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Intellectual Property and Culture, information policy

Creative Jets from Brazil: an early model of open information policy

03.23.07 | 76 Comments

Litman made a brief mention of how other nations are opening up their information policy as the U.S. codifies more and more mechanisms of control.(find page) She stops with that assertion, however, and leaves the details hanging. This brevity of mention make sense given her focus on specific digital copyright law rather than broader information policy, but left me curious as to what alternative models may be implemented out there. Lessig will likely cover this broadly, but before opening those pages I wanted to do a brief cases study to get my own personal bearings before getting into his particular perspective. A warm-up, if you will, to the deeper cultural implications of copyright law.

One of the global leaders in open information policy, it turns out, is Brazil. Prior to research, if I'd been asked to throw out some nations I thought might be leaders,Brazil's would have been on of the early ones due to my awareness of their controversial take on drug patents, another major component of intellectual property law. Brazil's drug policy in 2004 and thereafter pretty much told major patent holders on HIV/AIDS medicines to bugger off as Brazil produced it's own copies of the drugs to best address the growing AIDS health problem within it's borders. They've evidently taken a similar take on copyright.

The Brazilian cultural ministry took umbrage at the idea that it's creative activity could be controlled by the interests of corporate media conglomerates a hemisphere away (mainly those in the US). In 2003 a newly appointed Brazilian Minister of Culture reacted by forming an institutional aliance with the Creative Commons movement, one that has gained continual popularity as an alternative to the "all rights reserved" nature of tradional copyright. The national sentiment behind the move is expressed well by a spokesman for Brazil musicians speaking at a public forum on Brazilian IP law,

the discussion is not only within economic basis. It is time to bring the discussion within a human basis. … When dealing with intellectual property we are renegotiating my life not as an artist, but rather as a citizen. … It is crucial that the human aspect be the core of the discussion: I am a commons good, I create the national identity. I and all the other artists are intrinsic goods of the country just like petrol is.

The emerging information policy of Brazil reflects this natonal sentiment well. The Minsitry of Culture has sponsered the Pontos de Cultura, or "Cultural Points", program, in which small government grants are issued to hundreds of community centers to install small - and increasingly affordable - recording and video studios in community centers, and to teach residents how to use them. As a result, many Brazilians and engaged in and created a cultural outpouring of music and video, often times "racially conscious and politically tinged" takes on hip-hop and electronica. Further, these individual and group creations are broadcast over community radio and independently distributed in CD's at "markets and fairs" rather than record labels. In this small way, Brazil's relatively small program had brought everyday citizens into the process of creating culture, and had been able to so while circumventing the traditional institutions of cultural authority: the major record labels, recording studios, and radio stations. Of course, these institutions are quite unhappy with the new tendencies of Brazil's information policy, and their representative interests have put the nation on notice. 

There does exist, in actual policy, alternative visions of copyright to those being forwarded by the MPAA, RIAA, and the like, and this breadth of possibility seems important to keep in mind.

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