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Brazil Approves Internet Bill of Rights
First time accepted submitter Dr.Potato (247646) writes "After more than three years being discussed, Brazil's Internet Bill of Rights was approved on April 22nd (and in Portuguese). It was rushed through the senate in order that president Dilma Roussef could sign it during the meeting on internet governance that occurs in São Paulo this week. In the bill of rights, among other things, net neutrality was maintained, providers will not be legally responsible for content published by users (but are forced to take it down when legally requested) and internet providers are obliged to keep records of users' access for six months and can't pass this responsibility to other companies."
Brazilian internet users may continue to have the right to be surveilled on social media, too.
Exactly whose "rights" are they talking about?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Rights given by men, can be taken by men; they are therefore not rights.
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”
If the internet is turned off, does a Brazilian have the right to force other men to turn it back on? This is absurd, there is no "right" to internet service any more than there is a right to free healthcare, housing, MTV or iPads.
has just given itself the right to apply censure in whatever it pleases, by using this law as a Trojan Horse and inserting in it a vague statement regarding what is unacceptable and not protected by freedom of speech.
Looks like this bill of rights is granting more rights to the intelligence community and ISPs than ordinary citizens.
"Net neutrality" can be good for consumers, but not when ISPs react to being forced to respect it by throwing temper tantrums and raising prices and refusing to upgrade ancient ADSL switches. We know that all too well in the US.
The remainder of the bill seems to be dedicated to benefiting the people in power. But why would we expect anything else? To get a Senate to "rush" anything through would imply there's an enormous financial incentive for them to do so, and that's almost never good for the common man.
"hat goes some length towards protecting net neutrality"
Where exactly is this stated in the actual document?
internet providers are obliged to keep records of users' access for six months
Nothing like making it easy to build the list of links for an ISP by putting all the data in one place. Bet it's online accessible, too.
Best Slashdot Co
Keeping net neutrality is a huge win. Other articles in the bill are very positive too.
The shitty part is the record keeping. As far as my legalspeak goes, and that is almost nothing, what I understood is that if I have a website I have to maintain a 6 month record of all my visitors. I'm guessing that they refer to general access logs, just like Apache access log files or some equivalent. What I did understand is that ISPs cannot keep those records. But I might be very wrong. Either interpretation is bad anyway, so it does not matter much how bad it is.
What bothers me more is that our equivalent to the FCC (Anatel) is building a database and backdoor access to all ISPs client data. If what I heard is right (two sources working in a third party developer for a local ISP) they will have access to every byte sent through every Internet connection in the country. The buffer size I do not know. THAT bothers me a lot.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
would never allow that to happen in 'Merica. They fear and hate the Internet because it is against their religion. Also they do is plot against access. Even here in Seattle the conservatives have successfully destroyed Internet access. The fastest connection I can get is dial-up with copper.net. They provide great dial-up, but after over a decade with them, I fucking want faster access, but the city will not allow CenturyLink or Comcast to upgrade their equipment. I had DSL, but it was just too unreliable to use. The Republicans have turned Seattle into a tech shithole.
The FCC just substituted its oversight of subjective free speech protection for true net neutrality. What's funny about this is that while Comcast is chucking an evil chortle thinks they just actually crowned the mega church business incorporations as the new netflix. Mega churches are slowly taking over businesses due to their tax privledges, immunity from antitrust, large capitalization that let them operate a loss to kill competition and apple-scale brand loyalty. The mega churches just got another freebie,: not paying content access fees to the ISP since the FCC will feel that against free speech for certain.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In the meantime, Harper is trying to pass laws against Canadians.
Message to Harper: you're supposed to be an elected official to represent the people, not a corporate puppet out to sell out our rights and natural resources to the highest bidder. Canada isn't your private land and property, it's the country you're supposed to be governing.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Without access in the first place, none of the other rights mean a damn. We have great Internet rights here in the US except for that one sticking point. Where I live, we do not have cable TV or Internet, and DSL is flaky due to the fifty year-old phone wiring. The city will not allow Comcast to put in pedestals to provide access, and Comcast is too wimpy to try to fight the city over it. CenturyLink is in the same position. They tried to offer fiber to the node, and the city denied it. The people that rule here in Seattle hate the Internet and simply will not allow us fast access. You can talk about rights all day long, but when I am forced to use dial-up in 2014 and waiting days to finish downloading a single movie, those rights don't mean a damn. How about allowing us fast access?
You are basically wrong about rights. There is no objectively correct formulation for what a right is. The idea of rights precedes philosophical discussions about them. There are rights discussed in some of the most ancient writings we know of.
You can be given the right to enslave by a government. You might say 'in philosophy x you have no right to enslave' and you can also so 'philosophy x is the best way of thinking about this because' but you cannot say 'It is a rule of nature that you cannot enslave humans and therefore can have no absolute right to enslave', without supplying at least a whole books worth of justification, and even then you will probably not be persuasive.
Brazilians do not have the right to force other men to turn the internet back on. Instead they have a right to privacy, equal access to the network and so on.
Dear everyone here,
Brazil is not the U.S. It has a different culture. Your cultural norms cannot be blindly fit onto Brazil. Please stop trying.
P.S. The rest of the world would like to express the same thing. They started a queue.
But this is just a description of the law, not the law itself (from the linked article in Portuguese).
> "O sigilo das comunicações dos usuários da internet não pode ser violado. Provedores de acesso à internet serão obrigados a guardar os registros das horas de acesso e do fim da conexão dos usuários pelo prazo de seis meses, mas isso deve ser feito em ambiente controlado."
"The secrecy of the communications of the internet users cannot be violated. Internet access providers (sic, presumably ISPs) shall have the obligation to keep record of access times and of connection ending (disconnect time, probably) for six months, but that must be made in a secure environment."
See, no IP control, but from the law itself ("Rights and Guarantees",article 7, VI):
"VI - ao não fornecimento a terceiros de seus registros de conexão e de acesso a aplicações de Internet, salvo mediante consentimento livre, expresso e informado ou nas hipóteses previstas em lei;"
"VI - to not having their connection and access records to Internet applications provided to third parties, except through free, express and informed consent, or in cases predicted by Law;"
"Cases predicted by Law" being the key expression...
> This is absurd, there is no "right" to internet service any more than there is a right to free healthcare, housing, MTV or iPads.
I fail to comprehend the phrase. I will assume you wanted to say that:
"This is absurd, there is no "right" to internet service any more than there is NO right to free healthcare, housing, MTV or iPads."
Did you know we do have right to free healthcare in Brazil? (It doesn't work well, but then a lot of things don't work in Brazil...)
We don't have a right to free housing, but it's an interesting idea and some countries (Kuwait IIRC) do provide free housing to those wanting to form a family (or so I've seen a while ago on TV).
You don't have free healthcare in the USA, because your country -- to sum it up -- sucks. Obama, the most Republican of the Democrats (hah!) set to correct that, but will the rich pay for basic health for the employees? No fscking way! (I wonder why Mr. Burns was created as a character, since reality makes him look softhearted).
Also, so that you know, Policemen are men (maybe even in L.A.P.D.) and they are literally forced to do what the law mandates. It sucks, but... Dura Lex, sed Lex (the Law is harsh, but it's the Law).
Paragraph 3 talks about damages -- honor, reputation and "personality rights", whatever that may be (copyrights? patents?)
Paragraph 4 states a judge can act to avoid damages, with unequivocal proof and considering the colectivity interest in making available content on the internet, provided the allegation is verisimilar (seems true) and there is risk of irreparable (or hard to undo) damage.
So, yes, public interest of having things available on the internet is taken into account, but some factors might prompt a judge to order the content to be made unavailable.
Article 19, in its main part (caput) talks only about content which is not removed after an specific order from a judge, not about general illegal content.
As an aside, I'm astounded at how badly people interpret law -- and I'm often corrected by my colleagues at work, since they're way better than me at that. Of course, bad translations of incorrect readings surely won't help anyone... 8-/
like you're butthurt that America doesn't defend net neutrality. Too bad~
I believe it is already approved and can be read here:
http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL_03/_Ato2011-2014/2014/Lei/L12965.htm
Specifically:
CAPÍTULO III
DA PROVISÃO DE CONEXÃO E DE APLICAÇÕES DE INTERNET
Seção I
Da Neutralidade de Rede
Art. 9o O responsável pela transmissão, comutação ou roteamento tem o dever de tratar de forma isonômica quaisquer pacotes de dados, sem distinção por conteúdo, origem e destino, serviço, terminal ou aplicação.
CHAPTER III
OF THE PROVISION OF INTERNET CONNECTION AND APPLICATIONS
Section I
Of the Net Neutrality
Art. 9o. The responsible for the transmission, commuting or routing must treat in an isonomic (*) manner any data packet, without content, origin and destiny, service, terminal or application distinction.
The following text talks about technical necessities (QoS, I venture) and emergency treatment (911?). Also, there's a veto to block, filter etc. any packet.
(*) Surprisingly "isonomic" is not in M-W -- but it is the Collins Dictionary. Isonomy is in M-W and is not just "equality", as suggested in some translations. Iso- means equal, and -nomy refers to rules, so it would mean "equal rules" or, as M-W defines, "equality before law" (well... kinda). Not that Portuguese is that great, it surely has plenty of flaws, but English is rather brain damaged IMHO.
Agência vai coletar informações sobre números chamados, data, duração e valor =
= The agency will gather information about numbers called, dates, duration and (charged) value.
But, yes, the text says such information will be available via direct access by Anatel (even without operation knowledge).
... without operator knowledge, that is.
I believe your phrase was right and mine therefore is wrong; our languages have a different structure, that must have got me confused.
Nonetheless, the rest of the post is my opinion. Just to make things clear, there are natural rights, like the right to life and rights created by the society, like the right to drive a car (actually the right to obtain a permit to drive, that is).
Why must someone pass an examination to be qualified to have the right to drive? Because it's not a natural right, but a society-established one.
Actually now we do have that right (to force the internet back on).
1. You are choosing one definition of right based on your personal preference and chosen literature, and you are stating that anything different is not and cannot be right (pun intended). Another definition is that a right is something a certain society agrees upon. Under your definition there can be no such thing as "the right to enslave". But in reality this right was used by many people over time. Even life is a society given right, this is obvious since in several countries there is death penalty. If people can lose the right to life, by having it taken by men, it is certainly a right given by men, as any other right.
2. In Brazil the constitution is the highest law, so all that discussion about what is a right and what is not doesn't really apply to this posts subject, if it says it's a right, it counts as a right and that's what matters in this case. We can have academic discussions about the subject, but if things go to court the constitution and the laws prevail. In spite of any feelings of injustice against the rich you might feel.
3. There is a thing called "modern constitutions" and it is normal in them to add many more things than what was normal to add when the American constitution was created (instead of only "regulating" the existence of the country, it "regulates" anything that was considered important by the legislators and also guides how the government is supposed to behave and what to pursue when those rights aren't immediately achievable). In Brazil we have one of those "modern constitutions" (quotes in "modern constitutions" because this is an actual academic term).
4. In the Brazilian constitution there is a list of constitutional protected and/or pursued fundamental rights, somewhat similar to what the amendments do in the US Constitution but broader. That list does include freedom of speech, education, healthcare, access to culture and information, freedom to come and go, privacy, besides several other rights, but does not include any products or brands (like your ipad and mtv examples). *
Note: It is important to understand before the next session of comments that Brazil is a third world country and that the quality of anything here is questionable to say the least or "pretty shit" to be precise.
4.1 (implications of 4)
4.1.1 We do have free schools up to high school for everybody and many free universities (the best universities in the country are the free ones). Since it was impossible to achieve free universal superior education instantly, to increase availability and accessibility over time is government's obligation and they've been doing it.
4.1.2 We do have free healthcare.
4.1.3 For several years now, electricity and water has been considered a fundamental right. If we don't pay the bill, and the company cuts it off, it will take a day to have it back by judicial order. Eventually we will have to pay the bill, but there is a right to electricity, just as much as to healthcare or housing (other thing that is increasing over time).
As society evolves, the minimum standards of education, etc, etc, go up, and it is the government's constitutional obligation to create laws and regulations to pursue what is established in the constitution. Some of what this new law establishes is just how to secure what already was in the constitution, but considering the existence of the internet. Like "access to culture and information" was something totally different in 1986 and today. Today it is questionable to say that you have access to information if you don't have access to the internet, so the new law does force the companies that provide it to turn it back on, and also to offer low budged options of internet service. The right to privacy is in the constitution, but unless there is a law that explicitly says that inspecting content and packet analysis are violations of that right, it is not illegal. Now we have that law. Not having net neutrality is basic
> So if the internet goes down in one area of town how do we preserve equality of access without forcing other men, at gunpoint, to turn it back on?
Well, what would happen in Brazil is: the government would make sure infrastructure is built, either directly with public workers or by competing providers, in true capitalistic fashion. Service in the first case would be paid by money from taxes (including IRS) and perhaps from low symbolic fees, to make sure users can somehow share the costs (really something affordable).
See this from Wikipedia, regarding public transportation:
"Public transport services can be profit-driven by use of pay-by-the-distance fares or funded by government subsidies in which flat rate fares are charged to each passenger. Services can be fully profitable through high ridership numbers and high farebox recovery ratios, or can be regulated and possibly subsidized from local or national tax revenue. Fully subsidized, zero-fare (free) services operate in some towns and cities."
It's the same thing for internet, except packets are transported, not people. See about "Human Rights": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights
Now, please, it can be made to be a public service. Stop saying things which do exist are impossible; this creates a bad image for you.