Arquivos do Mês: July 2024

The National Library receives an average of 80 thousand publications per year.

For 20 years, every work published in Brazil had to have at least one copy sent to the National Library Foundation (FBN), the oldest cultural institution in the country. Enacted in 2004, during the administration of singer and composer Gilberto Gil as Minister of Culture, Law 10.994 “regulates the legal application of publications in the National Library, aiming to ensure the registration and safekeeping of national intellectual production, in addition to enabling the control, preparation, and dissemination of the current Brazilian bibliography, as well as the defense and preservation of the national language and culture.”

“A country without memory is not a country,” highlights Gabriela Ayres, the FBN Processing and Preservation Center general coordinator responsible for collecting the works sent through the Legal Application. The National Library does not only safeguard the history of Brazil but also the history of Brazil’s construction.”

With the Legal Application, the space receives, on average, 80 thousand publications annually. Some areas of knowledge receive more work than others, and there is also a difference in the number of books sent by region, especially the North and Northeast. “There is a shortage due to logistics and shipping costs, but we always try to cover the major areas and interact with publishers and authors, promoting heritage education on the importance of sending these publications to the National Library,” explains Ayres.

According to the Management Reports available on the institution’s website, in 2023, the foundation received 59,054 works through the Legal Application. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lowest collections in the last ten years were in 2020 (35,772) and 2021 (17,671).

Regarding the types of books, Carlos Henrique Juvêncio, a professor at the Department of Information Science at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) and author of the book A Biblioteca e a Nação: Entre catálogos, exposições, documentos e memória (The Library and the Nation: Between catalogs, exhibitions, documents, and memory) (2024), explains that they are all those published in the country, including translations of foreign productions and official documents, if collected in books.

“Even if the author is foreign, there was a translator who, at the very least, speaks our language,” he points out. In these cases, there may not be an intellectual production in the sense of being a Brazilian work. Still, the editorial production is, as is the translator’s care and the language. The Legal Application shows the transformations in our language based on written production, so translations are also subject to the legislation,” he adds.

However, the researcher emphasizes that Law 10.994 is still silent regarding publications made in the virtual environment. “There is a loophole that says ‘all printed or other media works,’ but there is still no clear regulation on how digital works should be sent and how they will be made available to the public.”

According to the general coordinator, digital publications, such as e-books, are generally sent to the FBN stored on CD. Still, this issue continues to be one of the main challenges faced by the Processing and Preservation Center.

“Scientific journal publications, for example, have completely moved from the printed model, from a magazine, to a website model”, she notes. In this sense, in 2020, the Digital Preservation Policy of the National Library (PPDBN) was published, with principles for the conservation, management, and dissemination of the digital collection that is part of the BNDigital, created in 2006.

In addition to safeguarding the country’s cultural, literary, and musical heritage, the Legal Application is also related to another Brazilian law, Law 9.610, which regulates copyright in the national territory. The Copyright Law establishes that when a work enters the Public Domain, that is, it can be used without authorization from the family or heirs, and 70 years after the author’s death, the State becomes responsible for safeguarding its integrity.

“Analyzing this part of the law, which says that the State becomes responsible for the integrity of the work, this already refers to the Legal Application,” says Juvêncio.

In the professor’s opinion, with two decades of Legal Application, one issue that needs to be discussed is compliance with the legislation. “We have severe publishers who effectively comply with the norm, but most do not,” he warns. For example, he mentions sending newspapers, which he worked until 2010 at the National Library. According to him, the FBN received around 124 titles from all over Brazil, a scarce production for the territorial extension of the country.

Imperial law

Juvêncio explains that the Legal Application Law originates from another legislation from the early 19th century. In 1824, an order from the then Emperor Pedro I required that all printers of the Court in the city of Rio de Janeiro submit a copy of all works produced to the Imperial and Public Library of the Court, now the National Library. The legislation would only be revised 83 years later, when Decree 1,825 of December 20, 1907, determined that “the administrators of typography, lithograph, photography or engraving workshops, located in the Federal District and the States, are obliged to send to the National Library of Rio de Janeiro a copy of each work they execute.”

Almost 100 years later, the 1907 decree was replaced by the Legal Application Law and Law 12,192/2010, which “regulates the legal application of musical works in the National Library, to ensure the registration, storage, and dissemination of Brazilian musical production, as well as the preservation of the national phonographic memory.”

“The idea is that the National Library will have all the works published and disseminated in the country since the establishment of the Legal Application in the 19th century so that it can be a source of memory and complete what is called the National Memory Collection, formed by a group of institutions, such as the National Archives and the National Museum”, explains the professor.

Source: Agência Brasil

Brazilian innovation in renewable energy gained particular attention. Researchers at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) developed a solar panel that is the thickness of a sheet of paper. According to the program presented by Laura Marise from the channel “Não Vi 1 Cientista” in the section “Brazilians need to be studied,” this ultra-thin technology promises to revolutionize how we use solar energy.

With its extremely thin thickness, the solar panel created by UFPR researchers can be applied to various surfaces, from building walls to accessories and mobile devices. Imagine a future where entire buildings are covered with these panels, generating energy from sunlight. Or even devices that can be automatically recharged just by exposure to the sun. The versatility of this solar panel opens up a range of innovative possibilities in using renewable energy.

Solar Panel Energy Efficiency

One of the most impressive features of this new technology is its efficiency. The ultralight solar panels developed by Brazilian researchers can generate up to three times more energy than conventional solar panels. This superior efficiency is a significant advancement in the field of renewable energy, making the technology more effective and attractive for a broader range of applications.

Another crucial advantage of this solar panel innovation is the ease of large-scale production. UFPR researchers highlight that paper solar panels can be manufactured faster and cheaper than traditional models. This mass production capacity is essential for the widespread and large-scale adoption of the technology, potentially making solar energy more accessible and affordable.

Future impact

These ultralight solar cells are expected to become even more economical and durable as technology advances. The accessibility and efficiency of new solar panels promise to benefit several industrial sectors and facilitate access to quality electrical energy for many people. With this innovation, Brazil can lead the development of renewable energy technologies, contributing significantly to global sustainability.

Source: CPG

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman made somewhat controversial statements when he said in an interview with CNBC that everything published on the internet is “freeware” — that is, anyone can copy and use it as they wish. The statement came after the interviewer’s question, who wanted to know whether AI companies take intellectual properties from the web to train artificial intelligence models.

AI can be trained with everything on the internet

When calling online content “freeware,” Suleyman says there is no problem using network publications in generative AI training, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.

“I think that, with regard to content that is already on the open web, the social contract for this content since the 90s has been fair use”, points out the CEO of MS. “Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. This has been ‘freeware’ if you prefer, that has been the understanding”, he concludes.

The problem with this “understanding” is that there are countless cases of intellectual property online, from videos on YouTube to texts on sites. Furthermore, photos and other media also fall under different rules, just like content on social networks. Therefore, it is likely that Suleyman is wrong when he claims that everything is “freeware” on the internet.

Microsoft and OpenAI are being sued

It is worth remembering that in December 2023, the American newspaper The New York Times filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing the companies of copyright infringement in training artificial intelligence models.

The famous news portal claims it lost “billions of dollars” because chatbots used its content and information without permission.

Source: CanalTech