Brazil v. Big Content

A David v. Goliath case? National sovereignty v. multinational capitalism? Brazil takes on "Big Content"--the burgeoning forces of drug, media, and technology companies that control the vaults of intellectual property.

A stellar article from Wired Magazine covers this fascinating devlopment in the intellectual property arena:
Wired 12.11: We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin

From the mouth of Brazil's Minister of Culture, 62 year old politician and celebrated pop star Gilberto Gil:
"A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property," he says. "No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it."

Gil rose to fame at the vanguard of the tropicalismo movement--"a very '60s attempt to capture the chaotic, swirling feel of Brazil's perennially uneven modernization, its jumble of wealth and poverty, of rural and urban, of local and global." Here's the Wikipedia entry. I'd say a very well-suited background for the developments we're seeing now. There's a very interesting discussion about how rebellious and subversive the music was considered by the government in the Wired article.

Another quote: "Every license for Office plus Windows in Brazil - a country in which 22 million people are starving - means we have to export 60 sacks of soybeans," says Marcelo D'Elia Branco, coordinator of the country's Free Software Project and liaison between the open source community and the national government."

So Brazil is looking for a solution. Gil is pushing an open source initiative in all areas of the economy where it's pertinent. He wants to tropicalize--tropicalismo in motion. One suggestion is the development of a free online database of Brazilian music. However, corporate opponents to these policies have been quick to rack up--Microsoft and Time Warner, the world's largest software and media companies, stand staunchly oppossed. Gil clearly has the hallmarks of a visionary. He's trying to change society from within, grant digital access to the underserved, impoverished masses that comprise the majority of Brazil's population. Will he succeed? Time will tell. The forces facing the Brazilian state are formidable, but at the same time, the current administration, filled with people of a similar mind, including President Lula da Silva, hold the reigns of power in the world's 10th largest economy.

Quite an interesting development in the realms of international relations, business, intellectual property, and general technology.