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.)
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.)