Watch Brazilian Minister of Culture’s interview on free culture, Creative Commons etc. at Democracy Now.

Today, 3 July, 2008, is the deadline for amendments to the Draft Law in Brazilian Senate. Possibly, the bill will reach the Senate for next week, and there it will only be possible to fully veto the proposed law or any of its articles. Amendments will no longer be possible.
In case the Draft Law passes the Senate, regardless of any vetoes, it will proceed to the House of Representatives (Câmara dos Deputados), where it will only be possible to either completely approve or veto any of its (...)

On Tuesday May 13th Francis Gurry from Australia was selected by the WIPO Coordination Committee to be the nominee for WIPO Director-General put forward to the WIPO General Assembly in September 2008. It was a close vote in a process that, while still not fully transparent, seemed to reflect a move towards more openness, some credit for which is due to Mrs. Hilde Skorpen, Norwegian Chair of the Committee, and her staff.
Mr. Gurry was one of 7 candidates who met with civil society and a (...)

Article originally published on the Financial Post website by Sarah Schmidt.
OTTAWA — Consumers will be locked out of some digital content they have already paid for and face penalties up to $20,000 if they try to get around any digital lock to copy CDs or DVDs for themselves under Canada’s proposed new copyright bill.
The federal government tabled the legislation in the House of Commons on Thursday, dubbing it as a "Made in Canada" solution to stamp out online piracy. "This is truly a (...)

The following is a press release from the Copy South Research Group. It announces the release today (28 April 2008) of the Spanish edition of the 210-page CS Dossier as prepared by Servicio Autónomo de la Propiedad Intelectual (SAPI), the Intellectual Property agency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The English version of the release follows the Spanish text - www.copysouth.org
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Boletín de prensa 28 abril de 2008
ANUNCIANDO LA EDICIÓN EN ESPAÑOL (...)

Dear colleagues,
On May 15, 2008, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will be choosing a new Director-General. Historically, the selection process has been non-transparent and closed to civil society. In an attempt to open up the process, CIEL, Third World Network, and a group of civil society organizations invited all 15 of the WIPO Director-General candidates to meet with civil society groups on April 15, 2008 in Geneva. Candidates were also asked to respond in writing to (...)

Considering that:
1. Health is a fundamental human right and a necessary condition for human dignity and for the full exercise of citizenship.
2. The dominant model of medical innovation, reinforced by the implementation of the Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement of the World Trade Organization, is based on patent incentives that create monopolies, high prices as return on investment and market perspectives in developed countries.
3. Data on the world (...)

The majority of Brazilians simply do not know much about copyright. The Brazilian population in general knows that copyright exists, but actual copyright rules are not well recognized. When asked to take a guess if a certain act of reproduction is against the law, many Brazilian nationals would probably give a correct answer, but actual knowledge of the law – its text and possible interpretations – is certainly absent as a rule, especially when it comes to the concept of exceptions and (...)

Read bellow the new press release by WIPO, on a study on exceptions and limitations to copyright:
Geneva, March 13, 2008 PR/2008/541
Member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) agreed this week on elements of a program of work for the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). Meeting from March 10-12, 2008, the SCCR decided that it would continue to address issues such as the protection of broadcasting organizations and the protection of audiovisual (...)

The Open Rights Group and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have just launched a campaign against the extension of the copyright term on sound recordings beyond 50 years in the EU. To support this campaign, you can sign the petition here: For more background see here.
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Tell the EU: Keep Copyright Sound!
A handful of major record labels are trying to break a fifty year-old promise. Musicians and their fans will not be the only victims. Copyright in sound recordings currently lasts for (...)

Read bellow the "five part series on the World Intellectual Property Organization Leadership Race" developed by IQsensato, an independent, international not-for-profit development research and policy think tank.
A Five Part Series on the WIPO Leadership Race
In the next few weeks, IQsensato will run a five part series on the race to succeed Kamil Idris as the Director General (DG) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The aim of this series is to examine what the (...)

Article originally published on iCommons website.
More than 200,000 HIV positive people receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) at no cost from the Brazilian government. However, the sustainability of this AIDS Programme is being threatened by the high prices of the patent protected medicines: the universal distribution policy costs the Health Ministry about US$1 billion per year – 80 percent of which is spent only on six out of the 18 ARV medicines provided by the program.
The six drugs in (...)

By Claudia Jurberg for Intellectual Property Watch
RIO DE JANEIRO - Doubt about the constitutionality of an aspect of the Brazilian Industrial Property Law has been raised by civil society institutions to Attorney General Antônio Fernando Barros e Silva e Souza.
Articles 230 and 231 of Brazil’s Law 9.279/96 created the mechanism known as the pipeline, which allowed patent claims to be accepted and approved for technological fields that had not been recognised previously, such as (...)

"Elite Squad / A bone too hard to chew / Catches one / Catches all / Is gonna catch you too"
(From the original Portuguese version "Tropa de Elite / Osso duro de roer / Pega um / Pega geral / Também vai pegar você")
The most frightening nightmare (or the most efficient marketing dream) of every Brazilian film producer has become a reality – and, what’s more, with a Brazilian movie that had not been released to movie theatres yet. ’Piracy’ has been the most spoken word on the streets and (...)

The Center for Technology and Society (CTS) of Getulio Vargas Law School was highlighted on CNN on October 19.
The story highlights Tecnobrega, musical style from the city of Belem, Para, studied in a research promoted by the CTS in partnership with Fipe-USP in 2006. The research looks over the Tecnobrega production chain, analyzing its business model from the quantitative point of view as well as from the qualitative one. Find below the reproduction of the original CNN article:
"BREGA" (...)