Tropicalismo legend Gilberto Gil, now serving as the Brazilian Minister of Culture, excoriated the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization this week. He told WIPO that its fundamental reason for existence needed to be rexamined, now that knowledge-goods have become so critical to development:
It is clear to us that development will only be ensured if there is a balance between intellectual property rights and obligations and the public interest, as had been highlighted by the Ambassador of Argentina, on behalf of the Group of Friends of Development. If such balance is lost we will violate the nature of knowledge itself: we should never forget Thomas Jefferson's words, according to which there would not be any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property than ideas, whose sharing does not necessarily harm anyone….
