Travelling down seven tracks, an estimated 220 participants from Latin America and the Caribbean take the fast-road to picking up essential tech skills that promise to make it easier for the region to communicate with less hiccups, and help build the much-needed not-for-profit networks and content-sharing links that serves the people of this continent.

Issues highlighted in the latest Chakula newsletter, dated July 2005 focus on the World Intellectual Property Organisation and its ‘Development Agenda’. Chakula traces the background to calls for reforms at WIPO, outlines the key issues of the proposal for the establishment of a ‘‘Development Agenda’’ for the organisation, and the developments so far after a series of meetings this year. Chakula is the Swahili word for ‘food’. This Africa Policy Monitor newsletter got its name to reflect its intended nature as a "form of nourishment" for organizations working in the field of ICTs for development in Africa.

What happens when popular media takes on the political class? In Thailand, it resulted in a $10 million civil suit, and a criminal libel suit, slapped on the young lady-campaigner who leads that country’s campaign for popular media reform. You can add your voice to an online campaign gaining momentum and drawing support from some prominent global campaigners.

Non-governmental organisations from across the globe have come out in support of a proposal submitted by the Group of Friends of Development (FoD) for a development agenda at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)." Some 99 organisations (at the time of writing) have supported the demand.

European parliament has reject the plan to allow software patents. This is being seen as providing a "breathing space for new initiatives based on all the knowledge gained during the last five years".

By a (legal) sleight of hand, the European Parliament 2003 vote against software patents has been effectively overturned, allowing monopoly control over the critical tools of an ‘information society’. This threatens both the free and unhindered access to information, and even free speech.

Synesthesia Urbania is a collaborative audio/visual public performance integrating mobile devices, a multilingual multimedia online workspace (moblog), collective copyright licensing and a custom 3D performance engine. Participants from Seoul will encounter those from Melbourne in this innovatively-charted out event.

APC member RITS was concerned that introducing telecentres in the Amazon would snuff out the traditional culture. But they report, “the opposite has happened”. The locals have embraced this new world on the internet, “have succeeded in better identifying who there are and now want to launch community sites to present their reality to the world.” Two telecentres are now running on the banks of the Tapajós River and another telecentre is planned. But there are other new developments in the air. – RITS

In Peru, the internet acts like fertilizer in the field. Or, you could say it helps to harvest information needed about sowing operations in a timely and far more accurate manner. This promises to bring home some benefits to poor farmers working on a subsistence model.

Rosario — one of Argentina’s three most-populous cities — sees computer literacy as its citizens’ passport to accessing the job-market. Residents of its western district voted to finance a computer training project, and APC member Nodo TAU was handed the challenge of training the trainers.