As Diego Stands Trial, Show Your Support for Open Access | Electronic Frontier Foundation

"Access to knowledge is a global right." These are the words of student Diego Gomez, who begins his trial in Colombia today, and faces eight years in prison for posting a scientific paper online to share with his colleagues. Diego's plight highlights three important issues: (1) stringent copyright regimes around the world are being abused to stifle access to knowledge; (2) those regimes are in part a result of U.S. efforts to use trade deals to spread bad innovation policy; and (3) open access is a policy that's critical to education, innovation, and global progress. We need you to stand by Diego. Help us inform the world about the injustices that turned this student into a criminal, and show your support for advancing open access policies worldwide ... Extreme criminal copyright rules chill users' rights, especially when it comes to access to culture and knowledge. When users face the threat of being jailed or hit with debilitating fines over allegations of copyright infringement, everyday activities like sharing academic resources can be intimidating. It doesn't help that Colombia, like most of the world, lacks robust fair use protections ... We need to question why Colombia has such severe copyright laws in the first place. It directly results from the country's trade agreement with the United States. Colombia reformed its criminal laws in 2006 and expanded criminal penalties for copyright infringement in order to fulfill the trade deal's restrictive copyright standards. While the country already had criminalized copyright infringement, the trade agreement compelled lawmakers to heighten possible prison sentences and monetary fines ..."