , signed 60 years ago, was drafted
when the relationship between citizens and governments occurred through face-toface
interactions. Today, most of this interaction rely on electronic media. However,
in spite of the media changing, the Human Rights must continue to be considered 6 .
Articles 2 and 7 from the aforementioned Declaration present the right of not
suffering discrimination from the government or the law. The digital world seems to
ignore the existence of those articles.
How many times have we tried to view a governmental website and find out
that it “only works” with a specific browser that, in turn, requires a particular operating
system? If I don’t purchase the required operating system and browser, I can’t
communicate with the government?
On other occasions, haven’t we already found published documents on a government
website in formats that require the purchase of a specific software in order
to access the information they hold?
In those two cases, we face a “technical problem” that prevented access to information,
or are we facing situations that violate the articles of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights?
We already have several open standards in constant development, which eliminate
those artificial hitches that keep users dependent on software suppliers. Both
examples presented above can be solved by using the W3C standards 7 for web pages
and site development, and the ODF standard (Open Document Format) 8 for recording
and exchange of editable electronic documents.
The use of these open standards has increasingly been the choice of governments,
companies and organizations worldwide, privileging free circulation and
5. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml).
6. Haia Declaration (http://www.digistan.org/hague-declaration:pt-br).
7. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): www.w3.org.
8. “Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF)”: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/
tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office.
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