Civil Framework Internet: Brazil protects net neutrality

Almost always, when we talk about laws and the Internet in this space, it is to criticize the measures taken by governments to defend the copyright industry. Such agreements are a constant in the world and represent an attack against users' freedoms. However, from time to time, countries decide to direct their laws to citizens to protect their rights rather than other interests. Such is the case of Brazil and the Civil Framework Internet .

Civil Framework aims to establish the rights and responsibilities of users, based on principles of defense to net neutrality One of his great achievements is the protection for Internet service providers, hosting services and web sites, about legal responsibility of the content uploaded by third parties. While copyright laws favorable to these actors seek to be the ones paying for the offenses, the Civil Framework disclaims that charge. In addition, an important step by proposing that the user's interest will be protected if and when introduced laws to combat online crime or intellectual property protection.

Another feature of the Civil framework is that it was made ​​only by legislators, but also included the participation of civil society organizations, academics in the area of law and web users (why not all the laws of that matter can get it?). The process was as follows: legislators were associated with academics from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, the social research institution most prestigious in the country. Together, they developed the draft Framework Civil. Once done, it published online for all citizens to consider it, and comments received through a forum on the website of the Ministry of Culture. To know more, this report is very illustrative (although in Portuguese, is not as complicated to understand):

This August 8th Congress will vote to approve or reject the Civil Marco. Although the bill has many supporters, some opponents have also gone. The main criticism is that, by protecting the content hosted by the users, services such as Facebook and YouTube can not be removed without a court order, even if it is considered offensive. Doing so could get in trouble for committing a violation of freedom of expression. This is a problem in the case of information that threatens to rise's privacy or other content such as hate speech because the hosts who have no power to remove without a permit. In fact, his main critics, telecommunications companies and the copyright lobby, argue that the Civil Marco could turn the site into "a land without law."

If approved, Brazil not only give a very important step in the defense of net neutrality, but would give the world a lesson on how to make a law with citizen participation and a decentralized system of collaboration. Brazil has been working very well in terms of Internet access and digital education in recent years, and the Civil Marco is just a sign that things can be properly and for users. Perhaps we need to turn more toward the giant Amazon and learn you a trick or two in that category.