The Hacker-Minister
Pontos de Cultura
Cultural Hotspots
One of the key areas of tension in the current IP system is that of transnationalism, the negotiations over which is WIPO's raison d'etre. In Tropicalia, the transnationality of pop music is something to be celebrated; its musicians liberally borrowed from Anglo-American rock, and caused controversy with their adoption of electric guitars and other instruments. To Veloso and Gil, the pop music industry was a space in which musicians could be active artists, and was not something to be avoided for its own sake.
Tropicalia and transnationalism
Mixing Culture and Politics
As in Tropicalia, there is an emergent blending of cultural and political demands for economic and policy autonomy on the part of dominated parties. During the 1960-70s, the relationship shared between culture and politics was essentially communicative, educational and in some instances counter-hegemonic – which is why the right-wing military government came to oppose the movement and exile Gil and Veloso.
Among the many parallels between Tropicalia and this new dynamic, one that stands out is the fact that Veloso and Gil managed to aggravate both the military right and intellectual left with their music: the former for subversion and the latter for embracing hegemonic Anglo-American rock and pop.
Mixing Left and Right...
This is very similar to the blurred right/left lines in IP and copyright policy debates. This in turn reveals how the right/left binary becomes anachronistic in a world dominated by information flows. It also suggests the redundancy of those labels in a world of networked communication that in many ways is only tangentially subject to governmental and/or market interventions.
... and North and South
Can we also speculate that the west itself might be entering a Tropicalia  stage of its own, given the increasing pervasiveness of hybrid cultural and social forms? Can cannibalistic hybridity as a social force help to bring about, in the medium to long term, an amelioration of the extremist totalistic forces currently manifest in US domestic politics, and the knock-on effects this has in the global political sphere?

Tropicalia All Over The World?!
The tropicalist perspective and the work that gave it life was inspired by a liberating, mind-opening and pioneering recognition: that the cosmopolitan electric-guitar beats from abroad and the rhythms of regional groups in the hinterlands of the Brazilian northeast were resonating to the same pulses of modernity. The urge to communicate and mix across cultures was the key to what came to be known as tropicalism.
Tropicalism
In the rise of the "network society",  that channel cultural works in real time and at zero marginal cost, culture and politics are even more thoroughly interpenetrated, and in fact may have collapsed into each other. To assert the absolute need to protect IP is now a function of US and EU trade policy, and defines the starting position for a new mode of engagement in the global community.
Network Society blends Culture & Politics
In the 2000s, Gil's focus on the hacker ethics  of openness for the digital culture was instrumental in highlighting a comparable mixing of cultures, peers, rhythms, codes and complexities. In his own way, he managed - four decades on, and in a transformed cultural, musical, media, political and technological environment - to creatively introduce new conceptual layers and nuances to his public discourse. The result was that he opened new ground for political debate over a range of contemporary issues: among them mass culture, the market, technology, traditional-modern tensions, and intellectual-property regulation.
Tropicalist Digital Culture
Culture and the Commons
Cultural policies for Commons practice
International Commons Conference
Berlin, 31.10 to 02.11.2010
Hacker Ethics inside Gov
Grato!


José Murilo
Coordenação de Cultura Digital
Secretaria de Políticas Culturais - MinC

blog: http://ecodigital.blogspot.com
twitter: @josemurilo
The idea is to enable the cultural groups to digitise their creativity and publish it under alternative licenses. The project mixes three things:
free software,
advanced concepts on copyrights, and
an awareness that the appropriation of technology by the people is the emergent social movement which supports the generative dynamics of the digital era.
Digital Culture
as
Culture of Use
The institution (the ministry) getting a hold of the many possibilities of interaction with its users

BLOGS, SOCIAL NETWORKS, INTERACTIVITY
a broadband connection;
digital multimedia infrastructure;
technical workshops on open-source audio and video-editing software,
"To act upon digital culture is the concretisation of this philosophy, which open spaces to redefine the form and the content of cultural policies, and transforms the ministry of culture... Digital culture is a new concept. It comes from the idea that the digital technology revolution is cultural in its essence. What is at stake here, what generates creative tension, is that the use of digital technology is capable of changing behaviours. The plain use of the Internet and of free software creates fantastic possibilities to democratise access to information and to knowledge, to maximise the potential of cultural goods and services, to amplify the values that form our common scripts, and therefore, our culture, and also to prime cultural production, generating new forms of art.''
Gilberto Gil
Aah... the 60's
John Barlow e Gilberto Gil
September
2004
Their iconoclasm and cosmopolitan ambition marked them as troublemakers Gil & Caetano were imprisoned and exiled by Brazil's military government
a permanent platform for policy design and for the facilitation of consensus through the broad participation of stakeholders from the state, the market, and from civil society.
Collaborative Policies for Digital Culture
The platform as a permanent network for policy design and for the facilitation of consensus through the participation of stakeholders.
Open Political Processes Hosted
@ CulturaDigital.BR
Civil-rights based regulatory framework (w/ Min. Justice)A collaborative process to build comprehensive norms about online privacy, freedom of expression, and limitations on the liability of internet users and internet providers.
Reform of the Brazilian Copyright Act
Deals with expanding the exceptions and limitations to copyright, including the right of private copying, and forbid the use DRM to block fair use.
National Broadband Program
Participation of the network CulturaDigital.BR ( as a political avatar) at the committee that evaluates the guidelines of the state-sponsored program to provide broadband internet access throughout the country.
November 14-17
Cinemateca Brasileira - São Paulo
Brazilian
Digital Culture
Forum
2010 Edition
Network of Networks
http://culturadigital.br/forum2010/
1996 - Gil launchs the song "Pela Internet", Barlow releases
"A Declaration of the Independence of the Cyberspace"
2003 - Meeting at "Tactical Media Brazil", where it all started
2010 - Opening of the Forum's 2010 Edition
http://CulturaDigital.BR
Grammy-awarded musician Gilberto Gil