Brazil approves new internet legislation

Brazilian senators vote on Internet Law

The Brazilian Senate has just approved the Civil Landmark of the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet), a subject that will for sure be on the cover of this wednesday Brazilian newspapers. The text of the law ensures net neutrality, even though it also opens the door for content discrimination in specific cases to be determined by presidential decree. The net neutrality -- the legal prohibition of discriminate data flow according to the type of content, such as slowing down Skype connections on mobile internet -- was the most sensitive subject of the law, a subject that now will be probably on the hands of the next Brazilian president to resolve.

The law also ensures the privacy of users and limits the liability of Internet Services Providers in cases of judicial process regarding third party's prejudicial content published online. There is an interesting mention that internet application providers (such as Facebook or Google) should not abuse in the use of private information of users (even if authorized by them). I would not be surprised to see in the future a civil lawsuit against one of the big internet companies in the country.

I'm curious to see how will be the coverage of the main newspapers tomorrow. The first time the text was approved on the Chamber of Deputies I noticed few of the criticism about the limited net neutrality (this I saw later on specialized publications). In fact, both O Globo and Folha were rather optimistic about it. In fact just now (as the subject is only on the online versions of the media, the attentions are focused to the victory of the government in surpassing the opposition maneuvers against the project.

-- update --

I just had a brief discussion with a friend  which was on the government during the public consultations of the internet law project. Basically the reason why they let the details of net neutrality to be determined by presidential decree was in order not to pass a rigid law that would have to be changed in the future due to technological developments. So net neutrality is still there as a principle and a set of rules which will have specific subsets of parameters and exceptions (Many thanks to Guilherme Almeida de Almeida).

As for the media coverage it was pretty modest, compared to the first approval. Since the text was not passed with many changes, newspapers sticked to describing the law and its concepts. Folha published an article from PSDB (opposition) senator Aloysio Nunes Ferreira arguing the law could be improved had the Senate more time to work on it. He said the privacy issue could be better defined, granting more protection to users.

-- end of update --

Catching-up

The Easter week I skipped publishing here was dominated by the Petrobras scandal (the refinery purchase that brought a billionaire loss to the company) and the presidential election forecasts, that again are dimming for Dilma. They both seem to be related, but in fact I hardly believe the average voter will put much weight on what is being done with the biggest company in the country.

On the Petrobras' front the most interesting development is a sort of discrepancy between the declarations of José Sérgio Gabrielli, Petrobras' former CEO and president Dilma Rousseff. Dilma said the Pasadena purchase was a bad business. This Sunday, in an interview to O Estado de S. Paulo, Gabrielli replied saying that Dilma was one of the board members and shared the same responsibility in the purchase. This was at least what O Estado de S. Paulo put in the headlines. I read the whole interview and could see Gabrielli saying the purchase was totally in acceptance with the 2006's context. But the contradiction surely was enough to be replicated by Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo on their monday editions.

Brazil ensures net neutrality

After years of discussion and six months being discussed as an urgent subject in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, the set of laws regulating the internet (known as the civil landmark of internet) was approved this Tuesday. The law still has to be approved by the senate, where the government has a more comfortable position. Its approval means the president was able to control the allies rebellion and also puts Brazil on the map of an international discussion over the issue of network neutrality (that has been opposing Internet Service Providers, as the Telecom companies, and Internet Companies, such as Google).

Activists celebrate the approval of the internet law
that ensures net neutrality in Brazil

Folha de S. Paulo front page today was about the law passing. The newspaper said it puts Brazil in the vanguard of the internet, calling the law a "constitution" of the internet. It mentions, though, that the text changed after the lobby of Google to remove the determination to nationalize data centers for all the business conducted in Brazil  -- which would impose that all virtual services had a local server in Brazil. This demand was not on the original project and was put in the text after the NSA scandal broke the news. It was supposed a political statement from Brazil, against the American surveillance.

O Globo said the law puts Brazil in the vanguard of the internet. The newspaper front page, though gave more space to the scandal on Petrobras, which just had one of its former directors, Paulo Roberto Costa, arrested because of a overpriced purchase of a refinery in Pasadena. The president of Petrobras, Maria das Graças Foster gave an exclusive interview for O Globo and stated it will investigate thoroughly the issue.

On the economic ground both newspapers also mentioned the reaction after Brazil had its national rating cut by Standard & Poor's. Contrarily to what might be expected the stock market and the currency reacted positively, because the market have already taken into account such measure from the rating agency.

Finally to complete the subjects covered in the media last week, the proximity of the 50 years of the military coup in Brazil motivated a series os special reports on the main media. Folha de S. Paulo again made a multimedia rich, Snowfall-like, special report on the military dictatorship, which is very interesting. The newspaper covers the whole process that led to the coup, trying also to put in context the role of the Brazilian left at that time, which was also fighting for its own revolution. The story also pointed out to the unsettled case of the amnesty to military torturers and brings the transcriptions of the US ambassador and presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, both supporting the military coup. O Globo is publishing during this week a series of stories about the coup.