I reached into my backpack the other day and found money from six countries. Man, I’ve been everywhere! In coins and bills I had Argentine pesos, Brazilian reais, more pesos from Colombia,  Malaysian ringit, Indian rupees and American dollars. (Somehow the shekels, naira and yuan I’ve collected didn’t make the voyage)

A rolling stone gathers no moss, now it’s time for liftoff!

I used to love downloading music off the Internet, but  it has been years since I kicked the habit.

The year was 1999 when I made my first download, a Jimi Hendrix song, but since then filesharing has grown from a collegiate rite of passage into an outlaw art practiced by pirates and thieves. Judges have been  successfully lobbied to hand out stringent penalties, even jail time to violators and, in the process, the ossifying record industry has made a declaration of war against its consumers.

Late last week  a Brazilian judge made the use of all peer to peer (P2P) filesharing software made illegal in the country. The ruling, handed down by the 6th Civil Chamber of the court of Paraná, makes it a criminal activity for any Brazilian Web site which displays add to distribute P2P software, according to a story which appeared in Torrent Freak.

According to Torrent Freak story, the lawsuit was issued against Cadre Information Technology Ltd, whose products include iPlay.com.br. As the article states, iPlay distributes a piece of P2P software called K-Lite Nitro that attracted the ire of  the Protective Association of Phonographic Intellectual Property Rights (APDIF). “The outfit, an anti-piracy group now part of the Anti-Piracy Association of Film and Music (APCM), unsurprisingly counts EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner as key members,” the article said.

In another jurisdiction, such as São Paulo, the appeals court may have sided with Cadre, who argued that they are not the developers of the software, but a heavily-funded industry group was able to steamroll the judges of a kangaroo court to achieve a precedent-setting decision. Although Cadre said they will appeal, according to the article, it seems to me that little can be done to reverse course, in Brazil at least.

It’s impossible not to take sides. On the one hand we have the record-buying public who, some would say, rightly feel that the business of recorded music is and has been a racket. Even a quality album may at best have four standout songs, which hardly justifies the $18 purchase price of a compact disc. In the perverse, criminal mind of a file swapper,  downloading one song–or an entire album–is thus beneficial to the artist if he or she subsequently buys tickets to a see them perform live. The benefits to the musician are delayed, but more meaningful when they occur.

Opposing this viewpoint are record labels such as Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers, who argue that they rightly own the musician and his or her music and any future offspring. It is, therefor, the prerogative of the labels how you the customer receive their product and will you quit complaining about it already? Doesn’t sound like there is much room for compromise here.

With the help of Napster, my first personal computer, a Dell Dimension with 12 gigabytes of memory,  became the vessel in which I explored uncharted galaxies of music. In late August of 1999, 12 gigabytes  of ROM seemed an astronomical, almost comic storage capacity, especially when bolstered by a 256 mb Iomega zip drive. However, by January, I was a Napster addict, and as we all know, you can’t tell an addict when he has had enough. During this time, I could have filled a hard drive with 18 gigs, 25 gigs, who knows, maybe even 30 gigs of music if I only had the space!!! Today, 40 gigs fits into the fifth pocket of my jeans, but the late 90s was a different era. (Definitely click the last link for an awesome gallery of cool USB drives.)

Just like an addict, the first thing I would do each morning was add new songs to my download queue, and at night, I was often awoken by the sudden, irrepressible urge to mainline more music into my system. The ability to download my favorite artists from the Ninja Tune catalog, the Jimi Hendrix Blues album and every other song and album I could think of. However, every junkie faces a reckoning sooner or later.

During the winter break of 1999, stories started to circulate in that Dr. Dre and Metallica (whom I called Metalliscum), were taking action against their fans and threatening lawsuits against anyone who had used Napster to download any of their music. Around this time, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic 2001 was released, and when I returned from ringing in the new millennium, I too had an email from Dr. Dre warning me I might be sued for downloading it. While  I was quick to delete any tracks by the humble and unassuming Dr., I was hardly off music downloading.

While Napster was eventually shut down, reincarnated and doomed to languish as a paid service due to a lack of interest. Without Napster, I was chasing the dragon again, and I was willing to experiment with all sorts of torrent clients, such as Gnutella, Kazaa and anything else to feed the urge. However, just like the war on drugs, the war on music downloads has been an evolving cat and mouse game, with new technologies arising only to be crushed by the calloused, unforgiving hand of copyright law.

So what is the lesson here? Firstly, the recorded music industry will stop at nothing to to resist innovation. Secondly, their greed knows no bounds.  According to a recent article published in Ars Technica, groups representing recording artists, such as ASCAP and BMI, now feel their clients should be payed every time someone listens to a 30-second song preview because it somehoe constitutes a public performance. The sound you hear is me slapping my hand against my forehead. I wonder if it too can somehow be counted as a public performance.

In fact, public performance was the start of my road to recovery. Few people know this about me, but I spent several years in Seattle recording music and making the occasional, impromptu performance in Seattle clubs. All the while, I was kicking the downloading habit, but it was ultimately the result of more practical concerns.

Firstly, as anyone who has paid his or her own bills knows, the price of broadband Internet is not cheap. Although American ISPs don’t cap bandwidth, no one in his right mind would want his home network tied up with an endless download cue. While its fine to exercise this level of disregard on a college campus, it’s just a pain in the ass at your own place.

Secondly, as clever as any torrent operator might be, there’s no escaping the watchful eyes of the record companies. As soon as a download client gets big, they’re bound to shut down. This doesn’t just mean loading a new piece of software onto your computer. It also carries with it the risk that you will be downloading scads of new viruses onto your machine.

There’s also the matter of ownership. When downloading first became possible, the dominant medium of music performance was the CD. In fact, I remember how me and the other nerds in my dorm would compare the price of a blank CDs, in sold on bulky spindles of 100. The last time I moved, I couldn’t be bothered to pack CDs I had purchased retail, including album art, because they were already part of my iTunes library. The iPod changed everything. Businessweek reported recently that Apple has overtaken WalMart as the world’s foremost music distributor and it’s all because of the iPod. I’ve downloaded a total of two albums to my iPod since I bought it over a year ago. The rest of the music I have, I copied from friend’s hard drives and never bothered to ask how they came across it.

The real reason why I don’t have to download anything anymore is because of streaming. While iTunes may have changed the game as far as paying for music, the music industry has another problem; mainstream music still sucks. No amount of file sharing technology is going to make bad music good, even if it is free. The one or two good songs on any album I like, I can listen to on YouTube, iMeem, Pandora, Jogli or…you get the picture. I can now get my fill of good music without owning anything, so why buy anything.

In the end, it was the recording industry itself that got finally got me, a former download junkie, to stop downloading copyrighted tunes. It wasn’t fear, intimidation or a new technology. No, today more than ever, mainstream music is just crap. Congrats record labels, it looks like you won after all.

Today  The Atlantic announced the full release of The Atlantic Wire, a slick compedium of political news and opinion from around the Web. It’s actually rather brilliant.

Herein lies a problem, however. While I just found a new content site that combines a beautiful interface with a stimulating blend of opinion, I have to access articles from on their site which is a huge problem. This morning I read an article in The Globe and Mail  called ‘Information-Rich, Attention-Poor,’ that sums up the situation very succinctly. The quantity of information I have readily available is almost infinite, however, my attention is scarce. All the multitasking and browser tabs in the world isn’t going to make me more thoughtful or well read when I can only devote a minute or two to any particular news item.

The Atlantic just made this problem even worse by creating a site I want to visit, but probably won’t because I don’t have time. Adding a new content source to my daily routine has zero transaction costs, but takes effort and some repetition to become a habit. What’s needed is a new delivery system that takes any work out of the process.

Earlier this week I had an article published in VentureBeat about Busk, a startup I encountered while I was in São Paulo this July. Busk uses real-time search technology to deliver news content based on tagged keywords and topics. Any mention of the word cricket, for instance, would search a database of 15,000 manually-added news sources and 100,000,000 articles to bring back every mention of the word cricket. Not too bad.

While this solves one problem, it doesn’t fully address the addition of a single source to my daily reading diet. One solution would be to change my home page,  but in doing so, I lose the page that I used to have there. Similarly, with an RSS reader, such as Google Reader or Feedly, I have to check them whenever I want to know about the latest articles posted. As it turns out, Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages are becoming my preferred method of receiving news. I filter most of what I know about the world through these two sites. Anything worth knowing finds its way to me. To put it another way, I’ve become accustomed to the news seeking me out, instead of going to it.

While Facebook and Twitter are good at presenting information in a ‘river of news’ format, it’s far from perfect. For instance, I have to be logged in to either site and separate hard news from social fact. While I don’t have much of a problem with it now, this is due to the scarcity of news sources I receive on Facebook and the sheer volume of duplicated news on Twitter. If I was more serious about it, I would need a more robust solution and so far I’m not aware of one that does the job. I’m sure there is a product out there that stays on top of interesting news sources–preserving the user interface without commodifying the information–and adds new sources without pain. If you’re out there somewhere, I hope we meet soon!

In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m relocating to Bangalore, India to take a full-time job with a media startup. Moving to India means uprooting my life and literally restarting halfway across the planet. Such is the life of a TechTrotter.

Although I spent much of the summer months in Brazil it’s nice to know that India was never as far away as it seemed. In particular, a soap opera on the Brazil’s most watched network, Globo, helped to create a common link between the two continents. While I wait for my connecting flight to Mumbai in the Brussels International Airport, allow me to tell you about one of my favorite Brazilian TV shows, Caminho das Indias. (The following contains excerpts from a post original intended for publication on SAJA Forum.)

–

India’s impact on the world is felt in myriad ways, but the form it takes can often come as a bit of a surprise. Members of the Indian diaspora are found throughout Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean, but there is one place few would expect; Brazil.

One of Brazil’s most popular television shows is soap opera is called ‘Caminho das Indias‘ or, ‘Way of the Indies.’ The show airs nightly after the 8PM news broadcast on Globo, the largest television network in Brazil. The show has three inter-linked plots that unfold simultaneously in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Dubai and the cast features more than a dozen Portuguese-speaking, Brazilian-born Desis.

Tell me more …

Nearly lost amid the stories of startup heroes and plucky entrepreneurs is the plight of Brazil’s poor. While Sao Paulo is the cosmopolitan hub of industry and commerce, it most starkly embodies the work that must still be done to create financial opportunities for all. In a city of more than 21 million, the overwhelming majority are poor. In 2003, 21.5 percent of Brazil’s approximately 190 million citizens lived below the official poverty line according to Rural Poverty Portal.

While an economic miracle is happening in Brazil, over those without proper education are in danger of missing the boat. One of the keys to ensuring Brazil’s continued success as an economic and, soon, technological powerhouse, is through the education of its young people. Colleges schools such as USP (Universidade de São Paulo) and Unicamp (Universidade de Campinas) are where the country’s best computer scientists, engineers and doctors are trained and their education is free. However, the condition of public education at the primary level is abysmal, according to nearly every person with whom I spoke during five weeks of interviews.

Tell me more …

Investing venture capital funds in Brazilian startups is a lot like match-making, which would make Monashee’s Capital partners Eric Acher and Guillerme Decourt  part investor and one part Yenta. Today we sat down at their office to talk about educating the market about the role of a venture firm, taking the long view of investments, how to spot a winner and the importance of saying “no.”

“We’re not techy guys, we’re strategy-oriented,” Acher told me. As such, marrying the right idea with the right team is a strategy that Monashees views as central to their long term success. “An idea is a commodity,” Acher said. “The name of the game is compatibility.” And, just a like a  couple who saying their vows, Monashees is committed to the long-haul.

Tell me more …

In my last post about imitiation vs. innovation in Brazil and I used rock music to parallel what goes on in technology. Today I want to talk exclusively about innovation in music, because Brazil is one of those places that has a reputation for producing hits. In my opinion, few countries besides Jamaica and The U.S. are known for their breadth and depth of musical styles and hit-making abilities.

Rather than go into the history of Brazilian music (which I don’t know), I thought I would share with you the BBC’s take, which have conveniently been sliced into digestible episodes posted below. My classmate Luis first brought the series to my attention.

• Section One deals with Brazil’s most famous form of traditional music, the Samba and its spread into the U.S. and beyond.

• Section Two is about Tropicalia music and the creative resistance of Brazilian musicians to two decades of military rule.

• Section Three starts around the time I was born and deals with contemporary music such as Hip Hop and Baile Funky.

I hadn’t watched any of the episodes from Section Three before today and I fully intended to post them sight unseen and go to sleep. My highest praise is due for the BBC production team that put this masterpiece together. In a  matter of hours I have learned a tremendous amount about Brazilian history and culture, though from a 30,000 foot view.

The reality on the ground is much different and cannot be fit into vignettes, but I hope you will take as long as is required to view this amazing documentary series. If you’re short on time, you might skip ahead to Section Three.

I’m sure my non-Brazilian friends will find the following series enlightening. The production value and storytelling are unparalleled as documentaries go. Although it’s in English, I would be delighted to find out from a Brazilian if he or she has learned anything new about their history or music from these clips.

And now for your enjoyment and edification:

Brasil, Brasil – Samba to Bossa Nova -BBC 1

Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

Tell me more …

One of the best things about traveling is the ability to reinvent oneself on the fly. In New York, I’ve become somewhat of a curmudgeon. After four years in town I’m not as filled with wide-eyed wonderment, or as willing to experiment. One consequence has been my declining intake of live music, a significant departure from the days when I would trek to the Bronx or Brooklyn to see African Hip Hop or grime rappers at a moment’s notice. Expensive drinks, snobby fans and long, late commutes home were just some of the reasons that come to mind.

Not so in Brazil. Last night I attended my third concert in two weekends; a pretty good streak. Last weekend I saw Seu Chico, a group from the city of Pernambuco who cover songs by Brazilian legend, Chico Buarqe.  The venue, Studio SP,  which bills itself as an urban art space and performance hall on Rua Augusta, had a nice blend of grit and posh, with an upbeat crowd.  Even better were the cheap drinks, such as the “busca vida,” which was a mix of cachaça, extra cane sugar and lemon juice.

Of course, the highlight was the band itself. In spite of the fact they played covers, or perhaps because of it, they had the crowd enraptured, singing along loudly with every tune. While the lead singer looked a bit bereft, the group’s 19-year-old pianist, Vitor Araújo, stole the show.

Tell me more …

Yesterday I got to demo a revolution in the offing when I met with boo-box founder, Marco Gomes, and company CEO, Marcos Tanaka, at their headquarters in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of  Pinheros

By creating a tool that is “non-intrussive, yet elegant,” in the words of Tanaka, boo-box allows publishers to target ads based on images and content that appear within a post, leveraging the relationship they have with their audience to add value for all parties involved.

One cool feature I saw was a full-page ad for Marvel comics that expanded to inlcude old comic book covers and a video trailer for the movie ‘Iron Man.’ Those same slots could easily be used to show previous, related posts if a drag and drop feature were to be rolled out some day.

Image via CrunchBase

In 2007, boo-box was the first Brazilian startup to be mentioned in the American press while the company was still in a “pre-alpha” stage, Tanaka said. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch speculated, “this may be quick acquisition bait for Amazon or eBay.” Two years later, the company has partnered with Brazilian e-commerce heavyweights such as Buscape and Mercardo Livre, with shows no signs of slowing down. Twenty two-year-old Gomes wears the hat of CIO, which in American might stand for chief innovation officer. At boo-box, his job is to be constantly on the lookout for ways the company can reinvent itself through innovation.

The full rundown of our lengthy discussion is destined for another venue, so to avoid the risk of plagiarizing myself I won’t say much else. I will however share with you a remarkable lesson I learned. At one point during the afternoon, Tanaka told me his image of an American is a boy with a lemonade stand, or a girlscout selling cookies door-to-door. Brazil does not have an equivalent.

So simple and yet so poignant, that statement helped me to see how as Americans, entrepreneurship is practically part of our DNA.

Click to play

Fabio Akita wants Brazilian businesses to fail. Really.

The Ruby on Rails evangelist and apostle of agile management also thinks that while nine out of 10 Brazilian startups will probably fail, this is good for business overall.  The quicker flaws are exposed, the sooner people can go about fixing them. “Having no problems is a problem,” Akita said. “You can’t improve if you assume you are not making mistakes.”

On a blissful evening in the depths of *cough* winter, we met at a lively cafe on Paulista Ave, to discuss the language and lifestyle of Ruby on Rails programming, as well as what barriers must be broken for Brazilian companies to take their place on the world stage. Besides the typical culprit, stifling bureaucracy and its attendant cronyism, inefficiency and top-down management, Akita said Brazilians have been programmed not to take risks. In spite of the pitfalls, entrepreneurs just think differently. “If they are entrepreneurs, they will try anything to make their dreams come true,” said Akita.

Fabio Akita is the author of the first book on Rails created for a Brazilian audience and a product manager at Locaweb – the largest web hosting company in Brazil, with the mission to make Rails ubiquitous in the Latin American open source community, according to his profile on Working With Rails.

Tell me more …