Paraguayan Horses: The Entailments of Internet Policy and Law in Brazil

• Autores: Alexander S. Dent
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. Extra 15, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: New Media, New Publics?), págs. 113-122
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this paper I consider law and lawlessness as interpretive practices that seek both to unleash and control the Internet in Brazil. I analyze diverse institutions and actors: the government, lawyers, judges, NGOs, hackers, pirates, and police. Whereas users of �new� media frequently distance themselves from previous media forms along technological lines, in this Brazilian case, policy makers index their border with Paraguay. They also point to what they take to be a uniquely Brazilian corporate rapaciousness, arguing that that rapaciousness partakes of bordering practices much like those involved in Paraguay. In this sense, mediation is more about the nation and the corporation than it is about reference to previous technologies. I analyze all this through attention to media piracy, identity theft, and hacking. In order to understand the publics that are facilitated and foreclosed by the Internet, we must attend to durable, localized, border policing as well as mainstream understandings of business transgressions.