Could it be that we aren't as far apart as we think?

I’ve just finished reading an article by Ana Montes, “The victim showed up for the date,” in which she recounts her attendance at a Fundación Vía Libre event, during which Julio Raffo presented his bill to reform Law 11.723. It’s a project of which I hope I am not entirely innocent: I harbor the illusion that my chats with Julio might have contributed to its gestation, and he was kind enough to share the early drafts with me.

Given that the title of the piece makes it crystal clear that Ana feels like a victim of the project, and that she writes on behalf of La Migré, I waded into the text expecting the usual, mind-numbing, and ill-informed whining that without draconian copyright laws, authors would promptly starve to death. I was not disappointed: there they were, in all their glory, those and many other misguided clichés—like the one claiming copyright, as we know it, is a human right (spoiler: it isn’t).

However, halfway through the article, I stumbled upon this sentence, highlighted by the author herself:

We authors are in favor of the free circulation of content on the web, and the only one who should pay is whoever negotiates with our desires to create and be re-created.

The sheer difficulty of reconciling this notion with the rest of the article isn’t enough to dampen the joy of finding a common ground: yes, we authors are in favor of the free circulation of works¹ on the web (and elsewhere). And that is precisely why we must support the reform of Law 11.723, because that law is one of the most restrictive on the planet and actively conspires against the circulation of works.

Welcome then, Ana (and perhaps La Migré with her?) to the reformist ranks of 11.723. We surely won’t see eye to eye on everything, but if we truly favor the free circulation of works, we must at least agree that the law needs a serious loosening up.

The rest is just a matter of details.