In the new MIT Technology Review, a fine quartet of articles  on the current state of ‘intellectual property’. See especially Lawrence Lessig’s the people own ideas! (see below for more.)

A quote:
“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.

Gil is emphatically not against copyright. He’s one of Brazil’s most successful musical artists, which means he has benefited greatly from copyright. But he is also one of the very few Brazilian artists to make it outside of Brazil. And he is convinced that a different kind of economy might spread Brazilian creativity more broadly.”

Imagine that! A cabinet-level government bureau run by someone who cares! It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the New Deal.

Apropo of this post, see also Brian Martin’s indispensable essay against intellectual property, which does to info-feudalism what Tom Paine’s common sense did to monarchy: disembowels its entire rationale, exposing it as but a fraud and theft of the people’s right to decide for themselves.