Board/RonaldoLemos

Background information on Ronaldo Lemos, Mozilla Foundation board director

Ronaldo Lemos is an internationally respected Brazilian academic, lawyer and commentator on intellectual property, technology, and culture. He is the Project Lead of Creative Commons Brazil.

Lemos is the director of the Rio Institute for Technology & Society, and professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University´s Law School. He is also a partner with the law firm Pereira Neto Macedo advogados.

Ronaldo's academic background includes a J.D., University of Sao Paulo Law School, a Master of Laws degree, Harvard Law School, and a Doctor of Law, University of Sao Paulo. In 2011, Lemos joined the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University as a visiting fellow. In July 2013, Lemos joined the MIT Media Lab as a visiting scholar. He is also the liaison to the director of the MIT Media Lab for Brazil.

Ronaldo's work protecting the open web

Lemos was one of the creators of the Marco Civil da Internet, a draft legislation for protecting civil rights, privacy and net neutrality for the Internet in Brazil.

He worked with the Brazilian federal government on the implementation of its free software program. Lemos also worked with the Ministry of Culture on the implementation of its digital culture policy, and was appointed by the Ministry of Justice to its electronic commerce commission.

Ronaldo is also is a founder of Overmundo, for which he received the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category of digital communities.

He founded the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School in 2003, and was the director of the Center until 2013, succeeded by the former Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Nelson Jobim. He was a co-founder of the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in Rio de Janeiro in 2002.

Ronaldo was nominated in July 2012 as a member of the Council for Social Communication, a governmental body that includes preparing studies, opinions, and recommendations to National Congress of Brazil|Congress regarding communication, media, and freedom of expression.

He writes weekly for Folha de S.Paulo, the largest national newspaper in Brazil, and contributes to a number of other publications, including Foreign Affairs, Harper's Bazaar, and Bravo!. He also hosts a weekly TV show at Globonews, the biggest cable news channel in Brazil, called Navegador.

Publications, interviews and lectures

Comércio Eletrônico (2001), Conflitos sobre Nomes de Domínio e Outras Questões Jurídicas da Internet (2003), Direito, Tecnologia e Cultura (2005), and Tecnobrega: o Pará Reinventando o Negócio da Mùsica (2008), Futuros Possíveis: Mídia, Cultura, Sociedade, Direitos (2012).

The 2007 documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy" includes an interview with Lemos, in which he comments on the Brazilian Tecno brega industry and copyright.

Publicly available lectures from Lemos include:

• A Conversation with Ronaldo Lemos: The State of the Open Internet in Brazil, 2012
• "TEDx Talk on music, technology, global peripheries, and internet regulation" 2009
• Google Policy Talk: "Culture Production and Digital Inclusion in Developing Countries", November 2007

Ronaldo's work with Mozilla

Ronaldo has been working with Mozilla in Brazil since 2005. His involvement began with the Free Software Forum events organized annually in Porto Alegre, where he helped Mozilla organize activities and work the Brazilian community. During this time, he has played an active role in press relations and community building.

More recently, he has been involved in a series of legislative initiatives to keep the web open, with Mozilla acting as a partner, supporter and interlocutor, including the "Marco Civil" - Civil Rights Framework," which was officially supported by Mozilla. Ronaldo has been exchanging ideas with Mozilla and its community in Brazil to make the draft bill more friendly to the open web.

Other open web legislative initiatives include working to reform Brazilian copyright law, a data protection bill, and successfully opposing proposed SOPA- and PIPA-style cybercrime legislation in Brazil.

Ronaldo has also been exchanging ideas about Firefox OS, with an emphasis on ensuring the phones are affordable in the developing world. He is passionate about the potential of Firefox OS to expand access to the open web in the developing world through smartphones.