|
The man in charge of Interpol's Intellectual Property Crimes Unit, John Newton, praised the job the Brazilian government has been developing to combat piracy.
According to Newton, the country is solidifying its position as a leader in this area, and Interpol wishes to continue its dialogue with the government to expand the campaign against this type of crime.
The Interpol official took part in the destruction of a million counterfeit CD's in the Maracanã Stadium on January 20.
The coordinator of the Chamber of Deputies' Subcommission on Piracy, Júlio Lopes, stressed the importance of the presence of Interpol's global anti-piracy campaign director at the event, witnessing the progress Brazil has made and helping Brazil continue to maintain a permanent policy of combatting piracy.
For the deputy, Brazil "has shown the world that when society so desires, things really do happen in the country."
He also pointed out that the mobilization that has occurred sets an example for the rest of the world, not just with the seizure of millions of CD's, but of cigarettes, drinks, and phony medications as well.
According to Lopez, piracy inflicts losses equivalent to US$ 10 billion on the Brazilian economy every year and impedes the offer of two million jobs.
In 2004, the Association for the Protection of Intellectual Rights for Recordings (Apdif) registered the seizure of 17.5 million pirate CD's in the country.
For its part, the Association for the Defense of Intellectual Property (Adepi), which oversees the film sector, gathered around 20 tons of illegal material.
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.