
Brazil's copyright societies indicted for fraud - DiabloD3
http://www12.senado.gov.br/noticias/materias/2012/04/24/cpi-do-ecad-propoe-novas-leis-e-orgaos-para-gerir-direitos-autorais
======
malandrew
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...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/04402516196/brazil-
drafts-anti-acta-civil-rights-based-framework-internet.shtml) )

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.)

~~~
randomStuff
"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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate)
this leads me to believe your point is moot.

~~~
pessimizer
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>

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

~~~
diego_moita
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.)

~~~
cfontes
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.

~~~
rhengles
Yet another Brazilian here and you mean white collar thieves.

------
andos
This is not about copyright, but author rights.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
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.

