The undersigned, as members of the educational community, the ICT sector, the cultural domain and civil society in general, declare:
One of the main objectives of our educational systems has to be the upbringing of autonomous citizens of the new information and knowledge society, with a critical mind and able to make the most of all the opportunities offered by communication networks and new media.
The use of new technologies in the educational sector opens a wide range of possibilities for learners and educations, bringing within their reach resources and tools that can enhance and facilitate the learning process at all educational levels. These technologies, however, should not be introduced at any cost. Big companies that produce software and educational materials usually offer their products at very favorable conditions to the educational community, hoping that today's students will be their customers tomorrow.
At the same time several social, academical and technological movements promote the free exchange of information among individuals. There are two of these movements especially relevant for the educational sector: Free Educational Materials (a.k.a. Open Educational Resources) and Free Software (a.k.a. Open Source or Libre Software). Both movements defend a model of collective construction of knowledge, on which works of authorship (whether they are computer programs or educational materials) can be freely used by anyone, either in their original form or with modifications. This model makes it possible for the community of users and developers of these works to share the effort of creating and maintaining them and to benefit from the results of this collective effort. In this sense we subscribe to the Budapest Open Access Declaration, [1] and the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, [2].
To work in the direction of these principles we propose the following concrete actions:
1) Free Software
We want the teaching of Computer Science and its application to software to be based on concepts instead of products, without a dependence on any particular companies. Therefore we demand the use of Free Software in educational institutions and that teachers and educators are provided with the training and support they need.
2) Free Educational Resources
We request the introduction of free educational resources in schools, so that collaboration between schools is favored for their creation. These materials can be customised by teachers or institutions in order to adapt them to the needs of every group of students. This will make knowledge more accessible, more up-to-date, more fitting to the needs of students and teachers and independent of corporate interests. We want everybody to be able to participate in this process according to their interests and their means.
3) Free Culture
We want to promote the principles of free culture within the educational system. We propose that all members of the educational community receive training on this topic and that the use of free licenses is established as the default for all works financed with public resources. With this we want that all publicly funded works are made universally accessible, without restrictions or obstacles of any kind. We are aware of the problems that traditional business models must face in the digital age in the area of culture and entertainment. That is precisely why we are convinced that it is necessary to find new ways to guarantee a fair retribution to artists and authors.
4) Balancing the copyright system
We demand that no authorisation from the author is needed in order to reproduce, transform or communicate already published artistic, scientific or technical works, when these acts have educational or research purposes, as long as authorship is attributed and other moral rights are respected. Transformation should be done using chain copyright assignment to avoid wrongful appropriation.
Moreover, all works over which the copyright is held by a public body will be immediately released into the public domain.
We defend the right to q in all cases where the cited work has already been published, as a vehicle of democratic growth in the information society.
5) Universal and neutral Internet
Network neutrality is one of the most important principles upon which the Internet is built. From the point of view of basic rights, network neutrality is equivalent to the equality and non-discrimination principle, since it guarantees that there will be no restrictions to the equipment connected to the network or the services and information that will be offered through it. Defending this principle is essential in order to keep the Internet from falling under the control of a few [] and thus we ask that this principle be guaranteed by law.
6) Open Standards
Open standards guarantee that different systems from different providers can exchange information without technical restrictions, using open formats defined by non-for-profit international bodies. We demand the use of open standards [3] in order to guarantee the durability of information for future generations and the technological independence of citizens.
References
[1] The Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
[2] Capetown Open Education Declaration, http://www.capetowndeclaration.org
[3] Open Standards definition, http://freeknowledge.eu/definitions/openstandards