Brazil's copyright societies indicted for fraud | Hacker News Reader

Brazil's copyright societies indicted for fraud

www12.senado.gov.br

51 pointsDiabloD314 comments

FYI ECAD is the Brazilian equivalent of ASCAP in the US. The article is basically saying that when ECAD was originally founded that it was a big win for writers, musicians and other creators of content, but that in the Senate hearings and investigations it was found that ECAD had degenerated into an organization with poor transparency that now operates as if it exists for its own sake. 15 people involved with ECAD are being indicted on a variety of issues including such as fraudulent collections.

This is awesome, and despite some backwardness in how Brazil's government is on some internet issues, it has been very forward looking on issues such as the drafting of an Internet bill of rights ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/04402516196/brazil... )

While this investigative committee was formed in the middle of the last year, it was ECAD's targeting of my co-founder's design blog ( http://www.caligraffiti.com.br/ ) and one other blog that moved recently moved popular sentient against the organization and brought these fraudulent collections to light. Their attempts to double collect royalties from both Google (with whom they had a contractual agreement for royalty collection) and using legal threats against people, like bloggers, linking to content on sites like YouTube blew up in their face and they ended up getting a ton of well deserved bad press.

The cool thing about Brazil is that culturally, we own up to the fact that remixing is a big part of the creative culture and has been for a long time, something that is true of the US as well, but isn't as universally acknowledged.

(e.g. they are quick to send censorship notices to companies like Google, this is largely because most judges are very computer illiterate and don't understand how the medium differs dramatically from others. It is largely an issue of misinformed judges. Brazil desperately needs an EFF to help with the issue of legal education pertaining to the Internet, but current laws regulating legal organizations prevents the creation of an analogous organization.)

"we own up to the fact that remixing is a big part of the creative culture ... something that is true of the US as well, but isn't as universally acknowledged" ever wonder why American rap music only samples for 30 seconds, let me give you a hint if they went longer than that they would have to pay a royalty. Most artists have accepted and worked creatively within this confine. As for "isn't as universally acknowledged"; according to wikpedia a higher percentage of people in Brazil can't read than America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_r... this leads me to believe your point is moot.

You don't need literacy to remix. Video or music can be remixed creatively without the need to read or write.

There's no 30 second rule for sampling - IIRC the limit to sampling is how many people you want to negotiate a composition credit with. That's why newer music that uses popular samples usually just sounds like an annoying remake of a song that was good enough already. This creates an image in the public mind that people who sample aren't very creative at all, just turning up the bass and shouting over old songs.

During the golden age of rap (aka the only reason rap entered worldwide mass consciousness), the music would be stitched together from half a dozen or more manipulated and overlaid samples of songs, often of sub-second length. After a few high profile lawsuits, rap was neutered into the type of party pop where it would be considered notable that samples were less than 30 seconds.

Listening to, for example, a Bomb Squad produced song from the era, you could have previously been familiar with every single song that went into the production, yet be hard put to spot more than one or two.

I'd liken the situation to trying to write a program in a world where there's a billion libraries that you can use, but for each one you have to share 25% to 75% of the profit from the program with the owner of the library. In addition, these billion libraries would be criss-crossed with a million patents, assuring that you can't simply reimplement the functionality without running into the same problem.

</why I stopped listening to rap in 1995>

What I meant was that if you ask the average Brazilian, even those that are much older, you'll see a greater acknowledgement that remixing content is considered fair use culturally and popularly. In the US, there is just as much remix culture, but it's not culturally or popularly considered fair use by a large percentage of the population. In the US, most people would be like, "they used 5 seconds of another song in their remix, they need to pay royalties!", whereas in Brazil, most people would be like, "Srsly?"

I don't see what literacy rates has to do with remixing except when literary works are involved.

If anything a low literacy rate probably means that people are less exposed to the concept of "droit d'auteur", a concept internationally established at the Berne Convention by the literary elite in France (victor hugo, et al).

The concept of copyright is largely grounded in written works. If anything the recorded music industry was one of the first to challenge "right of the author". The sheet music industry was up in arms when recorded music became mainstream.

I also get the impression that writers are generally more likely to be adamant about copyright that musicians. When you are producing 4 minute songs versus 200 page tomes, there is a much greater chance that whatever work you are producing will demonstrate elements of the works that influenced the author.

"but current laws regulating legal organizations prevents the creation of an analogous organization"

Which legal/regulatory aspects prevents orgs like the EFF to be created in Brazil? I know foundations are very cumbersome to start and operate, as it is about everywhere else, but I thought it was pretty easy to start other forms of NGOs down here?

Could you clarify? I'm genuinely interested.

I personally cannot explain the problem. I think it was some sort of rule governing what bar-licensed lawyers can and cannot do or what an organization of lawyers can do. It's one of those rules that is like Rule #1 of the Screen Actors Guild. The person to ask about it is Marcel Leonardi.

Marcel is one of the few lawyers in Brazil genuinely proactive with respect to internet rights in Brazil. A few years ago he spent some time interning at the EFF in the US via a grant given to him by Google. He is now part of Google's general council in Brazil and AFAIK still works largely on issues of internet rights.

The following is his first article on the his experience at the EFF and the possibility of founding such an organization in Brazil. However this article was written before he encountered these legal hurdles. I don't know if he wrote specifically about the legal hurdles or if we simply discussed them in person over lunch.

http://leonardi.adv.br/2010/01/eff-minha-experiencia-e-as-po...

If you want to know more or want to get involved, I'd contact him, since he can better explain the legal hurdles to creating an analogous organization in Brazil.

Brazilian here. I am surprised our senators are doing their job.

Brazilian expat here and I left mostly because I got tired of fake institutions.

This looks like the Mafia going after the smaller criminals in the neighborhood. The Brazilian Senate bosses are among the biggest gangsters in Brazil (e.g.: José Sarney, Renan Calheiros, Jader Barbalho, Demostenes Torres, etc.)

Another Brazilian here and you are definitively right, our government is mostly filled with white color thiefs.

So this might be mostly a some criminals going after another group for some problem they had.

Yet another Brazilian here and you mean white collar thieves.

This is not about copyright, but author rights.

A more productive comment would explain the difference between those two ideas for the benefit of people (such as most Americans) who have not encountered authors' rights.

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