The polemic did not take long to reach the Brazilian Legislative as well. Over the last months, nine draft bills were presented in the National Congress about website and application blockings that deal with the question in different manners, even though they are processed together. The main draft bill is the <\/span>PL 5130\/2016<\/span><\/a>, proposed by Congressman Jo\u00e3o Arruda (PMDB\/PR), which aims to alter the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework (BICRF) to exclude the possibility of prohibition or temporary suspension of activities of Internet application providers as a method of sanction (provisioned on article 12). This proposal, supported by technology companies and <\/span>part of the civil society<\/span><\/a> (that see in this bill the <\/span>path to put an end to the history of blocks<\/span><\/a>), seems to be based in the premise that the legal grounds for blockings are in the BICRF. However, not only there are cases previous to the promulgation of the law, but also the enforcement of its article 12 in these situations is controversial. <\/span><\/p>\n On the other side of this normative dispute is the <\/span>PL 5204\/2016<\/span><\/a>, proposed by the <\/span>Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Cybernetic Crimes<\/span><\/a>, which aims to regulate the possibility of blocks of applications \u201cdedicated to the practise of crimes\u201d that are hosted abroad or that do not have representation in Brazil, with an exception to instant messaging applications (like WhatsApp). This proposal seems to be directed to the block of websites that share copyright protected material, and has received strong support from the <\/span>Motion Picture Association<\/span><\/a>, which represents the interest of Hollywood producers.<\/span><\/p>\n There are also draft bills that aim to <\/span>hinder only the block of communication applications<\/span><\/a> (once again offering a \u201cspecial treatment\u201d for applications like WhatsApp), and other that <\/span>demand for the judicial decisions of blockings to have clear justifications for the measure<\/span><\/a>, even when the processes are under investigation secrecy. Another project seems to aim on the argument that the determination of block would be grounded on the general writ power of the judge (consigned in articles 139, IV and 536, paragraph 3 of the new Code of Civil Procedure) or in the possibility of imposing obligations to third parties (according to article 380 of the same law), <\/span>by proposing a modification in the recently promulgated CCP<\/span><\/a> to prohibit provisions to third parties destined to the interruption of communication applications on the Internet. Draft bills 5130\/2016, 5204\/2016 and its other attachments are waiting appraisal from the House of Representatives, in face of the presentation of a <\/span>requirement of urgency<\/span><\/a>, that may be appreciated on the following days.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite the differences between the bills, all of them share the presumption that the approval of only one law will be able to deal with all the complexity that involves the issue of blocking. <\/span>Research conducted by InternetLab<\/span><\/a>, however, points that the circumstances of each block, its motives and the legal grounds used in each case are quite diverse. The first decision of blocking that we have notice of, for instance, was the <\/span>case of the posting of an intimate video of the model Daniela Cicarelli on YouTube<\/span><\/a>, which led the judge of the case to order the unavailability of the website based on constitutionally protected rights, such as image, privacy and intimacy. This case is very distinct from the <\/span>episodes that led to the WhatsApp block<\/span><\/a>, in which the blocking was used as a coercive measure, in order for the company to delivery data in the scope of a criminal investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n It is hard to believe, therefore, that a \u201csilver bullet\u201d, whether legislative or judicial, will be able to solve the issue of the block in a general manner, without tending to the particularities and circumstances specific to each case, and specially, without discussing in-depth the themes related to each kind of block. The draft bills currently in analysis by the National Congress, however, seem to have been elaborated in strong reaction to the WhatsApp blocks, and are not sensitive to all of the questions involved. The risk of this scenario is that, in case they are approved, the new laws will bring with them unpredicted and unwanted consequences, causing chilling effects.<\/span><\/p>\n Among the nine drafts bills proposed, for example, seven aim to alter the BICRF, a law that was discussed and elaborated alongside with all society sectors and that has been in force for only two years. To alter a regulatory framework like this, without the adequate and necessary debate, could weaken the normative framework of Internet regulation in Brazil and leave it more vulnerable to attacks from other fronts. <\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, the express prohibition of blocks through the alteration of the BICRF could be problematic in certain situations. Think about cases like of the <\/span>website Tudo Sobre Todos<\/span><\/a>, which released personal data on any person in Brazil (information like tax payer\u2019s unique number, home address and date of birth) without any authorization from the owners, threatening rights like privacy and intimacy. Or even situations that could appear in the future, such as an application uniquely devoted to the <\/span>posting of intimate images<\/a> without consent<\/span>. In these situations there seems to be strong arguments for the determination of application blocks, based on the violation of other rights. A promising path, thus, seems to lay in the discussion of whether there are legal grounds for the block in the specific context in which it was determined, a task that demands a detailed and in-depth analysis of each case.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The polemic around app blocking did not take long to reach the Brazilian Legislative as well. Over the last months, nine draft bills were presented in the National Congress about website and application blockings that deal with the question in different manners, even though they are processed together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434,20],"tags":[760,764,800,802,804,790],"class_list":["post-402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-sem-categoria-en","tag-article-12","tag-brazilian-internet-civil-rights-framework","tag-congress","tag-draft-bill","tag-legislative","tag-whatsapp-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Illustration:](\"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/photo_2016-12-02_16-29-03-foto-post-bia-1-1024x682.jpg\")
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Suggested Citation: Kira, Beatriz. \u201cFinding a \u201csilver bullet\u201d: Brazilian Congress analyses draft bills about website and application blockings\u201d, in:\u00a0bloqueios.info<\/em>, InternetLab, 02 de dezembro de 2016, translation by Ana Luisa Araujo, available at http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/en\/finding-a-silver-bullet\/.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"