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Andean Group - April 2012 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Internet legislation triggers new FTA-related row

As soon as the reforms proposed by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos to Colombia’s Law of Intellectual Property – bill 201 of 2012 - were approved in early April, the global web activist group Anonymous went on the attack. The websites of the senate, the chamber of representatives, the ministry of interior & justice, the presidency, the vice-presidency, the ministry of commerce and government online all became targets of the hackers, bringing back into the spotlight the controversial contents of the so-called ‘Ley Lleras 2.0’ or the 'Re-charged Ley Lleras'– so called because it constituted the second attempt by the government to reform the country’s intellectual property right law. (The first law had been sponsored by Minister of Interior Germán Vargas Lleras and met with such opposition, both from legislators and the wider public that it had to be shelved.) Without a doubt, very few issues have triggered so many headaches for the government as its attempts to put a start date on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA); bringing Colombia’s internet contents regulation in line with the US’s was a key step towards the approval of the FTA’s implementation law and the government wanted to be able to deliver on the last two commitments pending when President Barack Obama visited Cartagena de Indias for the VI Summit of the Americas (see postcript).

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