In case you missed it, this weekend's New York Times featured a nicely detailed article on Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian pop-musician-turned-cultural-minister who has become one of the leading exponents of the Creative Commons copyright license.
At the end of the 1960s, Mr. Gil was exiled from Brazil for his role in the politically charged Tropicália art movement. But more recently, as Brazil's minister of culture, the songwriter has driven his nation toward an unusually progressive stance on matters of intellectual property. Brazil has formed an alliance with Creative Commons — the more flexible alternative to traditional copyright created by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford University — through which Mr. Gil hopes to create a widely accessible online archive of Brazilian music.
For scholars interested in the evolving state of copyright law, Brazil's experiment is a case study worth following. (And for fans of Brazilian pop — or anyone else, for that matter — we can't recommend Mr. Gil's albums Expresso 2222 and Refazenda strongly enough.) –Brock Read
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