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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Chilling Effects

Lawrence Lessig revealed yesterday that Microsoft has taken the first step in the process under Brazilian law to sue Sérgio Amadeu, president of Brazil's ITI and advisor to President Lula on IT matters. The matter in hand? Following Bill Gates' lead [para 9, via Slashdot], he used the analogy of drug-dealer tactics ('the first hit is free') to describe Microsoft's approach to the Brazilian IT market. Amadeu is commendably firm so far.

As Spectra points out, what's interesting is less the lawsuit and more the target. Plenty of people have used the same analogies as Amadeu (not least Scott McNealy), so why sue just him? I met Sergio Amadeu in Brazil at FISL and found him informed, engaging, passionate and uncompromising, his speeches eloquent and rabble-rousing. When Emilio Umeoka of Microsoft directly criticised the Brazilian President's support of F/OSS, it was clear that the company is despairing of doing business in the country and is willing to treat it as just another corporation instead of as a sovereign nation (c.f. the responses to the US anti-trust suit). Acting now against Amadeu over an analogy so widely used that I can't find who said it first is an extension of the same action, a horse's-head-in-the-bed approach to stifling justified criticism. Market development through regime change, it seems.

More disturbingly, it's an illustration of the problem of corporations jostling for control with governments. Legal systems vary around the world, so some corporations are using that fact to secure judgements that would be impossible on their home territories. As Lessig points out, Amadeu's comments would not be remotely actionable in the US, just as it's been possible to damage Lindows by international actions they can barely afford to defend. The only possible cure for this disease is mass action; fortunately, the massively-connected society makes that possible. Hopefully someone in Redmond will be giving Mr Umeoka a call soon to tell him how his actions are threatening the success of the charm offensive the company is using elsewhere as certainly as feeding a mogwai after midnight stops it looking cute and safe.

Update:We have the global action! See above...

posted at 5:11 PM (UK) | |