Brazil to Offer Free Internet to Amazon Tribes

This is an interesting idea. Brazil is trying to use the internet to combat illegal logging in the Amozon rain forest. I hope it works:
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12488

BRASILIA -- Brazil will offer free satellite Internet connections to indigenous tribes in the Amazon as part of its latest effort to crack down on illegal logging in the world's largest tropical rain forest.

The plan will bring Internet to 150 small communities in the Amazon and other remote areas including Brazil's Pantanal wetlands and its arid Northeast. Many villages in such areas are cut off from outsiders because they lack basic infrastructure like roads.

"Internet helped us bring in the police (when we had illegal logging in our area)," said Benhi Piyanko, a member of an Ashaninka indigenous village of some 500 people in the Amazon state of Acre. "We managed to spread the message widely. We even reached the president."

While the Brazilian government will provide the Internet access, state and local governments will have to come up with a way to provide computers so the Internet can be used.