Member Article

After two years of heated debate fuelled by a diplomatic scandal with the US, Brazil has enacted a groundbreaking bill of internet rights which will protect consumers and give added certainty to businesses. The government initially sought to stem the controversy related to the US government spying on Brazilian internet by proposing rules which would require all companies with operations in Brazil to keep their data stored within the country by setting up local servers.

However, because of the costs involved – which could eventually have been passed on to consumers – many international companies, including Google and Facebook, lobbied against the new proposals. “There was a lot of reaction from private companies and investors to take that out, as it won’t help investment in Brazil given you need to put a structure together for those data centres,” explains Veirano Advogados partner Fabio Pereira.

Instead, the requirement to store data within the country was replaced with new rules on data protection and privacy, which foreign companies will also have to comply with. These rules include having to store all user data, including connection and content access logs, in a secure and private environment for six months, after which it is deleted permanently. “This will require some investment in security,” notes Pereira.

While the law follows some principles already implemented in the US and Europe, the Marco Civil is set to break new ground and it is not thought that any other bill in the world unites the same range of issues related to the internet. Although other countries in Latin America already have legislation related to data protection and privacy, the Marco Civil will be the region’s first wide-ranging law, encompassing net neutrality, privacy and consumer defence. “It’s trying to encompass a whole set of legal provisions that in most cases are very sparse,” explains Pereira. “It really directs how the internet will be used and how companies should behave.” The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has praised the Marco Civil for “reflecting the internet as it should be”.

 

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