Brazilian Democracy between Facts, Norms, and Code

Law, Governance and Technology Series, 2016

The Law-Governance and Technology Series is intended to attract manuscripts arising from an interdisciplinary approach in law, artifi cial intelligence and information technologies. The idea is to bridge the gap between research in IT law and IT applications for lawyers developing a unifying techno-legal perspective. The series will welcome proposals that have a fairly specifi c focus on problems or projects that will lead to innovative research charting the course for new interdisciplinary developments in law, legal theory, and law and society research as well as in computer technologies, artifi cial intelligence and cognitive sciences. In broad strokes, manuscripts for this series may be mainly located in the fi elds of the Internet law (data protection, intellectual property, Internet rights, etc.), Computational models of the legal contents and legal reasoning, Legal Information Retrieval, Electronic Data Discovery, Collaborative Tools (e.g. Online Dispute Resolution platforms), Metadata and XML Technologies (for Semantic Web Services), Technologies in Courtrooms and Judicial Offi ces (E-Court), Technologies for Governments and Administrations (E-Government), Legal Multimedia, and Legal Electronic

Encuentro Latinoamericano, 2017

Cyberspace and information technologies (ITs) have become essential to many of the activities of contemporary society. Mainly in the developed world, the daily practices have been linked to and served much of the facilities offered by ITs, making cyberspace a kind of support for the productive and social activities. While they maximise the ability of agents, these information tools also pose challenges to modern democracies. By asking how the discourse on the internet and cyberspace helped Brazil formalise its interests and policies domestically and abroad, this work argues that while Brazil started to formulate a set of rules for the cyberspace that could be understood as the approbation of the 'Legal Framework for the Internet', such legal code may contribute, at the same time, to a 'securitisation' of cyberspace.

Television & New Media, 2017

On Congressional approval in 2014, Brazil’s charter of civil rights for the Internet, the Marco Civil da Internet, was widely acclaimed as a template for national Internet policy elsewhere in the world. This was the result of a phenomenon I dub “draft once; deploy everywhere,” a pervasive belief in the universality of Internet law. This presumption underpins multiple charters of Internet rights drafted by digital rights organizations and policymakers. By showing how the Marco Civil was bitterly contested by blocks of powerful actors, the role played by Brazil’s recent history of dictatorship as well as its status at the margins of the global digital economy, I problematize the Marco Civil’s status as a global blueprint. This matters because without proper contextualization, the effective transfer of Internet law across national jurisdictions will be harder to realize, and their democratic virtues will prove more elusive.

Oxford Handbook of Intermediary Liability Online, 2020

Between 2009 and 2014, Brazilian civil society groups and government engaged with and ultimately approved the Marco Civil da Internet (Civil Rights Framework for the Internet). The MCI, which has been considered by some as a 'Constitution of the Internet' or as an 'Internet Bill of Rights', created a broad set of principles and norms, as well as specific rules, that articulate rights and limitations on the exercise of power on the internet. But how does the MCI measure against the backdrop of global debates on digital constitutionalism? To what extent and in what ways can the enactment of the MCI be considered a landmark for the constitutionalization of the digital environment? This chapter, in order to address those questions, will review the intermediary liability regime before the MCI, the process of approval of the MCI, and how the law is being implemented in practice. Finally, it will analyse the MCI in the light of digital constitutionalism theories.

Revista Jurídica`, 2019

The article addresses the peculiarities and complexities of the cyberspace regulation, acknowledging, but not endorsing, the utopic ideal of the cyberspace as a no-law virtual territory. It explores the variety of means of regulating people interconnections around the Globe through the Internet. It points up the need of due heteronomous protection of interests and claims linked to the core proposes of the Internet itself, such as those deriving from the freedom of expression and concerns with the right to privacy. The article takes as standing point Lawrence Lessig’s pathetic dot theory about the four forces that design the use of Internet potentialities. It then focuses on the Brazilian current basic cyberspace normative framework and refers it to Lessig’s theory, mentioning challenges yet to be met. It intends to share the Brazilian experience with the large English speaking auditory, pointing out how Brazilian legal framework relates to mainstream academic approach to Internet regulatory issues.

The article seeks to examine whether it would be feasible to recognize Internet Service Providers as being legally obliged to adapt the code of their applications in such manner as to contribute to better enabling individuals to exercise the right of reply online. The paper adopts the premise that there is no way to guarantee rights without also considering duties, identifying in the Brazilian 1988 Constitution, inter alia, the duty to protect a balanced environment. The article argues for a " digital environment " , as opposed to the overused concept of cyberspace, in order to include Internet Service Providers within the scope of this duty of protection. Next, valuing the importance of architecture of code for the eff ective fulfi lment of rights and duties in the digital environment, the paper aims to diff erentiate between types of service providers, seeking to ensure the imposition of proportional duties on individuals, with a view to obtaining a practical accommodation between the duty of protection and costs attached thereto. Finally, a suggestion is put forward that Internet Service Providers should commit themselves to making slight modifi cations in the code of popular applications, in order to contribute to enhancing the eff ective exercise of the right of reply on the Internet.

2016

It is known that cyberspace and information technologies have become almost essential to many of the activities of contemporary society. Mainly in the developed world, the daily practices have been linked and served much of the facilities offered by ITs, making cyberspace a kind of support for the productive and social activities. While it maximizes the ability of agents in varying degrees, these information tools also pose challenges to modern democracies. In this sense, the main challenge has been to create mechanisms respecting the established democratic rules in order to include cyberspace in a public governance, especially when it includes security issues with reflections on individual, government or financial fields, among others. This work intends to analyze the Brazilian behavior and interests on this issue of governance of cyberspace. By asking how the discourse concerning the internet and cyberspace helped Brazil to formalize its interests and policies domestic and interna...

International Conference on Electronic Publishing, 1999

Etymologically speaking, the word democracy originates in the Greek language and means the peoples government. It is related to a political regime that is based on the peoples sovereignty. To democratise, in its turn, means to make accessible to all classes of people; to make popular. In this context, it seems to be very easy to make a link between democracy and the Internet, the world-wide network that has transformed the physical boundaries in the globe into mere geographical reference points. Apparently, at least, the use of the Internet may lead to the democratisation of information, as such a network makes the information that is available in electronic format widely accessible to everyone. Nevertheless, there may be some requirements for one to benefit from such access. The democratisation of information does not seem to be just a question of computer and network availability. It implies, among other things, literacy, but it even means something more than that.

Visión electrónica, 2018

This article reviews the development of the internet civilian framework (ICF) in Brazil - to be until now the only country in the American continent with a political Internet constitution; As well as the policies that have been implemented in the Americas Region. For the above, the Brazilian policies that guarantee the rights of privacy and neutrality of the network against those of the same type in the continent that are contrasted, evidencing the failure of the latter to violate - precisely - the rights that they pretended to claim; In this sense, the Colombian case is examined. The document provides a baseline for research on regulation of the use of this service in the region, as well as on the impact it generates among Internet users.

The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 2017

The process that led to the approval of Brazil's Internet Bill of Rights ('Marco Civil da Internet') was the first initiative from the Federal Government to crowdsource the making of a Draft Bill of Law, using the internet to diversify the debate and invite participation from different stakeholders. This article provides an overview of the process behind the creation of such a law, emphasising the participatory process that resulted in the final wording of the law. Additionally, the article reflects upon some of the most relevant challenges for the enforcement of Brazil's Internet Bill of Rights, as well as its international impact on future case law and in the legislative process. KEYWORDS Internet Bill of Rights; regulation; legislative process; internetprivacy; crowdsourcing legislation 1. Introduction: the invisible city of Isaura Isaura, the city of a thousand wells, was supposedly built right above an underground lake. The boundaries of the city mirrored its imagined limits on the lake below. In order to have access to water, villagers ended up digging deep vertical holes on the ground. Over time, two religions emerged in the city: one believed that the gods lived in the darkness of the underground lake, while the other believed that they lived in the buckets, in the pulleys and in all manners of gadgetry that brought the precious water to the surface. This is one of the many imaginary cities that Italo Calvino describes in his 'Invisible Cities'. 1 It is also an inexhaustible source of images that fosters a better understanding of human relationships through the accounts of fantastic cities that Marco Polo tells to Kublai Khan. In the case of the city of Isaura, a series of questions might help understanding the complex subject of this article.