The Jungle Book

The amount sums an outrageous yearly US$350.000, and the banner is this one:

No, this is not a Internet-wide marketing campaign. It´s a SINGLE BANNER in a not-that-popular website, www.paraiba.com.br, with a meek 208.667 Alexa ranking.

It´s not the first time, last year they aired the banner, too. But charged ONLY US$25.000,00 A MONTH for their trouble.

The entire transaction is online:

Link to the details of the operation - Brazilian Senate Website, translated by Google.

Oh, it´s not the only contract, looks like the R$48.000,00 monthly fee is standard to the Brazilian Senate: http://www.senado.gov.br/sf/contratos/empresaContratada.asp?o=1&e=R%C1DIO+E+TV+PARAIBANA

Outrageous, a total disrespect.

Last Wednesday, June the 4th, I was travelling from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, a 6 hour bus trip, nice to relax in a wide, 1st class seat, when the in flight, I mean, in drive movie started.

The movie? Check the video below:

Can’t play video? Have some pictures:

Yes, Virginia. They played Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

On a crappy 14" rounded-screen CRT TV, mono sound, a bootlegged copy without ending credits and opening ones in German. Of, dubbed in Portuguese.

They RUINED my experience. I was planing to watch the movie in a big real theatre, next weekend. I’m not a saint but I believe some movies deserve to be enjoyed on a REAL cinema screen. Some others are just POSs we watch to kill time, and those can be watched via YouTube. (I’m talking to you, Uwe Boll).

Specially, if I pay for a movie, if it’s included in my ticket price, I think it should be fair to watch a REAL movie, not a pirated, US$5 copy.

I’ll watch the movie today, after lunch, but it will not be the same. Great work, Autoviação 1001. You guys ruined a 20-years wait.

Hope Paramount take your company to the Courts and rip you a new one.

From what I could find about the story: The two were arrested after a house robbery, because instead of fleeing the crime place, they started to fight about the sharing of the booty.

When the police arrived, they were still fighting. Sooo… the cops decided that it was time to make peace, or better, make love, not war. Ordered to make out, they had no choice, after all Brazilian police can be very persuasive, with arguments from .38 to 9mm, not to mention the .380 ones.

Someone, possibly a cop filmed the whole love scene, using a cell phone. Yes, they french-kiss a little, and one of the guys really looks like he’s enjoying the whole thing.

Will someone be arrested? Other than the two lovebirds, no one, but I think a lot of NGOs will raise a little hell about the story.

Is it a sign of a new, softer Brazilian police? Nahhhhhh…. but it’s still way better than the on-site executions so popular back in the 80s among the Death Squads.

IBOPE, Brazil’s largest market research organization released the data from its last nationwide poll, about reading problems and how well the average person can read and understand a text.

As I always say, people can’t do that. They only read the title, they don’t have the superpowers required to assimilate a full text.

The research discovered that the amount of people who only read titles and the single phrases INCREASED in the last four years.

Monteiro Lobato, a great writer, once said: “A Country is made by men and books”. Looks like nobody paid him much attention.

Oh Well. Africa, here we go!

Even Argentina got one. Some countries without luxuries like tap water an paved roads did it, too. But not Brazil. Why? simple: our movie industry is poverty-oriented. We love our misery an are not afraid of showing it. Ok. A slum here and there is kosher, but to become a huge hit a Brazilian movie must show slums, social violence, black kids beaten by evil cops or a thousand miles of plain old fashioned rural poverty.

After a while it gets boring. Same old story with other characters. Even the actors are the same. And no, you can’t do it without a ‘denounce’ tone. A great little movie, Deus é Brasileiro (God is Brazilian) was ignored by the critics because it dared to be fun. To entertain and to show poor people being happy. Yes, Virginia, even poor people smile, love, have fun. They may be poor but they don’t feel miserable. At least not as miserable as the onnanist left-wing intellectuals believe they are.

We have a few pure-entertainment movies, but they’re not taken as seriously as the “real” movies.

Of course, American movies are allowed to be as fun and alienating as possible, because, well, that’s Hollywood. Point is: People love Hollywood-style movies, unless it’s a brazilian Hollywood-style movie. Our moviemakers are not allowed to be vain.

But there’s a small light of hope. Globo Filmes, a movie company tied to Brazil’s largest TV network release movie after movie, usually based on their own TV shows, or plain simple pure-entertainment movie. People are starting to react, and the public like what it see.

Maybe in one or two generations Brazil will have a great movie industry, like it used to have, back in the 40s/50s.

I just received the following email from Brazil´s AdSense Team:

(translated)

From: “Google AdSense” adsense-pt@google.com
Subject: Important message about your AdSense payment

Hello;

We´d like to inform you that the delivery of your AdSense paycheck, from December, was aborted, unexpectedly, due to restrictions imposed by brazilian customs laws, related to courier-delivered checks.

be assured we are working to solve this impasse as soon as possible and we will contact you again as soon as we´ve further information.

So, after the Government tried to close Orkut, the Justice tried to close YouTube, now we´ve a classic Mexican standoff, Google at a side, brazilian government at the other?

What kind of government is stupid enough to block INCOMING money? there´s not even a single fracking tax advantage to people who BRING money to the country, but at least  we should´ve equal rights to people who make money in country.

No, looks like we´re the bad guys.

Well, guess what: If things are not solved very quickly Everybody will lose. Specially  Brazil´s IRS.

Use the Technorati adsenselock or sign this blog´s RSS if you want to keep up with further developments.

 

This is YouTube for most of Brazil. Telefonica is redirecting the  requests to a page explaining about the Court Order. It covers every company with international links and has no ending date in sight.

Brasil Telecom was the first, and others are following. Embratel, the largest brazilian backbone provider will close the traffic to and from YouTube in a few hours.

I think don´t even CHINA blocks youtube altogether.

Shame on you, Brazil, shame on you.

Brasil Telecom for the first time acknowledged the YouTube blocking. Bia Kunze, a local blogger,podcaster, journalist and radio personality managed to reach a representative of BRT, and digged the statement, from a phone call 1 hour ago:

“We are aware of the YouTube non-access (sic). However we don´t have any more information right now. We ask you to wait for a formal statement”

Bia noticed that the press assessor measured “word by word” and the word “problem” never once used. (in a way longer conversation, while her credentials were checked at CBN Radio)

I did a few checks using Bia´s connection.

Not only Brasil Telecom is blocking the outside traffic to YouTube, but they´re also blocking any DNS requests, too. Pings return “could not find host”. Direct pings to YouTube´s IPs return “host unreachable”.

A traceroute ends at their last machine in Brazil:

C:\Documents and Settings\Bia>tracert 208.65.153.241

Rastreando a rota para 208.65.153.241 com no máximo 30 saltos

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 10.1.1.1
2 16 ms 15 ms 14 ms BrT-L10-ctaje700.dsl.brasiltelecom.net.br [201.1. 5.255.254]
3 * * 18 ms BrT-G8-2-700-ctaje300.brasiltelecom.net.br [201.
10.218.21]
4 * * * Esgotado o tempo limite do pedido.
5 * * * Esgotado o tempo limite do pedido.
6 * * * Esgotado o tempo limite do pedido.
7 * * * Esgotado o tempo limite do pedido.

We´re all becoming VERY worried down here, because Brazil has a history of totalitarism, censorship and fragile civil liberties. And no, we don´t have an ACLU here. Not even an EFF.

The local nonsense is a part of life, in a country where the President thinks Tsunamis are “wind storms”, but sometimes the surrealism goes too far.

A Justice decision demanded a immediate BAN of all YouTube services in Brazil, because the company didn´t acknowledged a prior Court order to remove some videos.

The whole story: A few months Ago a model / tv show host and (specially) Ronaldo´s ex-wife, Daniela Cicarelli was filmed having sweet, sweet sex on the beach, and I´m not talking about the drink.

The scenes were aired, by some some Spanish TV, and seconds later were all around the world. Brazil has not many celebrities sex tapes, hers was the first major one.

Lots, lots of blogs started to spread the video, using YouTube, Bit Torrent, Kazaa and all P2P services known by men (and some women).

Daniela went crazy, started to sue big portals, including Globo.com, the Internet arm from her former (and eventual) employer and the largest entertainment/news company in Brazil. (talk about burning bridges)

Somehow the lawsuits were accepted by Court, and the sites had 24 hours to remove the video or pay a US$116.000/day fine. The decision meant NADA to sites like Rapidshare and the whole P2P gang, and of course, YouTube.

YouTube ALREADY removes inappropriate content, but it can´t block every single upload, specially if the submitter does not use “video da cicarelli” or other related tag.

The judges are not really into technology in Brazil, so they think they can rule about anything. Including companies 10K miles away, in another country. It´s common restraining orders (trying) to block online content, and a blogger were sued (and lost) on defamation premisses, based on a comment left by a reader.

Local judges sometimes think they´re God, but the worst are those who are sure of that.

But some are not dumb. Sérgio Suiama, from the Federal Justice Department, thinks the decision is meaningless. “Justice will send a subpoena to all ISPs demanding the blocking of access to YouTube?”

Well, what did you expect from a Justice/Legislative branch so unrelated to reality that puts interest rates in the Constitution?

Sources (all in Portuguese, sorry)

IDG Now! and MeioBit

click to enlarge

A few years ago a rumor spread among Brazilian websites: An American textbook used by young children showed the Amazon region as an International Reservation, taking territory from Brazil and other countries.

The media went crazy, and soon a website produced a copy of the “textbook”. It was real, see? Never mind it´s a crackpot right-wing ultranationalist website.

Congressmen made speeches demanding action, the Exterior Relations Ministry called U.S. State Department, Brazil´s top military think tank talked ad nauseam about the case…

And I received a copy of that crap.

From a friend, not only fluent in English, but a professional translator.

I asked her if there wasn´t anything wrong with the text.

“No, of course not, it´s clear, don´t you see what they [the Evil Americans™] want?”

“Beth, this piece of crap was NOT wrote by anyone with a basic knowledge of english.”

Of course she never believed me. Neither did the tons of people who STILL send the story by mail.

I reply with a link to my blog where I debunk the story, but people still want to believe.

Frack, even when I show that it´s a right-sided page with an even-number they still buy it.

The “author” (David Norman) has books at Amazon (no pun intended) about Dinosaurs. No “An Introduction to Geography” book exists.

The pictures have different resolutions and no captions. It´s a damn textbook, not a Playboy pictorial!

The whole text is a masterpiece from the pen of an English Lord, Lord Greystoke. It´s clear, not even machine-based, but word-by-word translation, NOBODY with a basic knowledge of english should be fooled, but major newspapers published the story as fact.

Some published corrections, others never bothered.

Here´s the original text from the “textbook” page.

 

3.5.-5 - THE FORMER INT´L RESERVE OF AMAZON FOREST

Since the middle 80´s the most important rain forest in the world was passed to the responsability of the United States and the United Nations. It is named as FINRAF (Former International Reserve of Amazon Forest) and its foundation was due to the fact the Amazon is located in South America, one of the poorest regions on earth and surrounded by irresponsible, cruel and authoritary countries.

It was part of eight different and strange countries, wich are in the majorit of cases, kingdoms of violence, drug trade, illiteracy and a unintelligent and primitive people.

The creation of FINRAF were supported by all nations of G-23 and was really a special mission of our country and a gift of all the world, since the possession of these valuable lands to such people should condemn the lungs of the world to disappearance and full destroying in few years.

We can consider that this has the most biodiversity in the planet, with a vast number of species of all types of animals and vegetals. The value of this area is unable to calcule, but the planet can be cert that the United States of America won´t let these Latin American countries explorate and destroy this real ownership of all humanity.

FINRAF is like an international park, with very severe rules of exploration.

[map caption]
We can see the location of the International Reserve. It took area of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and F.Guyana; Some of the poorest and miserable countries of the world.