When Super Mario became the new Ronald McDonald

18/11/2010

A movie store is a rare sight in Latin America. They do exist, but there’s always an element of surprise when you see them. The explanation is pretty simple: why rent a DVD from Blockbuster when you can pay the guy around the corner less and never have to worry about returning it?

In the “developed world” some combination of guilt and the dissuasive power of intellectual property laws actually being enforced oblige the person selling pirated DVDs and the person purchasing them to operate clandestinely—when they operate at all. That’s not to say we don’t go about it other ways—illegally downloading movies and music; of course we do. We just try not to celebrate it. And furthermore, those who do are somewhat counterbalanced by those who use iTunes and those who are actually influenced in movie theaters by the anti-piracy advertisements we now expect to see before our movies.

So, why such different attitudes when it comes to intellectual property?

When I lived in Peru, I personally adjusted pretty quickly. Within days I was following the hordes who felt no compunction whatsoever when buying a DVD outside a theater where that same movie was playing. I contributed to the underground economy without flinching. But when I returned to Canada, I never sought out pirated DVDs or even downloaded movies illegally. Maybe I was lazy? Maybe there’s just something I’ve always liked about browsing the shelves. But now I’m back—in Colombia this time, and I’ve adjusted again.

That said, just when I started to think my respect for intellectual property was tenuous at best, I saw something that assured me there was only so far it could fall: Mario Bross restaurant in Cali, Colombia.

Yeah, I know. You’re probably thinking I made a mistake and added another “S”.

I didn’t.

That’s actually what the place is called. It’s a chain, I’m told. And in case there’s any ambiguity about the origin of the name, because I guess the owner’s name could’ve been Mario Bross, or something like that—the sign has everyone’s favorite Italian-American plumber carrying a massive burger on a tray that struggles to contain it.

Correct me if I’m wrong—I don’t remember that in the video game.

Shortly after my Mario Bross encounter, I had a beer at a place called Olafo’s, which shamelessly uses Hägar the Horrible to sell its food. Reading the newspaper later that day—ok— the comics, I realized Olafo is how Hägar the Horrible is translated, making the misappropriation even more blatant. Because I can’t find any proof that Dik Browne and his estate or Shigeru Miyamoto and the people at Nintendo approved their creations being used to sell mediocre fast food in South America. Realistically they’re probably not even aware, just as I’m fairly certain Christina Aguilera doesn’t know her face is being used to lure Peruvian women to various peluquerias, or hair stylists.

Who knows? Maybe none of them would care if they did know. It’s not as if these places are raking it in; and everyone’s aware Latin American systems of justice have more pressing concerns than the punishing trademark counterfeiters.

That said, at least in the Colombian context—it is part of their law.

As a member of the WTO, Colombia is required to abide by the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights) Agreement, which “requires members to comply with certain minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property rights covered in it.”

Ok, so we might say it’s something like the Kyoto Protocol—ratifying it and signing it doesn’t mean you actually have to enforce it. Just try your best and everyone’s satisfied.

But I was curious—what exactly are they supposed to be enforcing? From a 2001 WTO Legislation review, in response to a question from the United States, Colombia gave this answer:

“The penalties for infringement of copyright are laid down in Law No. 44 of 1993 as follows:

Article 51. – The following shall be liable to imprisonment for two to five years and a fine of five to 20 times the legal minimum monthly wage…

4. Any person who reproduces phonograms, videograms, software or cinematographic works without the express prior authorization of the owner, or transports, stores, stocks, distributes, imports, sells, offers for sale, acquires for sale or distribution or in any way deals in such reproductions.”

And…

“Law No. 599 of 2000…defines the following offences related to infringement of industrial property rights:

Article 306 states that "Any person who fraudulently uses a trade name, sign, trademark, patent, utility model or industrial design that is legally protected or likely to be confused with one that is legally protected shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of two (2) to four (4) years and a fine of twenty (20) to two thousand (2,000) minimum prevailing legal monthly wages", and the same penalty applies to any person who finances, supplies, distributes, puts on sale, markets, transports or acquires goods produced or distributed in the circumstances described above for commercial or brokerage purposes.”

Two to five years for the guy who sold me a DVD on the corner? Two to four for the owners of Mario Bross and Olafo’s?

Right.

You’re more likely to find the police buying DVDs beside me before they eat average burgers at Olaf’s or Mario Bross than you are to see them applying laws the “developed” world knows aren’t worth the paper on which their written.

As I said before, they've got other things to do.

A rebel with a cause, and a simple question I can’t answer

11/11/2010

I can’t remember his name right now, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. He was smug—a cheto as the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) would have called him—young, well-built, though not overly muscular, with Lacoste everything and a cocky stride that stuck out in an otherwise bland IBM office building in Puerto Madero.

I knew when I first met him that every class would be a challenge. In that sense I was lucky his attendance was sporadic.

One particular class, he was especially irritated. He was complaining about the laissez-faire attitude (read lazy) of the Spanish workers with whom he was obliged to communicate on a daily basis for what was at that moment the foreseeable future; then suddenly he came out with this:

“What are you doing here?”

Put on the spot, I came up with an embarrassing, barely coherent answer I won’t repeat. It felt like I was challenged and lost; I promised myself I’d never be unprepared for that question again.

It was a promise I didn’t keep.

Because the other day, on a bus to Cali, Colombia, a man in his forties sat down next to me, started to tell me how he’d lived for fourteen years in New Jersey, lost everything when he was deported for not being able to provide the authorities with papers after a supposedly random inspection...

“I miss it so much. There’s nothing here for me,” he continued. Then: “What are you doing here?”

I mumbled something about “viajando and de vacaciones”. He smiled and told me he was glad I was seeing his city, but the sad envy in his eyes told me something else. I could go back to the cold winters and opportunities. He had to wait six more years in sultry Cali before he could have a chance to get back to his American-born daughter in Newark.

This has been an extremely longwinded way of getting to what I planned on discussing: Lori Berenson—a woman who's answered that question and had the question answered for her repeatedly over the last fifteen years— a martyr to some and a sanctimonious would-be terrorist to others.

What was she doing with the Tupak Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru in 1995?

If you were to believe her parents, she was doing what any young, intellectual social activist would do?

From the Free Lori website:

“Lori Berenson is a firm believer in the need to work for a better world for all, for a world in which everyone's fundamental human rights are respected.”

They go into great detail about the kangaroo court that tried her—much less about the MRTA weapons cache found in the house she was renting in Miraflores, Lima, her grito de dolores-like statement (“There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA; it's a revolutionary movement!") made slightly less credible by their subsequent seizure of the Japanese embassy, and well, the fact she was arrested with the wife of one of the group’s leaders, Néstor Cerpa.

That she was guilty is and was hard to dispute. But despite how vociferously that guilt was contested by those close to her, it was always the judicial process rather than the evidence that was questioned.

When she was initially released this past May, I admit I found the reaction of her new neighbors in Lima surprisingly aggressive; a lot of time had passed; she looked older than her forty years, certainly owing to the fifteen years she’d already spent in prison. And yet that clearly visible naïveté was as strong as ever—like she’d do it all over if she had to.

Again granted parole five days ago, I’ve rethought my disappointment at again not having an answer to such a simple question.

Uncertainty shouldn’t be a source of embarrassment; there’ll never be a shortage of rebels. There’ll never be a shortage of causes.

A merciless, misguided fight

07/11/2010

Sipping a coffee in the neighborhood of La Candelaria in Bogota, Colombia, I opened my copy of El Tiempo to see what the national newspaper had to say. On the bottom right corner of the front page of Thursday’s edition, a headline caught my eye: “Lucha sin cuartel”, or merciless fight.

The merciless fight was referring to a government raid on La Dirección Nacional de Estupefacientes (DNE), the agency responsible for managing the seized assets of the narcotraficantes, or drug traffickers.

The raid was undertaken at the behest of the agency’s new leader—Juan Carlos Restrepo, who maintained he had “detected a series of fraudulent operations, the value of which could be measured in billions of pesos.”

Corruption in the Colombian agency that manages the assets seized from the drug trade?

I wasn’t exactly astonished, but then I realized I really didn’t know what their ally in the United States did with theirs.

After several conversations and discussions, I realized no one else seemed to know either. The dilemma was pretty simple: if the assets seized in any way funded police operations, they could easily create a budgetary dependence that—well I think the implications are fairly obvious…

And so the cursory research…

In the U.S. the assets seized by the USDA are held in something called the Assets Forfeiture Fund, created as part of 1984’s Comprehensive Crime Control Act. Essentially it works like this: the proceeds of forfeiture are used “to pay the costs associated with such forfeitures, including the costs of managing and disposing of property, satisfying valid liens, mortgages, and other innocent owner claims, and costs associated with accomplishing the legal forfeiture of the property.”

Pretty reasonable, really. The money seized is used to manage the money seized.

But then there’s a part under general investigative expenses about compensating “state and local law enforcement officers participating in joint law enforcement operations with a federal agency participating in the fund.”

I guess that’s where it gets hazy to me. States and municipalities facing budget cutbacks seem to have a strong incentive to “participate”. One particular U.S. Department of Justice audit I found from 2007 suggested that “while the DEA had established internal control policies for safeguarding seized cash, some of those policies need to be strengthened. For example, the DEA should: (1) better define situations when seized cash should be counted immediately by the seizing agent.”

Better define situations when seized cash should be counted immediately by the seizing agent?

I won’t go there.

In the Colombian context, the editorial in El Tiempo suggested it might be time “to clean the DNE from the inside.” But cleaning or reorganizing the DNE or DEA implies they can both operate transparently—that there is a way or ways to make them less susceptible to what that same editorial called “irregularities.”

I’d agree there is: eliminate the need for the cash seized to be managed at all.

Eliminate the cash.

Because as long as it’s treated as something that can be purified or at least managed, there will continue to be “evidence of a series of shady characters receiving benefits” and “numerous assets seized by the authorities, simply disappearing from the public registry.”

Whether it’s in Colombia or in the United States, whether it’s greed or desperation, the temptation to take a little extra home from work or to rationalize the funding of policing operations with the proceeds from drug trafficking are or at least should be blatantly obvious.

El Tiempo argues the Colombian government should be applauded for showing a willingness to eradicate “corruption, democracy’s most evil cancer.”

They could start by eliminating the DNE.

Wary of a mourning President

02/11/2010

Anyone who has ever grieved the death of someone close to them will tell you the expedited nature of the process is a confusing one. The most trivial of details demand attention; time, in the short term, passes quickly, till the whirlwind abruptly stops, and life, as it’s often said, goes on.

“Take as long as you need” is what’s most often heard, but it’s clear that kneejerk empathy is insincere, because the death of one individual does not allow for much more than a temporary pause. Former President or plebian, duties await impatiently.

“I shouldn’t speak about politics, it’s not the moment to speak about political issues but rather to show solidarity with the President,” Governor of Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti was quoted imploring yesterday in a Clarín article—this despite their differences in recent years.

Of the article—I couldn’t find the author’s name, but I could picture the smile on their face as they transcribed the quotation. The possibility that Mr. and Mrs. Kircher’s battle with the media conglomerate would take a hiatus didn’t go on for much longer. In fact, it begins with speculation in the paragraph that immediately follows Schiaretti’s quotation.

It describes the “political conversations” the last Governor of Córdoba, José Manuel De La Sota had with the former President before his death—conversations that involved helping Néstor in a province that never took kindly to el kirchnerismo. It then finishes with another high profile Cordovan politician, Eduardo Mondino, describing why he won’t attend a ceremony celebrating a new model of Renault to be built in the Province’s Santa Isabel plant. He still has, he says, the same objections he always had with “the ways and methods of doing Kirchernism politics.”

The Clarín editorial board couldn’t have said it better themselves, though they’re now forced to tread lightly. But even at their most compassionate, immediately following his death, the battle lines were still clearly drawn: “the absence of the leader means a big challenge for the political plan of Kirchnerism: the former President was the principal power builder and maintained a constant relationship with government legislators, governors, government workers and mayors.”

That political plan, of course, included besieging Clarín’s independence.

So now what?

It is clear Chavismo begins and ends with one man; but what of kirchnerismo without Néstor?

Many liked to imagine the pair another Hillary and Bill Clinton—two powerful politicians with enough wind to sail their own ships. While it wove a nice narrative, I never found it all that credible.

As Clarín has acknowledged, there’s no clear course; they’ve been forced to adjust their strategy, attack with slight jabs and wait to see how their antagonist responds.

They’re wary.

The Argentine public won't respond well to those who bully a widow, even if she is the President...especially when it can be argued her husband’s death was at least partially caused by the stress that came from their battles with Clarín…

They’re wary.

Hell hath no fury...