[P2P-F] Fwd: Brazilian Digital Culture Re: obrigada

[Michel Bauwens]

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-iceberg/.

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 <josemurilo at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 7:56 PM
Subject: Brazilian Digital Culture Re: obrigada
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
Cc: Silke Helfrich <Silke.Helfrich at gmx.de>


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-unique-And-what-can-the-rest-of-the-world-learn-from-it
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