Brazil Reshapes Exclusive Rights Discourse

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [A2k] Brazil:  "Fight piracy," Amadeu said: "buy
open-source software."
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:07:39 -0500
From: James Love <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&e=16&u=/nm/brazil_patents_dc

Brazil Reshapes Debate on Intellectual Property

Wed Feb 2, 8:17 AM ET
By Terry Wade

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil's president often gets
criticized by his old leftist friends for being conservative at
home. But globally he has reshaped the debate on intellectual
property rights to reflect the needs of poor nations.

In two years, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has forced the United
Nations (news - web sites) to change its global patent system,
irked Microsoft Corp. by scorning its proprietary software, and
annoyed recording studios by putting the music of his dreadlocked
culture minister online for free.

This year, the government will help 1 million middle-class
families buy computers loaded with open-source software, which is
developed collectively. It also will open 1,000 centers with free
Internet access, running free software, in poor neighborhoods.

Lula has accelerated a movement started by his predecessor,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who pressured big drug companies to
cut prices in the late 1990s after threatening to break patents
on anti-AIDS (news - web sites) cocktails.

Brazil is now at the forefront of what may be a global shift in
how knowledge is produced and distributed. It has spurred a
debate about what inventions should get patents, becoming
intellectual property.

Lula believes software, science and art should be governed by
open-source laws that would loosen up current standards.

But some drugmakers and entertainment companies say they are
losing money and the incentive to invest. They favor tighter
patent rules and say they need more protections to justify hefty
research budgets and expansion into developing countries such as
China.

"Brazil is now the case study," said Eben Moglen, a law professor
at Columbia University in New York and general counsel of the
Free Software Foundation. "It will play a major role in
intellectual property talks and is going to provide an
alternative example."

Along the way, Lula has forged a diverse set of allies, including
companies like Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.,
which support free software and now derive much of their revenue
from services and hardware. There are also
hippies-turned-digital-libertarians such as John Perry Barlowe, a
lyricist for the Grateful Dead band and founder of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation.

Government officials cheered this month when International
Business Machines Corp. released 500 patents to promote
open-source technology.

"Sun, HP and IBM don't intimidate the Brazilian government, they
collaborate with us," said Sergio Amadeu, Lula's head of
technology policy. He has helped Brazil's expansive bureaucracy
abandon Microsoft's costly Windows operating system and adopt
free alternatives like Linux (news - web sites) instead.

Microsoft sued Amadeu last year for criticizing its closed-source
business model but then dropped the charges. It declined to
comment for this article but has said it is intensifying
anti-piracy efforts.

This year, the U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization,
which critics say traditionally has worked to tighten patent
rules, is expected to loosen them under a joint Argentine-Brazil
initiative that could, for example, improve access to patented
AIDS drugs.

FREE THOUGHT, NOT FREE LUNCH

Advocates of open-source technology say society is morally
obligated to increase access to knowledge and that science
produces better results faster under a collaborative research
model.

Brazil was the first nation requiring all software programs
developed by taxpayer funds to be licensed as open-source. That
allows any individual or company to use any program, so long as
they make modified versions available to everyone else.

"Free software is not synonymous with free lunch, but with free
thought," said Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at the Fundacao
Getulio Vargas business school in Rio de Janeiro who helped bring
the licenses to Brazil.

Lula's culture minister, musician Gilberto Gil, has put at least
one of his songs online for free, betting that he will make more
money from concerts if more people have access to his music. In
so doing, he provided an example for artists wanting to sell
directly to listeners and cut out record companies in the middle.

Claudio Prado, Gil's head of efforts to change copyright rules
for the arts, says the dominant model is antiquated.

"The commercial life of music right now is six months to a year,
but copyrights can last 70 years, so lots of music gets stuck in
the tomb of forgotteness," he said. Freeing up old music for
remixes could improve earnings for artists, he said.

The United States has threatened to withdraw millions of dollars
in trade benefits for Brazil unless it more actively enforces
anti-piracy rules covering software and music. Brazil has agreed
to do this, but says piracy only exists because of proprietary
software.

"Fight piracy," Amadeu said, "buy open-source software."
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