Backward march: the turnaround in public cultural policy in Brazil

Two discourses, two actions

Celina Souza defines public policy as ‘the field of knowledge that seeks, at the same time, to “get the government into action” and/or to analyze that action (independent variable), where necessary proposing changes in the course of actions (dependent variable)’ (Souza, 2006: 26). ² This all-encompassing and generic definition arises from several fields, theories and analytical models that attempt to define and explore this area of the state’s influence over society.

To investigate a specific area of public policy, it is important to highlight that its formulation, in general, ‘takes place at the stage when democratic governments translate their electoral promises and platforms into programs and actions that will produce results or changes in the real world’, according to the perspective summarized by Celina Souza (2006: 26). It is precisely here that there is a need to examine the relationship between electoral platforms and the actions taken by elected governments, since there may be very little coherence or correspondence between them. In this specific case, the electoral campaign of President Dilma stated a commitment to digital culture – with a reformulation of the copyright law so as to guarantee ‘fair copy’. Nevertheless, the nomination of Ana de Hollanda as Minister of Culture went against both the electoral speech and the policy executed during the administration of her predecessor and main supporter. This can be seen in the evidence that there were different views of leadership between the Gil/Juca and the Ana de Hollanda administrations, evidence which can be found in an analysis of the inaugural speeches of the two ministers.

In 2003, spurred on by the popular demand that elected Lula, Gilberto Gil took control of the Ministry of Culture and promised in his inaugural speech to transform the ministry into ‘the home of all those who think about and invent Brazil’. After stating that ‘the cultural policy is a part of the policy of a society and a nation’, Gil delineated what would become one of the main characteristics of his term and that of his successor: the intention to contribute towards the transformation of Brazilian cultural policy by undertaking ‘a kind of anthropological do-in’, massaging vital pressure points, momentarily forgotten or sleeping, on the country’s cultural body. In other words, to bring alive the old and stimulate the new (Gil, 2003).

This concept of cultural policy was developed by Gil through the 25 years before he became minister, when he was involved in the creation of the Gregório de Mattos Foundation, a kind of municipal culture board in the city of Salvador, Bahia. In the book The Poet and the Politician, by Gilberto Gil and by the anthropologist Antonio Risério, they describe the Boca de Brasa project, an activity that may be seen as the precursor of Cultural Hotspots, as it brought a mobile stage infrastructure for holding shows to the outskirts of the city of Salvador. The Boca de Brasa program was defined and delivered in partnership with local artists and citizens:

This is what we’ve done: we stimulated the expression and organization of community productions, enabling the exchange of cultural experiences amongst a variety of small communities in Salvador, at the same time as, due to the mobile and multiple nature of the work, and its repercussions amongst the public, we are able to diagnose and record phenomena and trends, through mapping a reality in which our manifestations of culture come together. A kind of do-in: massaging the cultural body of our city. (Risério and Gil, 1988: 241)

Gil went on to conclude his inaugural speech by announcing that the Ministry of Culture, working within this policy, would be ‘the space for experimenting with new directions’, of ‘adventure and daring’. In the years that followed, the musician-leader and his partners, particularly the executive secretary and subsequent Minister of Culture, Juca Ferreira, developed the thesis of cultural policy along three dimensions – symbolic, civil and economic – which would constitute ( as noted by the literary critic Idelber Avelar [2011]), a political-cultural project from the left-wing, without any precedent in Brazilian history. To summarize, the idea of culture in three dimensions requires one to bring together policies that promote the rights of citizens, with support and freedom for artists, without abandoning stimuli for the cultural economy and the arts. This must be done without subordinating one of these dimensions to the others. A good public policy, therefore, emerges from a permanent balance between the symbolic, the civil and the economic.

Ana de Hollanda took on the ministry in 2011, with great expectations regarding how she would deal with the legacy of her predecessors, whose term had made the Ministry of Culture a true ‘house of all Brazilians’, especially because of the way the public policies established a focus on rural and urban groups, indigenous nations, descendants of slaves, young people, cultural networks, agents of fashion, design and architecture, without abandoning the recognized arts and the issues relating to listed buildings. In this way, a balance was established between the needs of creators and the rights of the citizens to access and use cultural products.

In her inaugural speech, however, Ana de Hollanda indicated that there would be, from her administration onwards, a change of emphasis. If the Lula administration gained recognition for having broadened the horizon and incorporated new segments, her administration was to be marked by a clear commitment to ‘creativity’, with the ‘human and real figure of the person that creates’, thereby denoting a border between the creators, on the one hand, and those who can only seek consumption or appreciation of the cultural product, on the other: ‘From this moment, when I take over the Ministry of Culture, each artist, each Brazilian creator can be sure of one thing: my heart is beating for them. And my heart will manifest itself in programs, projects and actions’ (Hollanda, 2011). At the end of her speech, in attempt to further underscore the message, the first woman to become Minister of Culture in the history of Brazil formulated the definitive sentence: ‘There is no art without the “artist”.’ This was the clue which indicated the dismantling of a policy based on a balance between the dimensions of citizenship, symbolism and economics, a balance which was inherent to the previous administration. In March 2012, this approach was criticized by some of the most important Brazilian intellectuals in a manifesto published in newspapers and on many websites. ³ In the manifesto, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Suely Rolnik, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Laymert Garcia dos Santos, among others, stated:

The mere celebration of a ‘culture’ conceived as a symbolic surplus handed to renowned professionals from the entertainment industry certainly cannot replace the active awareness of the central role that the creative workforce play in the scenario of the new capitalist regime. Nowadays, MinC [Ministry of Culture] is unaware of the financial accumulation systems, the unilateral corporation gains with copyright.

Although Hollanda had explicitly declared that she would not revoke processes undertaken during the Lula administration, the way her commitment to a portion of the artistic class was manifested led to some distrust – from groups who were politically engaged during the Gil–Juca era – that the country could undergo a return to individual ‘clientelism’, which is, as described by Marilena Chauí (1995: 81), the ‘traditional manner’ in which cultural producers and agents of the elite relate to the state, forming a ‘great service desk of subsidies and financial sponsorship’. In her first public appearance, Ana de Hollanda offered a partial and false reading of the abandonment of artists during the Gil–Juca administration, thus by implication delineating the principal guidelines of her own approach. An article that expresses this view, echoed by the minister in her inaugural speech, was written by the composer Fernando Brant (2012), in O Globo, entitled ‘Authors not admitted to the Broadband Minister’s Ball’.

The victory of economy over culture?

The first proposal by Ana de Hollanda, one month after taking over as minister, was the creation of a creative economy Secretariat, with a post which came to be occupied by the researcher and former Secretary of Culture at Ceará state, Cláudia Leitão. Giving emphasis to the economic aspects, Ana de Hollanda was aligned, initially, with the majority of Dilma’s government, which was marked, in the first year of office, by a more economy-oriented view of national issues. In an interview for the newspaper Brasil Econômico, ⁴ the minister highlighted the need to support ‘creative industries’, thus bringing the Brazilian plan closer to a conceptual approach adopted by some international bodies (Unctad, 2010) and by associated intellectuals, essentially transnational cultural industries. The Secretariat of Creative Economy was asked to put together a sector-wide plan, launched in September 2011, with the first design of a cultural public policy (strategic view), some guidelines and a few specific lines of action. According to the report, the creative economy is today responsible for a 2.84% contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) in Brazil. It is estimated that the sector has grown, on average, 6.13% per year over the previous five years, overtaking the average growth of the economy, which was 4.3%. The main proposal of the Creative Economy Plan is the creation of a federal program called Creative Brazil (Brasil Criativo), which brings together intersection programs and actions responsible for supporting creative agents in the country. However, until May 2012, when this article was written, the Ministry of Culture announced, as a complement to this plan, only the holding of a registration process to identify research and creative initiatives in the country – an extremely ‘timid’ approach compared to the ambition presented in the document.

The Brazilian Creative Economy Plan proposes articulation on four pillars: cultural diversity, sustainability, innovation and social inclusion. It further states that creative economy actions must complement the Brazil Without Poverty (Brasil Sem Miséria) program, the main program announced by President Dilma to eradicate poverty in Brazil over the next four years. The document also lists five challenges: (1) to capture information and data within the creative economy field; (2) to articulate and stimulate the growth of creative enterprises; (3) to educate for creative competences; (4) to provide infrastructure for creation, production, distribution/circulation and consumption/appreciation of creative goods and services; (5) to create/adapt legal benchmarks for creative sectors.

At no point does the plan mention initiatives that were designed during Lula’s government, thus associating itself with an opposition rhetoric, which marked the first days of the Hollanda administration at the Ministry of Culture. The plan omits to note, for example, that during the eight years of the Lula era, the cultural economy was one of the three strategic dimensions of public policy implemented by the Gil/Juca administration, as mentioned above. It was at that time that the first efficient indicators concerning the cultural economy in Brazil came into being, with the organization of the National System for Cultural Information and Indicators (SNIIC). The importance of cultural manifestations that historically were not the subject of Brazilian government policy has also come to be noticed: handicrafts, architecture, fashion, design, computer games and products of digital culture. Beyond the rhetorical change in terminology from ‘cultural economy’ to ‘creative economy’, it is hard to identify anything different about what is being proposed by the new administration in relation to the previous one – even more so when the advances of the previous decade are not mentioned in a study that seeks to guide the actions of the current administration.

As noted by Alfredo Manevy (ex-Secretary for Cultural Policy in the Gil administration and Executive Secretary in the Juca era), in a paper entitled ‘Ten commandments of the Ministry of Culture in the Gil and Juca administrations’, the policy for cultural economy resulted in the creation of a sector and a specific fund for culture aimed at fields such as animation, music and the creation of movie theaters by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES) (Manevy, 2010). Furthermore, the National Congress agreed to insert cultural producers in the tax exemption program known as SIMPLES, which reduced taxation for cultural enterprises from 17.5% to 6% on average, potentially benefiting more than 300,000 institutions. These were isolated actions that, although not articulated in a program with a central narrative, made a fundamental contribution to strengthening the economy of the cultural sector.

One additional difficulty of the proposal made in the Hollanda plan consists in the fact that the term ‘creative economy’ is not clearly defined. For the United Nations, ‘there is no single definition for creative economy’ (see Unctad, 2001). Within the Brazilian Ministry of Culture’s Creative Economy Plan, the expression suffers from ‘ambiguity and vagueness’. The economist Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, author of countless papers on the topic, and one of the consultants for the UN document and the Brazilian plan, highlights the ‘nebulous boundaries of creative economy’ in an article published by the Creative Economy Secretariat.

In the view of the author of this article, creative economy fuses the borders between cultural economy and knowledge economy, encompassing the totality of the former and part of the latter – specifically that which encapsulates symbolic contents, such as leisure software, animation and applications, which reveal a given way of thinking, profoundly molded by cultural aspects. Some voices will say that everything in this group of sectors is characteristic of a local culture – but the same could be argued regarding publishing or music sectors. (Ministry of Culture, 2011: 76)

Although it seeks to identify an all-encompassing and definitive concept, the Brazilian plan also fails to reach a conclusion. It even states, at one point, that creative economy is all ‘the economy of the intangible, the symbolic’. Can we therefore accept that all the economy generated from genetic decoding, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, to give only examples, would belong to the creative economy? When one speaks of the creative economy, what specific sectors of immaterial production are taking benefit? Does this creative economy influence the macro-economy and other economy sectors?

The result is that, instead of the clear program proposed for the development of public policies for culture generated during Lula’s government – a program based, as noted earlier, on three associated, interdependent and articulated dimensions (symbolic, citizenship and economic dimensions) – Dilma’s government presented an ‘ambiguous and vague’ view of creative economy, the immediate effect of which was to reduce the operational area of the Ministry of Culture.

Furthermore, in practice, the main actions to produce a true transformation in Brazil’s cultural economy – (1) approval of a new legal benchmark for funding culture; (2) approval of a new legal benchmark for copyright; (3) approval of the Cultural Voucher (Vale Cultura) Project; and (4) approval of PEC-150 (Proposal of Amendment of the Constitution), which segregates 2% of the federal budget for financing culture – continue to await approval in Congress, without receiving due attention by politicians.

The false opposition between artists and citizenship

The turnaround in orientation for cultural policies was not limited to a debate over economic views, but also reached the programs intended to stimulate rights and cultural citizenship – including the ‘Culture, Education and Citizenship: Cultura Viva’ (Alive Culture) program, of which the Cultural Hotspots project is the main initiative. The program was based on the principle that, although inducing cultural processes, the state is not the agent responsible for ‘making the culture’. It is the state’s responsibility, at the end of the day, to create conditions and mechanisms for citizens not only to access symbolic products, but also to produce and distribute their own cultural products, engaging with their local context as active subjects in these processes (Freire et al., 2003).

Based on these principles, the Cultural Hotspots’ proposal was transformed into a public open call for proposals aimed at civil society organizations which had been active for at least two years, areas with a low supply of public services and involving underprivileged populations or those in socially vulnerable situations. The organizations that were selected (who thenceforth became the Cultural Hotspots), would articulate and promote local actions. For that purpose, they would receive R$5000 per month, for three years.

Initially, the call for proposals required each Cultural Hotspot to house a digital multimedia studio. Resources would be destined for acquisition of a ‘multimedia kit’: computers connected to the internet, all equipped with free software, in addition to other equipment for capturing and editing audio and video – camera, camcorder, mixing desk, etc. The proposal was that communities included in the project would feel encouraged both to produce digital content and disseminate it on the web (Turino, 2009). According to a study undertaken by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA, 2011), at the end of 2011, Brazil boasted around 3500 Cultural Hotspots during its implementation phase, involving over 8.4 million people in more than 1000 towns throughout Brazil.

This first public policy for digital culture in Brazil, which would later evolve to include the Cultural Poles and the national and regional Hotspots – within a network called TEIA – placed emphasis not on the technological apparatus itself, but on the potential for transformation associated with the possibility of cultural production and dissemination on the internet, based on recognition and support for Brazilian cultural diversity. The following observation was made by Gilberto Gil, in a seminar held two years after the implementation of the policy, and recorded by the researcher Eliane Costa:

We cannot deprive local communities, whether traditional or otherwise, as well as artists and cultural producers, of the possibility of migrating their symbolic production to the web, to the cyberspace. To ensure that the expression of ideas and artistic manifestations can take digital formats and, furthermore, to guarantee that groups and individuals can create, innovate and recreate artwork and products in cyberspace itself, public guarantees of universal access to the world wide web are essential.… The culture of digital diversity is amplified by knowledge-sharing practices, sharing of open technology and expansion of telecenters, meta-recycling workshops, Cultural Hotspots. (Costa, 2011: 57–8)

When Gilberto Gil left the ministry, in mid-2008, neither the ‘Alive Culture’ program nor the ‘Cultural Hotspots’ program had lost their relevance in the government of Lula. Ferreira, who was executive secretary for the ministry until then, maintained the same discourse and the same political will regarding this and other policies, as we show later.

At first, the new minister seemed open to dialogue with the Cultural Hotspots and willing to consolidate the Alive Culture program. Nevertheless, already in the first months of her administration, Ana de Hollanda announced the unification of the Cultural Citizenship and Cultural Diversity secretariats, which comprised the administrative structure of the previous administration. She then nominated the journalist Marta Porto to be the secretary, who took on the new department charged with responsibility to reformulate the main program of cultural inclusion developed during Lula’s government. The flow of dialogue between the ministry and social movements was broken. In order to organize the relationship between government and social movements, the Cultural Hotspots formed, in 2009, a National Forum of Cultural Hotspots, whose executive body is the National Commission of Cultural Hotspots. This commission’s institutional role is to supervise, advise on and promote the public policies of the Alive Culture program, but it was completely disregarded by Ana de Hollanda when the minister radically redesigned this area of public policy.

In the first months of Ana de Hollanda’s administration, there was a view that it would be necessary to assess the quality of the Alive Culture program and improve it before expanding it. This position, however, generated considerable opposition among the main supporters of the program in civil society. ‘What is being discussed here is a dispute over schools of thought and political governance in response to the argument about quality over quantity’, explains Ivana Bentes (2011), professor and director of the School of Communication (ECO) at Rio de Janeiro Federal University, in addition to being a member of the ECO Cultural Poles. Bentes argued that there is no opposition between expanding the program and seeking to improve its quality. She pointed to the budget cuts at the ministry and lack of interest in the Alive Culture program, showing a cut of more than 70% therein and the indignation of the Cultural Hotspots (Bentes, 2012).

Indeed, some figures published by the ministry itself support the criticisms made by Bentes, which also echo the voices of most activists linked to the cause. As an example, the Ministry of Culture budget, which reached R$2.2b at the end of 2010, was cut to R$1.64b in the following year – which, contrary to the argument of film-maker Cacá Diegues in an article published in the O Globo, ⁵ is far from being a record sum. In addition, the Alive Culture program, which had received R$126m in 2010, received no more than R$70m in 2011 (see Table 1). Bearing in mind that the probability is always that there will be a larger budget in electoral years, if we remove the years 2006 and 2010 (electoral years) from the analysis, it may be seen that, nevertheless, the year 2011 was the worst year, in terms of budget, for the program.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Budget for the Alive Culture program during the Lula and Dilma’s eras.

Year	Funds allocated (R$)*
2004	16m
2005	68m
2006	50m
2007	150m
2008	120m
2009	140m
2010	216m
2011	70m
2012	20m**

*

Approximate values.

**

Actually, the Alive Culture program is not listed on the investment budget of the Ministry of Culture. Thus, theoretically, there are no funds provided for the program, but rather a sum of R$ 20m, aimed at ‘strengthening spaces and Cultural Hotspots, and development and support of cultural networks and circuits’.

Another factor pointing to a step backwards in relation to the program lies in the cancellation of calls for proposals that were already published, the suspension of payments and the lack of new open calls for proposals. As an example, despite the approval of projects and the dissemination of successful proposals in the Brazilian Federal Register, in the year 2011, the calls for proposals related to the Alive School (from 2009) and Alive Culture Agent (from 2009) projects, worth R$7000 to each beneficiary, were cancelled. In the following year, it was the turn of the Areté call for proposals (from 2010), worth R$4000. In the case of the Cultural Poles call for proposals, valued at approximately R$14m in total, payment is not yet assured. In addition, until mid-May 2012, there had been, under the Ana de Hollanda administration, no federal open call for proposals that encompassed Cultural Hotspots.

One of the explanations commonly given to justify this scenario is that the bureaucratic processes for Alive Culture were far too outdated for such an innovative program and, as a result, not easily adaptable the legislation – in this case specifically, Law 8666 (the Law of public administration tenders and contracts). This position is identified and refuted by Alexandrisky (2012):

The motivation is to reject discourse which criminalizes the Program, due to a supposed complexity in adapting it to the bureaucratic controls of Law 8666; reject the discourse that creates insoluble problems that compromise continuity and/or expansion of the Program.… Reject the discourse that appoints bureaucracy as defining public policy.… Beat those who say, cynically, that the Program is ‘the greatest legacy of Lula’s government, but, “unfortunately”, runs into old-fashioned, outdated, obsolete, confusing retrograde and chaotic legislation …’ which slows down the Brazilian state, under the false pretext of the need for control of public money.… When we all know – since newspaper headlines do not let us forget – that, instead of impeding corruption, the bureaucracy creates shadowy pathways for ‘seepage’ of funds from the National Treasury, under the shroud of ‘complex spreadsheets’, designed by ‘specialists’. Now, please fill the mailboxes of this newspaper with responses to the question that is on everyone’s lips: ‘What should change: the Program or the bureaucracy?’

However, even the Gil/Juca administration recognized these bureaucratic obstacles, being aware of the need to overcome them. Manevy (2010: 114) refers to this issue and highlights the challenges that lie ahead:

The program leaves us the challenge of modernizing the Brazilian state. This reflection does not apply only to cultural administration: the state we took part in was not geared towards comfortable partnerships with society. The legal instruments available for transfer of funds are obsolete and – in terms of legitimate combating of corruption – they make the relationship with most of society impracticable due to an excess of rigidity.… One of the main problems within the Ministry of Culture, over the past eight years, has been the provision of a fast and effective service for society, and the result is still considerably deficient.

From creative commons to favoring ECAD

As described at the beginning of this article, the emphasis of the new ministry upon favoring the ‘artistic class’ was used as an argument to denote an antagonistic posture towards the view that led to implementation of the Alive Culture program – for which it was necessary to expand and democratize access to and production of culture (formulating networks for sharing), instead of allowing segregation in ghettos. This vision is expressed in the ministry’s posture regarding the reformulation of the Brazilian copyright law, another sensitive topic that epitomizes the rupture at Ministry of Culture in terms of the prevailing cultural policy since Lula’s era and the Gil/Juca’s administration. Upon taking office as minister in January 2003, Gil began interacting with the copyright industry, not only as a famous singer of Brazilian music himself but also as the main public leader in the sphere of culture in Brazil. A few days after taking office, in a speech given at the Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale (MIDEM) – the main international fair of the recording industry – Gil already revealed signs of his intentions regarding copyright policy, saying that ‘one cannot ignore the importance of the market, but we must establish a dialogue between the market and other dimensions of culture’ (Costa, 2011: 148). The minister would go on to defend a fair balance between the protection of the authors and public access to information and knowledge.

At that time, when the internet and diverse digital technologies were already becoming popular in Brazil, the recording industry, as well as the entire cultural industry, began to decline, as mentioned by Dias (2006). This is because prior to digitalization of content both artists and the general public saw themselves becoming hostages of this industry, also called the intermediation industry. Artists had to submit their work thereto, inevitably relinquishing their copyrights to the industry, at the same time as the public could only resort to the cultural industry for acquisition of cultural products. With the advance of digital technologies for reproduction and sharing, this intermediation industry and its business model ceased to be indispensable, which has led to a steep drop in revenue.

It was at MIDEM, in 2003, that Gilberto Gil met John Perry Barlow, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated, among other things, to the defense of freedom of expression on the internet. Since the 1990s, Barlow also became well known for defending changes to the copyright law in order to deal with the inevitable obstacles that arose after the advent of social networks. Thenceforth, Gil began to form a considerable network of contacts, and held meetings and discussions to deal with this topic. This network would become one of the most cherished and sensitive features of his administration.

This decision gains further relevance when one considers that Brazil has one of the most outdated and restrictive copyright legislation in existence, according to Lemos et al. (2011), Souza (2011) and others. The current legislation, dating from 1998, did not consider the transformations brought by the internet and the popularization of computers already under way at that time and mainly served the interests of two groups: associations that work only for their own benefit (such as associations of publishing houses and composers) on the one hand, and groups interested in liberalization of trade under the efforts of the recently established World Trade Organization (WTO) on the other. In order to understand the restrictiveness of this law, here are two examples: (1) in Brazil, works such as books and pieces of music can only enter public ownership (free of copyright) 70 years after the death of their author/composer; and (2) if the law is interpreted in its strictest form, Brazilian citizens are forbidden to transfer to their personal computers or mp3 players any music they may have acquired, for example, by buying a CD in a physical store. ‘Brazilian Law is one of the most restrictive in the world.… On the other hand, there is a series of different collective interests in society, which involve preservation of the cultural property of a nation, access to knowledge, access to communication, the right to culture’, points out Souza (2011). Minister Gil understood that it would not be possible to promote and widely develop culture without at least discussing this legislation. For this reason, he began conducting in 2003 a study on the issue of copyright in several countries around the world.

In that same year, Gil took part in the Internet Law Program Brasil conference (I-Law), bringing together several specialists from the field. At this event he met Lawrence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses. It was during this event that Brazil came to formally adhere to the CC movement, leading this debate on a worldwide level and showing how to legalize practices such as copying, redistributing and remixing, so commonplace on the worldwide web, and which could otherwise have transformed a whole generation of web-surfers into criminals. One year after leading Brazil to adherence to CC, Gilberto Gil licensed his song ‘Oslodum’ by this method, during the 5th International Free Software Festival (FISL) in Porto Alegre.

In addition, in an attempt to formalize the advances after years of debates and discussions, the Ministry of Culture proposed, in 2012, under the leadership of Juca Ferreira, an alteration in copyright legislation in Brazil, suggesting the necessity to modernize it to include the possibility of making copies of copyrighted material for private use, as an example; as well the creation of a public body (the Brazilian Copyright Institute – IBDA) to take care of balancing and monitoring each sector interested in this topic – especially the Central Office for Copyright and Distribution (ECAD), an institution that, although obliged by law to be accountable to the state, is constantly the target of accusations concerning irregularities.

The bill for a new copyrights law was subjected to a public consultation online, in an open and collaborative process of review, and received more than 7800 contributions, subsequently analyzed by the Ministry of Culture.

Initially, in 2011, when Ana de Hollanda took over the ministry, she changed the discourse that had been adopted during the Gil/Juca administration by emphasizing the ‘artistic class’, as noted above. Furthermore, surprising activists and all those who were involved in the cultural policy of Lula’s government, 20 days after taking office, she had the Creative Commons label removed from the ministry site. The footnote used before on the website (‘The content of this site is published under a Creative Commons License’) was substituted by another statement (‘License for use: The content of this site, produced by the Ministry of Culture, may be reproduced, provided the source is given’). The new sentence represents no legal security for users and conflicts with the country’s copyright law. In a press conference, Ana de Hollanda declared that it was ‘inappropriate’ to use CC to ‘advertise a private entity that offers a service’, since ‘there was no contract that authorized this’. At the same time, however, the ministry kept brands of North American enterprises on their webpage, such as YouTube, which demonstrates a lack of transparency in the official argument.

In the broader debate over copyright, the minister has, thus far, had to respond to severe criticism about her alleged connection with ECAD – the arch-enemy of copyright law reform. As an example, in February 2011 Ana de Hollanda gave serious indications that she would abort the plans of Gil and Juca for the aforementioned reform. The minister dismissed the civil servant Marcos Souza, one of the most important defenders of the reformulation of the law from the Directorship of Intellectual Property Rights (DDI) at the Ministry of Culture, the body responsible for coordinating the reform. A civil servant from the Federal Attorney’s Office, Márcia Regina Barbosa, was nominated for his position. Based on some of her administrative acts, activists alleged she had ties to Hildebrando Pontes Neto, former-President of the National Copyright Council (CNDA), the body responsible for regulating the sector between 1973 and 1990, and now one of ECAD’s lawyers. ⁶

With regard to the copyright reform bill, despite the wide-reaching debate that arose and the fact it was totally formatted by the previous administration, the new minister opted to revise it, having forwarded the final version to central government only at the end of October 2011. The new project, which was kept under wraps by the Ministry of Culture itself, is 80% faithful to the original formatted under the Juca Ferreira administration, but diverges from it on key points.

One of these diversions relates to inspection of duty collection entities, such as ECAD. The new bill provides for less tax inspection of these societies, which lack transparency and have been targeted for investigation by the authorities. Another sensitive issue relates to charging for copyrights proportionally to the use of the works themselves. Currently, without any legally defined criteria, those using just one item pay for the entire catalogue of a given musical association, since the duties are levied through sampling. In the copyrights reform bill proposed by the Ministry of Culture in 2010, proportional taxation was already defined. However, in the current version of the bill, as proposed by the Ministry of Culture in 2011, it is said that sampling should only occur if it is ‘technically and economically’ viable, and the responsible entity for evaluating this condition of viability is ECAD itself.

Such reformulations, however, go against the final report No. 22 approved during the parliamentary commission of inquiry about ECAD, conducted by the Brazilian Senate. The text recognizes that the current copyright law (9.610/98) ‘urgently requires reforms’, but expressly recommends that the authorities expand inspection of entities like ECAD:

[Recommendations to the authorities] 14. Send to the Brazilian Congress, as a matter of constitutional urgency (CF, art. 64, § 1o), the Bill related to the reform of Copyrights Law (LDA), under the Inter-ministerial Intellectual Property Group (GIPI), currently pending approval by central government.

15. Create within the Ministry of Justice, the National Secretariat for Copyrights – SNDA and the National Copyright Council – CNDA, administrative structures with jurisdiction to monitor and mediate conflicts and to inspect entities for collective management of copyrights. We further recommend that, after the creation of the Secretariat and the Council, that the Ministry of Justice conduct a serious debate with society regarding the pertinence of the creation of an autonomous, self-governing body, with jurisdiction to pass judgment on collective management of copyrights.

16. That the administrative structure mentioned above has access to budget, funds, physical infrastructure and qualified personnel to perform regulation, mediation and inspection of bodies that collectively manage copyrights.

17. That a transparency portal is created, containing information on revenue and expenses of these bodies for collective management of copyrights.

18. That an ombudsman is created for the sole purpose of receiving complaints from copyrights’ holders and protected work users [our highlights]. (ECAD, 2012: 1046, emphasis added)

Finally, a recent event helps one to understand the rupture represented by the Ana de Hollanda administration at the Ministry of Culture. On 26 April 2012, the ministry published a official release ⁷ explicitly celebrating International Intellectual Property Day. In the message, signed by the minister, there is a special mention of copyright. According to Hollanda:

amongst … subjects that are part of Intellectual Property, copyrights exercise the important role of enabling the coexistence of diverse segments involved in the chain of cultural production in the society, recognizing and valuing cultural production and the central role of the creator.

Final considerations

A recurrent view of those who criticize the current administration for the Ministry of Culture is that the government has no plan for culture. Brazil is currently going through a clear change of emphasis in the macro-guidelines for cultural public policy. It has ceased its attempts to reach the society as a whole, and has begun to favor the cultural intermediation industry, in a return of the ‘individual clientelism’ that historically favors a privileged circle of ‘creators’ or ‘the artistic class’. The decision to reverse cultural policy without listening to society is one of the main factors in the dissatisfaction expressed by several sectors in the Brazilian cultural field, and it is at the core of a persistent dispute regarding the maintenance of a specific interest group in power.

As described by the researcher and current Secretary of Culture for the State of Bahia, Albino Rubin, one of the most important formulators of the cultural public policy designed by the Worker’s Party (PT) for the Gil/Ferreira administration, studies on cultural public policy in Brazil are hardly panoramic. In an attempt to summarize them, however, he observes that Brazil is a victim of ‘three sad traditions’: absenteeism, authoritarianism and instability (Rubin, 2010). If during Lula’s government it was possible to overcome absenteeism and authoritarianism, the same could not be said about instability, given the current administration’s decision to break with the general direction for cultural public policies that were already being implemented in Brazil. ⁸

The adoption of an opposition rhetoric – which is not trivial, since Dilma’s administration was expected to implement continuity with former government policy – produced an institutional crisis that weakened the Ministry of Culture, resulting in a negative impact on all who are involved in these arrangements, something that only benefits the entertainment industry itself, represented by large international recording labels and by the most important film studios. In an article where she remembers her activity as Secretary of Culture for the city of São Paulo from 1988 to 1992, the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí, a relevant personality in the cultural field inside the Brazilian Worker’s Party and a critic of Ana de Hollanda’s administration, states that a cultural policy must seek a transformation in the political culture of a society, expanding and strengthening democracy: ‘From the point of view of the political culture, it was about encouraging forms of self-organization of society and, above all, the less privileged segments of society, creating a feeling and reality of participatory citizenship’ (Chauí, 1995: 71).

Gil and Juca, with their anthropological ‘do-in’, a view of cultural public policy that strengthened Cultural Hotspots, digital culture networks, young activists from all artistic segments, indigenous artists and descendants of African slaves, among so many others, fulfilled the mission outlined by Chauí and created a considerable change in Brazilian cultural public policy. Furthermore, they embraced established artists through public policies that gave support and created an infrastructure for culture. Hollanda’s administration reinforced the emphasis on the defense of the cultural industry – a program which turned around the public policies already being implemented. This carries the risk of leading Brazil back into the stagnation of the twentieth century.