Gil downloads

Cérebro Eletrônico - Gilberto Gil - 1969
2001 - Gilberto Gil - 1969

Do you think Gilberto Gil reads music blogs? OK, maybe not. But here's an interesting piece of trivia: Gil supports a program that would comprehensively archive Brazilian music online and make the files free for download! Wired has an interesting article from 2004 that talks about this utopian project and digs into Gil's rationale for backing it. Read the full article here. It's funny how Wired compares him to a "Slashdot hothead" while also calling him a "well-compensated content baron." LOL

Excerpt:

For Gil, "the fundamentalists of absolute property control" - corporations and governments alike - stand in the way of the digital world's promises of cultural democracy and even economic growth. They promise instead a society where every piece of information can be locked up tight, every use of information (fair or not) must be authorized, and every consumer of information is a pay-per-use tenant farmer, begging the master's leave to so much as access his own hard drive. But Gil has no doubt that the fundamentalists will fail. "A world opened up by communications cannot remain closed up in a feudal vision of property," he says. "No country, not the US, not Europe, can stand in the way of it. It's a global trend. It's part of the very process of civilization. It's the semantic abundance of the modern world, of the postmodern world - and there's no use resisting it."

I recommend checking out this song that he recorded for his latest album, Banda Larga Cordel (loosely translated as "Broadband Pamphlet").