Dear friends, May I ask a special effort to support our Brazilian friends, where the free cultural policies are now in danger, by spreading this news item across your networks: The link: http://bit.ly/hC4uVb Please use twitter hashtags #brazil ; #reformaLDA Michel In Brazil, IP Counter-Revolution has begun: Ministry of Culture starts undoing Lula’s legacy<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/in-brazil-ip-counter-revolution-has-begun-ministry-of-culture-starts-undoing-lulas-legacy/2011/01/21> [image: photo of Michel Bauwens] Michel Bauwens 21st January 2011 Really bad news is coming from Brazil, where the new Minister of Culture is starting to undo creative commons licenses, negate years of work resulting from civil society participation held as exemplary at a global level, and undo the vision that was started by Gilberto Bil, continued under his successors, and strongly endorsed by former President Lula who always strongly supported free software and free culture. The evidence starts coming in that Ms. Ana de Hollanda is intent on restoring the primacy of IP monopolies in the purest neoliberal fashion. However, public pressure, including from the global free culture movement, could stil make a difference at this early stage of reset. Please spread the word via twitter’s hashtag #reformaLDA. The original article is at http://pedroparanagua.net/2011/01/20/brazils-copyright-reform-the-tip-of-the.... Full copy of a summary of developments<http://pedroparanagua.net/2011/01/20/brazils-copyright-reform-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/>by *Pedro Paranuaga*: “Who follows the Twitter hash tag #reformaLDA (copyright law reform) or #novaLDA (new copyright law) is noticing in the past few weeks an avalanche of manifestations against, and rumors on Brazil’s new Minister of Culture: Ana de Hollanda. Sister of acclaimed composer and singer Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Ms. Ana de Hollanda is herself a singer and composer as well. As soon as Brazil’s new president Mrs. Dilma Rousseff nominated Ms. Ana de Hollanda for the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for Brazil’s copyright agenda, several academics, activists and civil society have been voicing concerns against the twist of policy that she might implement from now on. Over 1,000 signatures have been gathered thus far on an Open Letter from the Brazilian civil society that is concerned that “the broad and open participation by society might be replaced by “commissions of notables” or “lawyers” giving their biased views on the subject”. Nearly 8,000 comments or proposals (in Portuguese) to Brazil’s new copyright draft bill have been made on an open public consultation undertaken by the Minister of Culture in 2010 to reform Brazil’s copyright law. Now this civil society group points that “Brazilian society and all who had the opportunity to manifest themselves over the past years can not and should not be substituted, overlooked or ignored. The reform of the copyright law should proceed based on the opinions that were already widely expressed. This is the republican duty of the Ministry of Culture, regardless of personal opinions of those who run it.” Former Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, was widely known for his enthusiasm and support to open culture, free and open source software, Creative Commons licenses, collaboration & remix culture, and so on. His successor Juca Ferreira, although not with the same charisma, gave continuation to Gil’s policies. It would make sense that whoever would be the new Minister of Culture in Brazil, he/she would put forward a continuation from the previous eight years led by former president’s Lula mandate, after all president Rousseff was Lula’s henchwoman. However, that may not be the case. Some rumors are becoming clearer. Yesterday, while Campus Party Brasil 2011, one of the largest technology and hacker events in Latin America was taking place in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s Ministry of Culture withdrew the Creative Commons license that it had on its website for the past few years. Although the website now shows this message: “License Terms: The content of this website, produced by the Ministry of Culture, may be reproduced, provided the origin is mentioned”, which in the end is very similar to the intention of a CC license, it seems that the tip of the iceberg has emerged. Ironically, even in the U.S., where most of the pressure from content owners comes from, the White House uses one of the broadest Creative Commons licenses — and not only for the content produced by the government, but also for any content posted by anyone on their website. It is still early to know exactly to what direction Brazil’s new Minister will head. Things don’t look good, nonetheless.” ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jose Murilo <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 7:56 PM Subject: Brazilian Digital Culture Re: obrigada To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> Cc: Silke Helfrich <[email protected]> Dear Michel, I tried to DM this one to you, but you do not follow me:-) #Brazil ’s #Copyright Reform: the tip of the iceberg? http://t.co/EPHmTW2#reformaLDA It's a fine report on what's going on in Brazil with the new MinC. The first sign is taking out the CC license from the Ministry's institutional website, something we put there in 2004, pioneering a move followed by others in the government -- the presidential blog today is CC. We think it would be nice to reverberate 'the tip of the iceberg' internationally, in support of the innovation brought by the Brazilian digital public policies. Maybe we can still educate the new minister on the importance of this project. We need this external support right now in order to mobilize politicians in the effort to save the Brazilian Digital Culture. By the way, I am writing in Quora about it: http://www.quora.com/Jose-Murilo/How-is-Brazils-approach-to-Digital-Culture-...