House of Representatives Approves Civil Right Framework for the Internet in Brazil

03/26/2014 - 09h08

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MÁRCIO FALCÃO

JULIA BORBA

FROM BRASILIA

After two years and seven months of struggles, negotiations and intense lobbying, the House of Representatives approved late on Tuesday (25) the main text in the Civil Right Framework for the Internet. The text now goes for Senate approval.

The proposal is like a Constitution, with established principles, guarantees, rights and duties in the web.

Deputies removed all suggested changes.

The Civil Right Framework for the Internet became controversial because of contrary interests from the government, telecommunications companies, Internet sites, Federal Police and Public Ministry, in addition to consumer protection entities.

With so many fronts involved and far from a consensus, the issue blocked the vote and other proposals at the House of Representatives for five months.

In recent weeks, the government gave in when it came to the priority points and negotiated positions, releasing funds for works sponsored by Congressmen in the budget in an attempt to empty the huge number of allies in the House and move forward with the discussion at hand, considered vital to strengthen Dilma Rousseff discourse against espionage.

NEGOTIATION

The greatest resistance to the text was brought by PMDB, the political arty advocated changes in terms of web neutrality-a term used to indicate that the connection speed cannot vary according to the program or website accessed by the user.

It is a popular measure for users, but contested by telephone companies since they would like to sell packages according to the level of consumption of each user.

With this, telcos are required to maintain consumption out of the equation. Thus, users can navigate whenever they want in the limit of their data and speed package.

The Brazilian Executive Power accepted to set standards for regulatory neutrality and established a presidential decree that will detail the concept of neutrality, without much change in the content. Behind the scenes, the move was interpreted as an honorable PMDB exit.

Another modification sponsored by the government in order to avoid a defeat in the House was the removal of the requirement for nationalization of data users storage centers. That was one of the measures advocated by President Dilma Rousseff as a way to respond to news of U.S. spying against Brazilian authorities.

The original version stated that an Executive decree would regulate the obligation of companies like Google and Facebook to keep user data storage structure in the country.

To do this they would have to replicate in the country a structure that is similar to other countries including the United States. According to the government the measure would give greater protection to data from the country.

It was decided, however, that the data will be submitted to Brazilian law. The project aso rejects contractual terms of any program that does not offer the user an alternative to appeal to the Brazilian forum if an user finds problems with the provision of services in Brazil.

For months, technology companies have been lobbying Congress to overturn the requirement, with the argument that would represent exorbitant spending.

Even without ensuring the implementation of data centers in the country, the president wants to use the framework as an international flag, to defend web communication, confronting allegations of violations of her electronic and telephone communications by the American security agency.

The government will work to accelerate the vote on the proposal in the Senate since the project is vital to strengthen Dilma Rousseff discourse against espionage. In April, Brazil will host the international conference on Internet governance, and the government wants to introduce the new law during the event.

Translated by SIMONE PALMA

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