Gilberto Gil by Joi Ito

Today’s Democracy Now! episode features an extensive interview with CC advocate and Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil in which he speaks at length his experiences with CC licensing in regards to culture, medicine, and the process of “democratizing the distribution of intellectual property rights”. You can read or watch the interview here:

Yeah. The author laws, the author rights, I mean, they belong to—the way they are set and the laws are written and applied and everything, that all belongs to a previous period, you know, previous time, an analog, so to speak, an analog time. Now, the digital area, the digital era enable us to extend and expand cultural products and cultural goods and cultural possibilities to a level that we—we have to also rewrite and reshape the legal framework and the regulatory framework, so that it can adjust to the new possibilities. That’s what Creative Commons is about, bringing possibilities to manage their own work, you know, to the creators, so that the songwriters, the theater play writers, the book writers, and so and so, can have the possibilities to manage their own work and say—and determine what their work will serve for.

Gil goes on to discuss his decision to CC licenses his music, the experience of bringing CC to Brazil with the help of CC founder Lawrence Lessig, and his opinions in general about culture and creativity in a digital age. A great interview that is free to share through Democracy Now!’s decision to release all their original content under a CC BY-NC-ND license.

UPDATE: Gil is also currently on tour, with upcoming dates across the United States and Europe.