Gilberto Gil: ministro da contracultura

O ministro da cultura Gilberto Gil defende o open source e a cultura livre no Guardian.

Gil está em Londres participando de um evento da Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts que tem o objetivo de pressionar governos a limitar a capacidade das grandes empresas de restringir o acesso à idéias. A briga vai desde o download de músicas até as patentes de plantas.

Gil is in London as a signatory to the RSA's Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Intellectual Property, which calls on governments to restrain corporations from further locking down their ownership of ideas. The campaign encompasses everything from the music industry's myopia over downloading to the recent efforts of one agribusiness firm to patent basmati rice, then charge Indian farmers for the privilege of growing it.

Vale ler inteiro, apesar de não apresentar gdes novidades é sempre bom ver um lado positivo (para os defensores da cultura livre) da imagem do Brasil no exterior, prá variar.

Much as it may be currently de rigueur for journalists to ask politicians whether or not they have ever smoked marijuana, the question does not, under the circumstances, seem worth the effort. Gil's constant references to the hippy counterculture are not simply the nostalgia of a 63-year-old with more than 40 albums to his name. For several years now, largely under the rest of the world's radar, the Brazilian government has been building a counterculture of its own. The battlefield has been intellectual property - the ownership of ideas - and the revolution has touched everything, from internet filesharing to GM crops to HIV medication. Pharmaceutical companies selling patented Aids drugs, for example, were informed that Brazil would simply ignore their claims to ownership and copy their products more cheaply if they didn't offer deep discounts. (The discounts were forthcoming.) Gil himself has thrown his weight behind new forms of copyright law, enabling musicians to incorporate parts of others' work in their own. And in one small development that none the less sums up the mood, the left-wing administration of President Luiz Inacio da Silva, or "Lula", has announced that all ministries will stop using Microsoft Windows on their office computers. Instead of paying through the nose for Microsoft operating licences, while millions of Brazilians live in poverty, the government will use open-source software, collaboratively designed by programmers worldwide and owned by no one.

Obs: a questão sobre o uso de maconha é devido a uma polêmica envolvendo drogas e o candidato a liderança do partido conservador, David Cameron, que está rolando por lá nas últimas semanas. Veja este artigo do Guardian.