Hello all!
Subject is not 100% related to Wikimedia, but definitely important for the future of projects like ours.
Marco civil da Internet (the Brazilian internet civil rights bill) has just been approved by the Brazilian Congresshttp://oglobo.globo.com/pais/camara-aprova-marco-civil-da-internet-projeto-segue-para-senado-11984559. Now the Senate still needs to approve it.
The bill has been recently supported http://www.webfoundation.org/2014/03/marco-civil-statement-of-support-from-sir-tim-berners-lee/by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.[1]
Back in 2007, several Brazilian civil society organizations started to fight against bills which were about to be approved creating a penal law over certain uses of internet.
This fight led the Brazilian government to build, together with other Brazilian organizations, a request for comment/collaborative platformhttp://culturadigital.br/marcocivil/sobre/[2] for the creation of a civil rights bill for the internet. Contributions were gathered together and a first draft was proposed for another round of public comments on 2010.
A first draft was negotiated within the government in 2011. A lot of lobby over the Congress was carried out especially against the articles about net neutrality and internet service providers liability (both by telecommunication companies and the intellectual property industries, but mainly the former - they wanted all internet service providers to be obliged to remove content under a simple notification claiming the content should be removed. Internet civil rights activists claimed for the need of a justice decision about that).
The case of NSA spying Brazilhttp://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-states-spied-brazilian-oil-giant.htmlmade the government become fonder of the Marco Civil bill, fostering its approval in the Congress.
Since the first draft of the bill, some aspects were lost, but the bill remains important and mostly beneficial to internet rights in my opinion. It's been a long process, with lots of threats to this initiative, but in the end the balance seems good. Good the the freedom of expression and good for net neutrality.
Best regards Oona
[1] http://www.webfoundation.org/2014/03/marco-civil-statement-of-support-from-s... [2] http://culturadigital.br/marcocivil/sobre/ [3] http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-sta...
Other links: a. Research about media piracy - the Brazilian chapter brings the history of the Marco Civil da Internet by 2010. - http://piracy.americanassembly.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MPEE-PDF-1.0.4... b. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/brazil-legislate-online-civil-r... c. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/02/19/amendments-to-brazils-bill-of-right... d. https://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/03/12/brazil-marcocivil-bill-of-rights/ e. https://twitter.com/marcocivil