As you know from other posts here and here, the House of Representatives is debating an Internet Bill which is framed as a “constitution for the Internet” and, as such, it purports to establish fundamental principles which should be followed on the Internet. Among the principles mentioned in the Bill are freedom of expression, privacy protection, neutrality, the preservation of the participative nature of the Internet. Continue reading
Category Archives: Internet in Brazil
Internet Bill should Not Fail to Include the Respect for Intellectual Property as a Principle
Filed under Entertainment Law Brazil, Internet in Brazil
Special Congressional Commission created to discuss the Brazilian Internet Bill
Last March 28, the House of Representatives of the Brazilian Congress created a Special Commission to discuss the Internet Bill. I have already made my brief comments about the bill here when I reported it had been sent to Congress so that I will not go into details right now.
Suffice it to say that there is a lot of room for improvement.
In any event, it seems that Congress is at least worried about the implications of such bill and the creation of the Special Commission is indicative of that. The President of the Comission is Congressman João Arruda, from the PMDB party from the state of Paraná (South of Brazil). In declarations to one of the largest Brazilian newspapers, O Estado de São Paulo, Mr. Arruda said that “The discussion touches upon censorship. It is related to privately owned companies. And it also relates to the responsible for the investigation of crimes. It is necessary to find balance.” Continue reading
YouTube, blogs, ECAD, streaming and public performance in Brazil. What a mess!
Last week, a debate has grown after blog Caligraffiti complained about invoices for public performance fees for embedding Youtube videos sent by ECAD, the Central Office for Collection and Distribution of Public Performance Rights in Brazil.
The debate has motivated a dedicated post at Forbes online where the charges were considered a scandal. The column, written by Forbes’ contributor Ricardo Geromel, considered that “astonishingly, according to absurd copyright laws in Brazil, the Central Bureau of Collection and Distribution is surprisingly correct in doing so”.
State Court of São Paulo has ordered GOOGLE to remove links to sites which offer unauthorized real time programs from TV GLOBO
According to news reports, the largest Brazilian television broadcaster – TV GLOBO – has obtained an injunction before the State Court of São Paulo against Google based on copyright violation. The injunction requires the search engine to remove from the search results links to sites which offer access to real time programs from TV Globo without authorization.
TV GLOBO claims to have first sent warning letters to Google demanding the removal of the links and that the court action was only filed as a last resource in view of the lack of compliance with the requests. Continue reading
The Ministry of Justice finally sent the Internet Bill to Congress: is this good or bad?
According to the Ministry of Justice’s website, the so called Civil Regulatory Mark for the Internet in Brazil was sent to Congress yesterday. The Internet Bill received number 2,126/11 and it is currently following the procedures of the House of Representatives and, then, it will be remitted to the Senate. It is unclear how long the process may take but now is the moment for content creators and owners to pay close attention as the Congress may amend the current text of the bill before sending it to the presidential sanction.
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And the news keeps on coming. This time the Internet is the target!
Brazil lacks specific legislation dealing with the so-called internet environment. However, this void will most likely be filled very soon.
The Ministry of Justice has recently started the second phase of public consultation regarding a new bill dealing with the “rights and duties related to the use of the Internet in Brazil”. It is a 34 article bill, dealing with the principles of the Internet, confidentiality of personal data, liability of the ISPs and the role of the government in all that. The intentions of the Ministry are, in my view, rather good and the bill itself is in the right path. Continue reading
