As commented here, the Ministry of Culture was going to reveal a plan for further possible comments on the second version of the draft bill of Copyright Act. Well, as an Easter Egg, the plan was revealed last night and, basically, any interested parties will have from April 25th, 2011 until May 30th, 2011, to make their contributions for the enhancement of the bill.
The Ministry further said that the intention is to have the modified draft sent to the Civil House on July 15th.
Our little blog project is already one year old since our firstpost.
Time really flies.We had a very busy 12 months but we would not be here, still writing this blog if it were not for you, our readers. You have provided us with incentive, comments and criticism. We now have a very nice number of subscribers and many others following us on our Twitter page or by RSS feeds.
We never assumed we would get this far but I can tell you that we made efforts in that sense and we are happy to say the fruits are easy to be seen: we have been mentioned in IPKat, a wonderful blog about IP, in Entertainment Law Reporter, a very informative blog about all things entertainment and in Knockoff Report, an incredible site about anti-counterfeiting measures. In addition, Direito e Mídia, a Brazilian blog by one of the smartest guys in the Brazilian entertainment landscape, gave us a lot of support. The same can be said by our friends at ABRAMUS, a great Brazilian music association, who provided us with a great post.
Oh, and we must not forget to thank the guy who inspired us to start this project: our friend and mentor Nils Montan, one of the masters of social media tools. Thanks, Nils!
So, as you can see, this post is a big thank you for all of you, our loyal readers and friends. We are not politicians but we promise we will keep this project up and running. There is even a spin-off blog dedicated to trademarks we are beginning to put together here and a planned Portuguese version of Entertainment Law Brazil. In sum, we have a lot to keep us busy! Continue reading
Ana de Hollanda, the new Minister of Culture, has been proving to be an incredible asset to the Ministry of Culture.
The prior policy of the Ministry of Culture was to say everything was very transparent while, in reality, it was not. Actually, it was far from transparent. Proof of that is that a pre-bill of Copyright Act was actually sent to the Head of the Civil House still in 2010 as I reported in this post. However, nobody knew the contents of this bill, which had allegedly been modified. Continue reading
The Minister of Culture has removed Marcos Souza from the post of Director of Intellectual Property Rights (DDI) of the Ministry of Culture.
As Director of Intellectual Property Rights, Marcos Souza was responsible for coordinating the project of reform of the current Brazilian Copyright Act under the guidance of the past Ministers of Culture Jucá de Oliveira and Gilberto Gil. Continue reading
This is my reply to a recent article by Pedro Paranaguá at Intellectual Property Watch.
The original article from Pedro Paranaguá criticizes a recent decision from the new Ministry of Culture Ana de Hollanda to remove the Creative Commons license from the Ministry´s website and argues in favor of a proposal to reform the current Brazilian Copyright law which the Ministry has decided was not yet ready to be presented to the national congress. Continue reading
Two news reports this week have called the attention of this blogger. The first one is an interview with the journalist and writer Galeno Amorin who was confirmed last week as the new president of the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional – The National Library Foundation in Brazil, which among other responsibilities deals with the management of the National Library, the copyright registration department and issuance and execution public policies concerning books and reading.
Galeano begins his tenure armed with a lot of good intentions to solve old challenges for Brazil: enlarging the access to books and the amount of reading for the population.
His plans are bold. He intends to create the Brazilian Institute for Books and Reading which will have sole responsibility concerning the public polices for books and reading and will function independently of the National Library which will retain the other functions.
The Creative Commons initiative now lives under the bridge in Brazil and must be desperate to find another home. The new Minister of Culture, Mrs. Ana Buarque de Hollanda, who had already made comments that were not in line with the Ministry’s old anti-copyright position, decided to eliminate any reference to Creative Commons in the Ministry of Culture’s website. She excluded the nice little logo from the initiative (who has never enjoyed any sizeable penetration in Brazil, by the way), substituting it by the legally correct inscription ”License of Use: The content of this site, created by the Ministry of Culture, can be reproduced so long as the source is cited.”
The Minister’s explanation: she will not officially sponsor any specific initiative and our law already allowed what Creative Commons said it “created”.
Following the announcement of the RIO 2016 logo which we commented here a controversy has stormed the internet and the media in Brazil as many have pointed to the similarities between the RIO 2016 logo and the logo of the Telluride Foundation with a suspicion of plagiarism:
As Rodrigo reported, Ana de Hollanda will be the new Minister of Culture under the president elect’s Government, as of January 1st, 2011. Rodrigo had hopes that Ana would be wise enough to calmly review the proposal of a new Copyright Act in Brazil.
Well, I think Rodrigo had some kind of inside information that he did not even share with me…
Despite all the efforts to remain in charge by the former Ministry Juca Ferreira , the president elect Dilma Rousseff announced today that Ana Buarque de Hollanda will be the new Ministry of Culture.
Updates
Entertainment Law Brazil 