The Circuit

by Ed Meza
Former Brazilian culture minister and renowned musician Gilberto Gil brought a philosophical, often esoteric view to the question of adapting Brazil’s legal framework to meet the challenges of the fast-evolving Internet, or as it’s now known, Web 2.0, at a discussion held at the RioMarket on Tuesday.

Following a lengthy and detailed presentation by local media lawyers and reps from Google and MySpace, who laid out a strong case for the need to upgrade Brazilian law to better cope with the growing demands of user-generated content on the Internet, the animated Gil injected the dry discussion with lively irreverence.

“I feel like a dinosaur here after hearing all these people talking about this issue. Like someone from the past.” Gil sang about the web and the evolution of communication in “Pela Internet,” a track on his innovative 1997 album “Quanta.”

“It’s been 10 years since I first discussed the possibilities of the web in my song. We were far from the kind of interactivity that has spread so fast since.”

Launching into a long and rambling discourse, the artist-politician touched on such diverse topics as the human soul, the relationship between man and machine, the pioneering filmmakers who moved from the East Coast to the West Coast to found Hollywood in "an act of piracy" against the domination of Thomas Edison, the U.S. elections, and friend and fellow musician Caetano Veloso, whose website he praised.

Gil reiterated his oft-heard call for greater flexibility of artists’ rights, saying there was a gray area between what was legal and illegal and an increasing complexity that was defining technological development: “We are facing a new life, a new world.”

Indeed, Pedro Less, who oversees governmental issues and public politics for Google in Latin America, pointed out that users upload 13 hours of video a minute on average onto YouTube – in terms of length, “that equals about 57,000 new full-length films hitting theaters every week.”

Fellow panelist Dirceu Santa Rosa of Brazilian law firm Veirano Advogados, added that current legislation was “not in sync with the technological level of Web 2.0. “In Brazil, it may soon be possible to watch French and American TV on the Internet.”

Mauro Falsetti of MySpace Brazil added that the social networking site went beyond what the law demands and bases its local regulatory guidelines on the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.