Culture, Courts Debate the Commons of Copies

Conjur — Consultor Jurídico — reports

The ministry of Culture and the federal appeals court, the STJ, will hold a seminar this week on Modernizing the Law of Copyright. The event is intended to finalize the draft of a bill thaqt will amend and add provision to the current law, Law 9,610/1998.

Discussions and debates will take place involviing judges, lawmakers, attorneys and other specialists on the subject, with an eye to modernizing Brazil’s production of intellectual property. The event will open with addresses from Culture minister Anna de Holanda, STJ justice Nancy Andrighi, retired federal appeals judge Carlos Mathias and representatives of the federal legislature.

Book early. The all you can eat shrimp boat with Chilean ají sauce is going to be divine, I hear.

The Cops Are Criminals Again | Sambodia

First thing I read in the Folha this morning: the cops are criminals.

Then I turn the page in the search for news that has some newness to it.

Most of the approximately 70 cases of theft and robbery of ATM machines so far this year in the state are, according to the state judicial political (PC) antimafia unit, being committed by a gang of 26 military police, most of them activity duty PMs.

On Saturday morning, 2 PMs were caught red-handed by the PC special ops unit, GOE, inside a Banco do Brasil branch in Jabaquara, in possession of explosives to be used to break into the machines..

A third PM, in uniform at the time and suspected of covering the operation, is also under arrest. This latter PM, says GOE, was providing updates on the location of PM patrol cars in the area of the bank being robbed.

Along with the 26 PMs, another 15 are also accused by DEIC in cases of ATM robberies.

Last week, a court order the 26 PMs detained. An ex-PM who is outside the jurisdiction at the moment is seen as the mastermind.

From May 1 to May 27, the Folha counted 16 cases of ATM robberies in the metro area alone. The wave of break-ins, which use jacks or explosivos, have led some business owners to deactivate their ATMs.

.They should think about the security of their wireless credit card processing, too. Paying with your cellphone is a media-driven fashion at the moment, which I think it is totally insane. The war drivers are everywhere.

The public square here by the house is a favorite spot for night shift PMs to party down with hookers, according to the guy, of unknown provenance and de facto authority, who actually patrols the neighborhood for a modest monthly fee. If I ever got into trouble, calling 190 would be the last thing I would want to be doing.

The Sacrifice of Isaias and the Latin American Guilty Plea

More like a hard slog toward lawfulness …

I admit freely that of all the Andean-Bolivarian leaders, the somewhat nerdy University of Illinois economist running Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is the only one with my unconditional admiration.

I have spent a fairly inadequate amount of time studying the debt crisis that gripped the country for over a decade, but have read enough to conclude that it takes real intestinal fortitude to try to rein in a grotesque  kleptocracy as entrenched as that which grasps the land of Chiquita Banana by the cojones.

(It is no accident that Correa’s last electoral opponent is a banana billionaire.)

I can understand why they no longer want our military bases.

What makes me most indignant about some of the coverage of the attrition between Correa and traditional elites, including media owners, is the out-and-out lying and distortion that an outlet like Fox News Latino, above — in English, go figure — bases its op-eds upon. .

Take the following proposition:

At last count, the government controlled some twenty media companies, including three popular television stations (accounting at the time for about 40 percent of the country’s nightly news audience) seized from the Isaias Group, a business conglomerate against which Correa has waged a particularly harsh vendetta.

«I am a victim of political persecution» — the «Fujimori defense» — is so commonly heard from criminal suspects in massive corruption cases that I have taken to calling it The Latin American Guilty Plea.

The Isaias Group borrowed money it never paid back, from a government who may have never intended for it to be paid back. Now, it is being asked to pay. In the process, it is subject to having assets seized.

This is called business as usual under the rule of law, with contracts and liabilities for all. As to the adversarial relations between government and Isaias, it would take some work to develop the backstory, but I will note this prescient piece of reasonably balanced reporting by Reuters on the case, 4 August 2004:

Ecuador on Monday ordered the seizure of shares owned by the local Isaias business group in 58 companies, including stakes in two newspaper publishers, because of a debt dispute with the state, the government said in a statement.

Part of two newspapers and 56 brokerage houses and they become «persecuted media owners» in the eyes of the Committee to Project Journalism Company Owners.

The seizure follows a mass confiscation in July of businesses owned by the Isaias group, which is linked to a decade-old banking crisis that led to millions of dollars in losses for the state and private depositors.

In July, the government seized nearly 200 companies, including two nationwide broadcasters, from Isaias, in a move popular with most Ecuadoreans that nonetheless worried media watchdog groups.

Media watchdog groups financed by media owners, that is to say.

The government says the group owes the state about $660 million in losses the state incurred trying to salvage one of their banks from going under in the late 1990s due to mismanagement. The group has denied any wrongdoing.

A lawyer representing Isaias was not immediately available for comments.

Critics says the mass confiscation is part of a government move to muster support for a September referendum vote on a new constitution that bolsters President Rafael Correa’s powers over the economy.

Just imagine it. A handful of powerful corporations are so out of control that they sink the entire country, not once, but again and again, and then again..

They get off scot free, too — until a young crusader puts them all out of business, burning off the underbrush to make way for a new generation of entrepreneurial managers.

Before being seized, the network bombarded viewers with its own side of the case, below.

[youtube http://youtu.be/L4gzsRBP50I]

Another rhetorical flourish characteristic of the Latin American klepotcrat is the heavy use of self-panegyric, as here when the brothers stress how they have borne with dignity the outrages against their integrity.

The Isaias brothers had previously owned state-owned bank, Filanbranco , and supposedly ran it into the ground. The group makes a great deal of noise about distancing itself from the bank, but it was in fact founded by as certain Pedro Isaias Barquet.

Current Wikipedia rundown — subject to timestamped modficiations identified by URLs —

In 1998, during the Ecuadorian financial crisis, the bank faced a liquidity crisis. It was sold to the government of Ecuador that year. It was merged by the government with the bank La Previsora in an operation questioned because Filanbank had to bear La Previsora’s huge losses. Once in control of the Ecuadorian government, it was used as a bank of banks to allocate assets to provide liquidity to troubled banks in 2000 and 2001, during the banking crisis. Filanbanco closed its doors definitively in July 2001.

The state was conducting an investigation into the administration of the Isaías brothers. The Deposit Guarantee Agency (Agencia de Garantía de Depósitos, AGD) later seized control of several companies related to the Isaias family to recover an estimated $350 million still owed in relation to the restructuring of Filanbanco.

And here is where it gets boring, with spreadsheets and legalese. Not the sort of thing the Fox network has the talent or the will to make comprehensible, much less informative.

And so it goes: another bastion of “free, independent media” falls to the Bolivarian hordes …

Finally, I have dug up a copy of the 2001 report by Deloitte & Touche, as mentioned in the video, for your pleasure. You are most welcome.

• Report on Filanbanco S.A. and Filanbanco Trust & Banking Corp. (2001)

As it turns out, far from looking for and not finding anything wrong, Deloitte was expressly not hired to look for anything.

Because the scope of our work was based on the information indicated in the preceding paragraphs, our work does not constitute an audit or a review of the financial statements conducted according to generally accepted auditing or review standards, and therefore we are unable to express, and are not expressing, any opinion or observation on the reasonability of the financial statements of Filanbanco S.A. and Filanbanco Trust & Banking Corp. at that date or any other date. If we had performed additional procedures, or had performed an audit or review of the financial statements, it is possible that other matters would have come to our attention and we could have notified you of them.

Initiating Tracking | Tropical R&D

The tools provided by the SIMILE project and used to develop this timeline gizmo in Drupal really are useful. .

It is useful, for example, to see Mr. Sorrell of the WPP group dining with President Obama not long after buying Blue State Digital, the agency that handles the spectacle of Obamism. I follow the company, and the timeline gives me a 1 to + 1 = 2.

I proclaim myself convinced, and I am ready to take a serious run at something I have wanted to do for several years now: track Brazilian IT.

Still a bug or two, as you an see. In any event, it all begins with the Computer Science Bill of 1985, subject of the prize-winning 1988 investigative report, long form, by Vera Dantas.

Once I get caught up and set my coverage universe, I can start think about translating the diachronic — one thing after another — into the syncrhonic — the general outcome as a whole considered as a structure or scenario.

Wandora would be one tool available for that purpose.

Information already gleaned through my Semantic Mediawiki just has to be transferred over …

And so I lift my Coney Island shot glass of Old Mudmaker arguardente to you, if you wish me well: May Brazilian IT become hot, hot, hot in about a year, by which time I will know a lot of detailed stuff about it, rather than the piecemeal knowlege I have now.

And if you do not wish me well, honi soit qui mal y pense.

The Antonin Scalia of the Tropics

Brazil has an Antonin Scalia of its own.

His name is Gilmar Mendes, and his conduct on a number of occasions cannot but seem shocking to the outside observer.

Unless, of course, that observer happens to be Italian.

In recent years, Mendes has been doggedly pursued by reporter Leandro Fortes of Carta Capital magazine.

Fortes has publicly questioned, for example, the propriety of Mendes serving as an active partner in a legal education service that was not only marketed to attorneys who practice before the Supreme Court but also employed active-duty deputy attorneys general, or the equivalent.

Oh, and did I mention that the building where the school operates was built with a federal loan from which the Justice benefited directly, according to records produced by Fortes?

Vio o Mundo, the personal samizdat project of TV Record journalist Rodrigo Vianna, notes another peculiarity in the justice’s professional conduct.

José Sarney (PMDB), president of the Brazilian Senate, has ordered the bill of impeachment against former Supreme Court Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes be tabled.

Sarney followed the advice of his legal advisor, Alberto Caiscais, and Senate Counsel, José Alexandre Lima Gazineo, who, if we can cut through the jargon, found not foundation at all for the impeachment petition simply because it was based on a press report

They saw nothing wrong with the Justice staying as a guest at the home of attorney Sergio Bermudes, taking his wife on a trip paid by Sergio Bermudes, or having his wife employed at Sergio Bermudes’ law offices in Brasília – all of which constitute impeachable conduct:

“Clearly, the speculative character of merely pointing to a friendship between the Justice and an attorney is not a prima facie reason to install a constitutional process with grave implications for the stability and credibility of the Courrt, such as an impeachment trial” – the opinion read.

But this was no mere friendship, my friends. Travel abroad, hospitality …

And a cushy job for the Mrs. 

Militia Watch | Justice Delayed in Witness Execution Case

Source of the above: Movement Against the Rio Militias

From a standing news alert on Rio’s militias — paramilitary racketeering enterprises run mainly by off-duty or disgraced police, firemen and the odd soldier.

These groups use heavily armed coercion to elect their own candidates to city hall and the state legislature, where they enjoy the most remarkable parliamentary immunity anywhere on the planet.

Notícias JusBrasil reports and I translate the relevant bit. You may notice that the author is a Marxist. They have those here.

Militias are for the most part led by bourgeois politicians or policement, they have become one tactic the bourgeoisie can use to hunt down and execute the proletarian population.

On Wednesday, 25, two members of a Western Zone militia had their trials postponed. Reinaldo Ramos Lobo, known as Printer, and Maciel Valente de Sousa, aka Zacarias, were indicted for participating in the murder of  Leonardo Baring Rodrigues on 2 July 2009 in Vila do Céu, in the Cosmos neighborhood. The victim was a principal witness to the massacre that occurred in Favela do Barbante, in Campo Grande, in August 2008.

The postponement is just one more proof of the collusion between militias and the formal Justice system. Most militia cases never even see a jury The ploy used is to delay the trial to the maximum so that the defendants can eventually be found innocent, as occurs in the vast majority of cases involving militiamen.

I can vouch for several other cases with the same pattern of facts, if not for the generalizations. To give you an indication, one top militia leader, assassinated by his own kind, was a top aide to the chief of the state judicial police. Rio, where the cops are criminals.

The groups are being rash, however, in attempting to exert influence over federally built housing projects. This brings superior police power and expertise to bear — both the Federal Police and the National Public Safety Force — under the supervision of federal judges less likely to be involved in racketeering themselves.

It is already happening.

More Motion For My Morning

My usual morning looks like this.

I faithfully record corporate actions, corporate finance news, M&A items, and other sorts of tidbit coveted by the inscrutable Customer.

In the M&A area, at any rate, what would be really wild to do — and I think my client could even introduce it on his site fairly easily — would be something like the following:

Brazilian ASCAP Faces Antitrust Probe

Six of us see the sequel to Elite Squad for about USD$2. To see it in the theatre might have cost USD$70. 

Ever since the incoming Minister of Culture took a firm stance against heavily promoted alternative models of global copyright such as Creative Commons — though not necessarily copyleft — her supposed ties to ECAD, a Brazilian analogue to ASCAP, the royalty collections agency — have been used to paint the minister as a mere tool of Big Content.

Now, ECAD faces an antitrust action — somewhat paradoxically, given that its relationship with Big Content would seem to be an adversarial one. But I could be wrong.

Still, if you want to investigate a cartel, investigate the IVC, the Institute for Verification of Circulation. Its governance code is as anarchistic as the charter of the Dill Pickle Club.

I translate the gist for the record.

The Ministry of Justice’s antitrust department is due to charge the Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição (ECAD) for cartel formation. Its principle objection is the fixing of arbitrary royalty percentages by ECAD and its affiliates.

The case file on ECAD was opened in July 2010 and sought to discover how beneficiaries and the central office arrive at the amounts to be paid as royalties. It was acting on a complaint by cable TV operations, who pay 2.55% of their gross, or some R$ 250 million per year.

Boo hoo.

Retool for Real Work, Vagabundo

I still cannot get Graphmind to work on my main Drupal site, but that it can work is proven by the instance running on the Learning Annex, above.

I have to think about re-retooling for real, paying work from an old client of mine in the near future. Less blogging, but on the other hand more cash on hand for spending with my cigar pusher in Moema, who has a fabulous deal on Partagas Series D, according to his latest e-mail circular.

The whole point of this exercise has been to see whether open source tools can help in real work like mine, and so it is with pride that I point to the utility, for exampe, of the dynamic timeline, courtesy of the SIMILE project at MIT-SAILS. I have set up,

1. A tracking timeline of coverage of a media-driven scandal here in Brazil … the latest in a series going back to the 16th century
2. A sociobibliography in the making of the literature on public diplomacy, propaganda, advertising and marketing, and international media development assistance
3. The history — just the official data so far — of WPP, the world’s second largest advertising, PR and digital media group.

This thingamajig is fantastic. I could, if I wanted, set up a tracker for ever single ticker and name I am assigned to cover, for example, providing me with am overview of what has been said and written on the subject.

Copersucar Ready to IPO

Copersucar’s booze-fueled Formula 1 model.

I told them so, but they only wanted to pay me $0.05 a word for the wisdom so I blew them off.

One of the largest ethanol and sugar exporters in the world, Brazil’s Copersucar has filed with the Brazilian SEC-equiivalent to go public and sell shares on the Bovespa stock market of São Paulo.

The company’s prospectus indicates it will offer both new shares (a “primary offering””) as well as shares currently in the hands of company shareholders  (the “secondary issue”) but does not specify the amounts it intends to raise with this action.

There is still not information on the timetable for the IPO, known in Brazil as an OPA.

In the preliminary prospectus, the company reports exporting 4.6 million tonnes from the 2010/2011 harvest, “or 10% of all the product in the world”, as well as  640 million liters of ethanol.

Goldman Sachs, Itaú-BBA, Bank of America and Credit Suisse will coordinate the offer, which is to be open to domestic and foreign investors alike.

Copersucar markets the output of 48 production units. In the first quarter, it presented net profits of  R$ 355.5 million, compared with a loss of  R$ 2.5 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

Gross revenue was R$ 8.3 billion, up from R$ 3.8 year on year. EBITDA was R$ 407 million, up from R$ 40 million on the same accounting basis.

via Jornal Documento | www.odocumento.com.br.

Behind the scenes there is a restruxturing going on so that partner cooperatives will not see their equity shares diluted by the IPO. I remember reading.