July 13, 2004
O Brasil tem direito de escolher : Brazil has a right to choose
by Liza Sabater
PSL Brasil - Campanha vitoriosa faz Microsoft recuar! - 2684
I read about the news of Microsoft's request for a lawsuit against Sergio Amadeu back at the beginning of June via Slashdot | Microsoft Sues Brazilian Official for Defamation. With all our attentions falling on Iraq, the coming elections and the combined chilling effects of the Patriot Act and Digital Rights Management act, I am not surprised that this event has fallen through the lacunas of the blogosphere's attention span.
Back in March, the president of Brazil's National Institute of Information Technology (ITI) was quoted in an article titled The penguin advances published by Carta Capital, a Brazilian publication about politics, economics and culture. In the article Amadeu compares MicroSoft's business practices to those of drug dealers : give the product for free or let them steal it now so they'll get hooked on it and eventually you will find a way to charge them for more. Not only that, the article repeats what has been the "battle cry" for Brazil : That to be economically free, Brazil needs to be technologically free. So open source software, non-DRM technology and copyleft is part of the answer for the country's future. Here's a sample from the ITI website (which is, by the way, a wiki) [MY TRANSLATION] :
:: ITI - Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informacao :: Software livre: a proxima batalha
The country's biggest free software battle will be played out in the judicial field. That's how the president of ITI, Sergio Amadeu, defined it in his presentation, "Free Software in Brazil : The next battle", which happened today at the 5th International Forum for Free Software.In the words of chief counselor of ITI, Marcelo Thompson, who also spoke about the topic, free software is an open contract with every citizen. Marcelo brought to the Forum a point of view that did not differentiated free software from proprietary software since both consist of a set of instructions for a computer. The difference between the two is in the contract. In the case of free software, it favors the citizenry, the sovereignty, national independence and publicity since, by opening the code, it allows for its auditing and the four liberties that characterizes it.
The idea is not to give preference to one or another provider or to one or another prduct. The search is for a contractual model more adequate for the State and its citizen", said Thompson.
So a Marxist-inspired government is waging an open-source battle against the biggest software company in the world because they see it as a threat to democracy. Amadeu, in the earlier Carta Capital article, characterized Microsoft's business model as founded on FUD : 'a strategy of fear, uncertainty and doubt'. You can read the whole article in English here.
What is most illuminating about this confrontation is that Microsoft petitioned for an inquiry/explanation from Amadeu about his remarks because, as the complaint stated, his comments were "an excess in freedom of speech and freedom of thought, by means of the dissemination of information." Not misinformation but information.
I have a BA in Latin American Studies and Political Economy. Most of my classes were directed at the New York University's Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies my primary focus was Brazil. So I read almost everything Fernando Henrique Cardoso had written at the time and had kept up to date to the populist movement that was advancing with the Partido de Travalhadores (Workers Party) under the leadership of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Needless to say, it is still amazing to me that Lula is president; even though historically I can understand that after the scandal and corruption of the Fernando Collor de Mello years and the wave of economic crisis that the country had been under since the 1980's.
Brazil is a country as big as the United States and it has the dubious distinction of having been the only real Imperial government in the Americas. Brazilians, as a government and as a nation, have never enjoyed playing 4th banana in América. Or as Henrique-Cardoso outlined in one of his books, Brazil has never enjoyed being a substantive political economic periphery of the United States.
What is so interesting to me with the current administration is that, instead of centralizing the government's IT infrastructure, the Lula government is looking at open source technologies as a way to giving to the people what is of the people. In other words, GNU licenses are a new for of redistribution of resources and wealth.
That Microsoft wants to basically run the country's IT infrastructure and basically grab Brazilians by o saco is not new. I can think of the old ITT, American Fruit Company, Union Carbide, Standard Oil Company and the ways these companies sustained dictatorships across the Americas and, thusly, sponsored atrocities of in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil and Paraguay (just to name a few). What is new is the way that the Brazilian government is using technology to fight against a company that basically runs like an empire without geographical borders.
As Prof. Pedro Antonio Dourado de Rezende writes in the addenda section of his Eucaristia Digital e Ameaça [Digital Eucharist and Menace], in response to a critic he encountered on a blog:
Who may or may not give permition to a Brazilian government official to degrade a company in public? I tell you who does: the company's track record. It is not Brazil's official that degrades said company, it is the company track record in judicial courts throughout the world. Some records speak for themselves. What this Brazil's official is doing, is paying attention to that record while doing his job. And his job is to decide or do that which, in his best judgement, is best for his or her contry. To say or imply that said company is the one who gives such permission, is called imperialism.
You seem to be unaware of how the world is changing. You seem to be unaware of how the acts and words of your government now in power are affecting the hearts and minds of people in the rest of the world. This is called arrogance. His and yours. This is not business as usual.
When you talk about degrading, you may not be aware of the history of the country, the role of US secret services and multinationals, either documented or implied, in shaping some of its darkest pages. Implied as in the Bush doctrine documents. So you may be excused to think this way, because you are not a Brazilian. But you would not be so excused if you were a Brazilian with enough sense of dignity and self-respect, who had not sold out your soul for thirty coins of gold. And among those you can count me, to rest our case. After answering in good faith my clarifying questions, i would hope.
Sergio Amadeu chose not to answer court's inquiry. In the mean time, an online petition of support got almost 10,000 signatures online, drew international attention and even had countries all over the world giving their official support to Amadeu and the Brazilian government --but for the United States.
In the end Microsoft did not go ahead with the lawsuit and the case was dropped on 6/July --not without it becoming one of the worst political-cum-public-relations fiascos the company has had in the past year. Way worse than the antri-trust loss in Europe and the SCO puppet show.
I'll finish it off with Sergio Amadeu's words in :: ITI - Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informaçao :: Presidente do ITI divulga nota sobre Pedido de Explicaçoes [MY TRANSLATION]
... I would like to point out that licensing software that preserves the values of freedom and openness is, for the Brazilian Government, an issue that is intrinsically related to the principles of democracy. And because we as a country have followed a long and torturous path to get to our present stage of democracy, we will not back down in our fight.
If democracy is a value replete with ideology, it is never of insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, it is a dream from which the country will never wake up.
The future is free.
Other Sources :
PORTUGUÊS
:: Carta Capital :: O pimguim Avanca
:: ITI - Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informacao ::
(Notice that this governmental site is actually a wiki!)
O Brasil tem Direito de Escolher
PSL Brasil - Bill Gates por Bill Gates:"Eles se tornarao como que viciados" - 2557
br-linux.org: Apoio da comunidade no anuncio da expiracao do processo contra Sergio Amadeu
PhpMania.org - Sergio Amadeu: Microsoft quer clima de intimidacao
:: Agencia Carta Maior :: Microsoft questiona funcionario do governo federal na Justica
ESPAÑOL
Observatorio de Politicas Publicas de Infoinclucion
ENGLISH
Lawrence Lessig : the local ordinance we call the first amendment
The Importance of...: Microsoft - Marketplace of Ideas Only for the US, Not Brazil
Posted by Liza Sabater in America Latina, Commerce, Copyright, Empire, Free, Open Source, Politics, Software, Technology, Trademark
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» Brazil's Techno-Social Culture Meme from Nutslapper.com; A Journal of Social Observation
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Found inJuly 19, 2004 02:05 PM
Say it loud, say it proud!
The war on Linux began in Fernando Henrique Cardoso's tenure, when FUST was created. It's probably one of the most important questions about our national future. The battles, however, are becoming more and more scarier.
That's why I think Sérgio Amadeu said a right thing at the wrong place. As a politician, he should know by now to measure his words.
I'm not sure that Lula's victory has much to do with Collor's impeachment. I think it's a direct consequence of Fernando Henrique's 8 years, which made us aware that inflation was not the most important issue anymore, and that we nedeed to address our social issues. Without FH's government -- which can be accounted as great and obnoxious, corrupt and sanitizing --, I don't think Lula would ever win (he was beginning to be known as the "competent candidate: always competing, but never winning).
Just one thing: this one is not a marxist-inspired government. In fact, it doesn't apply even to Lula: he was quoted last year saying he was never a marxist. He had to compromise with so many sectors, and has been criticized for being "too neo-liberal". Basically, it's been a centrist government, dealing with pressures that come both from left and from right.
And please, what exactly is "excess of thought"? It's so Microsoft.
2
Comment by: unsubscriber at July 17, 2004 08:46 AM
Unsubscribe.
All caps and letter spacing do not readable links make.
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Comment by: liza at July 17, 2004 10:10 AM
1. I cannot unsubscribe you of anything. I have no mailing lists.
2. Anonymous commenters with fake email addresses will be regarded as chickens with nothing substantial to say.
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Comment by: Unsubscriber at July 17, 2004 03:15 PM
1. I'm unsubscribing from your RSS feed, but I thought I'd tell you anyway.
2. Please feel free to ingore me, since I have nothing useful to say except that your blog is just not interesting enough to me personally to get past the awful typography.
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Comment by: Rafael at July 13, 2004 03:43 PM