Managing Knowledge Without A License: Retro-Ditadura is the Fashion in Brazil

Fenaj, 1946-2007. RIP. Under the 1946 Constitution, you could not vote unless you were registered with the Ministry of Labor as practicing a State-approved profession or occupation. Very Starship Troopers, is it not?

Item: Journalist briefly detained, facing legal proceedings for practising without a university degree (IFEX).

Neuza, who is taking an administrative law course for a PR job, pointed out to me today that the Press Law still on the books here in Brazil dates to 1967 — during the presidency of General Medici. It states its purpose as being to

Regula a liberdade de rnanifestação do pensamento e de informação
… regulate the freedom to manifest thought and information

General rights and principles of the 1988 Consitution — Article 222 in particular — were designed to supercede this law, but there are judges out there trying to create jurisprudence that curtails those rights. It is jaw-droppingly strange.

And more than that: What strikes me about the YouTube episode, for example, is that companies seeking to stave off antitrust measures designed to open Brazilian markets to competition do so by campaigning to preserve dictatorship-era law at the expense of the Constitution of 1988.

As a Bill of Rights-coddled gringo, I find this extremely shocking. And people like John Palfrey are out there “arguing” in favor of it.

Number seven
On the chump list
Playing stooge
Eatin shit

Toadies
Toadies

Note this recent Supreme Court case on the subject. Note, too, that FENAJ, the national journalists “union” — the word in PT-Br is pelêgo, I believe — opposes lifting the requirement that journalists be trained in State-accredited courses and registered with the Ministry of Labor.

(IPYS/IFEX) – On 14 December 2006, Judge Richard Fernando Silva ordered the arrest of reporter Silvério Netto, who was interviewing him, in the town of Pará de Minas, in the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil. Netto was working on an article for the community-based radio station Total FM’s webpage, BR Supernews, about a report presented by the Small Claims Court. The judge asked the journalist about his professional training; the reporter replied that he did not have a degree. The judge ended the interview and ordered Netto to be arrested. Netto was taken to a police station and released after he gave a statement.