Lawrence Lessig fala sobre o Forum Social Mundial e tem gente querendo mudar para Brasil

O pai do Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, escreveu um longo artigo no Technology Review do MIT relatando a visita dele ao Fórum Social Mundial deste ano.

O artigo mostra "cultura livre" paralela ao software livre...

As I listened to the Brazilians explain the free-software lab, I began to realize that this pattern was recurring. They were doing for culture what Stallman had done for software. The lab was not so much about "free software." It did not, for example, teach people how to make free software. Its aim instead was to help them build free culture using free software. The lab offered "workshops about video editing, audio editing, collaboration tools, [and] online collaboration," all "on top of free software." But the objective of this teaching wasn't, or wasn't just, better software. The objective was a different economy for culture. Culture itself, as one Brazilian explained to me, should be free, meaning, he said, "free as in free software."

... conta iniciativas do ministro Gil...

The Brazilian government is beginning to internalize the tenets of the free-culture movement as well. Brazil's minister of culture, Gilberto Gil, is leading a push for practical reform of the copyright system. His ministry has launched a project called Points of Culture (Pontos de Cultura) that will establish free-software studios, built with free software, in a thousand towns and villages throughout Brazil, enabling people to create culture using tools that support free cultural transmission. If things go as planned, the result will be an archive of Brazilian music, which will be stored in digital form and governed by a license inspired by free software's GPL. The Canto Livre project will "free music" made in Brazil, for Brazilians (and the world) to remix and re-create. And like a free-software project, it achieves that freedom on the back of copyright.

... lembra que os EUA para defender o copyright nos considera uma nação pirata...

The cause is not hard to see: according to the United States, Brazil, for example, is a pirate nation. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (which, its name notwithstanding, represents U.S. copyright interests) estimates that this piracy cost United States copyright industries close to $1 billion last year. Consequently, the U.S. has begun to put pressure on Brazil. That pressure has produced an unsurprising reaction against the stuff that makes it possible for Brazil to be a pirate nation--proprietary code and proprietary culture.

... e traz detalhes coloridos do evento de Porto Alegre que é comparado com Woodstock...

Two nights before my trip to the free-software lab, I attended a free-software rally at the same youth camp. Really. A rally. I arrived with Minister Gil and John Perry Barlow. The place was packed. There were hundreds inside the tiny tent; there were many hundreds more huddled outside. We were seated near the front, the only three with chairs. The evening began with some lectures, then followed with some music.

You can't imagine this scene. Or at least you can't imagine this scene as a rally for free software. I've seen free-software rallies in the U.S. They're populated by geeks with ponytails. This was something very different. The tent was divided evenly between men and women. Geeks were in the minority. Most of the people at the rally were astonishingly beautiful, and amazingly articulate. They were young and intensely passionate. And they were chanting free-software slogans. It was Woodstock without the mud and squalor, and with a penguin in the middle of the room.

Vale ler inteiro, principalmente se vc não sabe o que significam siglas como GPL, DRM, GNU, etc...

O artigo gerou uma imagem tão positiva do br que no Slashdot, (e em vários outros lugares por aí) tão achando que o Brasil é o paraíso...

Por lá, os textos positivos sobre o Software Livre por aqui são tão constantes que já tem até uma vinhetinha: "from the everyone-wants-to-live-in-brazil dept."

Os comentários dos brasileiros lá até tentam balancear o hype .br, mas já tem um monte de gente querendo mudar para cá... :)