By Paula P\u00e9cora de Barros e Jacqueline de Souza Abreu<\/em><\/h4>\n

Translation by Paula P\u00e9cora de Barros<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

BLOQUEIOS.INFO<\/b> is a platform that gathers information about judicial proceedings that have led, could have led or can lead to the suspension of Internet applications (web pages or applications) in Brazil.<\/span> This means that we catalog blocking cases in which Brazilian authorities, like judges, determine that <\/span>intermediaries<\/span><\/i> technically restrict the availability of access to contents, informations and services offered by Internet applications, such as websites and apps. In this first stage, we considered as \u201cintermediaries\u201d the Internet connection providers and virtual app stores providers”.<\/span><\/p>\n

This post concerns <\/span>some restrictive measures that have been called “blockades” in the press and even in judicial decisions, but that are not contemplated by our scope. Among them, we highlight the legal disputes surrounding the Lulu application, the site consulasocio.com and the insurance company Youse. <\/span>They give the opportunity to bring light to other types of “blocking” – those specific to certain profiles, pages or content, and which are not part of our regular mapping. It is an opportunity to better elucidate what we monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lulu<\/b><\/h3>\n

The first case occurred in 2013, when a Brazilian court imposed restrictions to the Lulu application, which became known mainly among women for allowing them to anonymously assess features of their Facebook friends. By signing up for the app, the friendship information was taken from the social network, creating profiles for review for each of their male friends. Only women could register for the application, and the information taken from their contacts was given independently of the consent of the users, the mere fact that the men were registered on Facebook already allowed for them to be evaluated, there was no need for them to join Lulu. Evaluations were done anonymously and were only available to other female users of the app.<\/p>\n

The proposal and way of functioning of the application soon achieved great popularity, generating also much discussion. With the controversy generated, the Public Ministry of the Federal District and Territories (MPDFT) filed a Public Civil Action against Facebook Brazil and Lulu, alleging violation of personality and information rights. According to the MPDFT, there could only be data sharing between Facebook and Lulu if there was prior, specific and informed consent of the affected user.<\/span><\/p>\n

The magistrate of the 1st Civil Court of the Judicial District of Bras\u00edlia – Federal District rejected the requested early protection, considering that the protection could be granted only upon request of each of the persons who felt concretely violated, and therefore, the Public Ministry was not legitimized for such request. The decision was upheld by the MPDFT, and the rapporteur of the 6th Panel of the Federal District Court of Justice accepted the complaint, as well as the request for restriction of the application, identifying violations to the rights of personality and of the constitutional norm of anonymity, contained in art. 5, IV of the Federal Constitution, to grant early protection of the grievance. It thus determined the <\/span>immediate exclusion of data and images from anyone who had not expressed their prior, specific and informed consent<\/b> to be placed for evaluation in the Lulu application, the prohibition of the anonymous assessment and the retention of data of the assessments made, available only to the legitimately concerned.<\/span><\/p>\n

After all the controversy, on December 24th 2013, the Lulu App went out of air by decision of the company, being released again only on July 20th 2015. In the new version, several changes were made, and according to the company, with its legal status regularized, allowing men access to their assessments and the app was no longer linked to Facebook. No further proceedings have been identified against the application in court, which is currently down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consulta S\u00f3cio<\/b><\/h3>\n

The second case refers to the website consulasocio.com, trialed in June 2016. The aim of consultasocio.com is to facilitate access to information about companies and their respective partners, from databases that, according to the website, are available to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

The action that led to the blockade was brought by seven members of the Buffara family against Privacy Protection Service Inc., the domain administrator of the site, claiming that it disclosed personal data of the applicants and the companies they composed, without their authorization. They asked for early protection so that the companies of Backbone, Personal Mobile Service and Switchable Fixed Telephone Service created obstacles “capable of preventing, until the judgment of the demand, access to the site (like what has already been judicially determined in relation to another similar site, tudosobretodos.se) or, alternatively, to all personal information of the plaintiffs” on the website consulasocio.com.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time of the decision, Judge Marcos Vin\u00edcius da Rocha Loures Demchuk of the 24th Civil Court of Curitiba verified that the site effectively allowed to discover “by the simple search of a certain person’s name, whether they were part of the corporate structure of a company, which companies, the company’s corporate share, the branch of activity exercised, the corporate name and the name of the company, the company’s capital, who the other members are, the national registry of legal entity (CNPJ) of the company, and the address, telephone and e-mail.”<\/span><\/p>\n

With this finding, he partially granted the request for the guardianship of, ordering the<\/span> \u201cblocking\u201d of information about the Buffara family<\/b> members on the website consulasocio.com, alleging that the information provided by the website violated the fundamental right to intimacy, privacy, honor and image, according to article 5, X, of the Federal Constitution, as well as the established in Laws 12.965\/2014, 12.414\/2011 and 12.527\/2011, regarding the use of registration information and restriction of access to information on private life without consent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Youse<\/b><\/h3>\n

Youse Caixa Seguradora<\/span><\/a> is a Registered Trademark and an Online Insurance Sales Platform of <\/span>Caixa Seguradora<\/span><\/a>, which offers online insurance services in an easy way, through <\/span>FPC PAR Corretora de Seguros S\/A<\/span><\/a>. The development of its business, however, brought some discussions in the judicial sphere and even led to the temporary blocking of the platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Federation of Brokers of Private Insurance, Reinsurance, Capitalization, Private Pension and Insurance and Reinsurance Brokerage Firms (<\/span>FENACOR<\/span><\/a>), based on the argument that YOUSE does not have a regulatory authorization for the commercialization of private insurance, so according to arts. 31 and 37 of the <\/span>Consumer Protection Code<\/span><\/a>, \u00a0requested the interruption of YOUSE’s, as well as the suspension of the <\/span>administrative proceeding<\/span><\/a> No. 15414.001677\/2016-46, filed by YOUSE to be authorized as an Insurance Company at the<\/span> Superintendency of Private Insurance (SUSEP)<\/span><\/a>, a federal agency linked to the Ministry of Finance that supervises and regulates the operation of insurers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judge Alberto Nogueira J\u00fanior of the 10th Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro identified an irregular operation in the YOUSE case and granted some of the requests. Considering that YOUSE presented itself as insurance company, nevertheless without proper registration in SUSEP, and that had as propaganda the “abolition” of the insurance broker, deceiving the consumer, <\/span>determined the suspension<\/b> of YOUSE SEGURADORA, under penalty of a fine of ten thousand reais per day of default, without prejudice to the ordering of the closure of the activities of YOUSE SEGURADORA by the Federal Public Force “. On the other hand, finding that FENACOR did not own any subjective right in the administrative process, it could not claim to intervene on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a request for reconsideration made by the insurance company, the same magistrate found that YOUSE\u2019s website had started to clearly state that the insurances marketed on the website were made by Caixa Seguradora, concluding that the platform does not intend to be an autonomous company. Comparing the content of the website with the images of the platform presented at the proposition of the present action, he noted the change in the content of the publicity disclosed, as well as no more advertising of “abolition” of the the figure of insurance broker. With the decision, YOUSE’s activities were resumed.<\/span><\/p>\n

FENACOR also filed an appeal to reform the decision to reconsider the injunction. The Rapporteur Alcides Martins Ribeiro Filho of the Federal Regional Court of the 2nd Region considered that YOUSE\u2019s page clearly stated to the consumer their relation with CAIXA SEGURADORA and considered that it had not been proven that YOUSE would be an autonomous company to require it\u2019s registration on SUSEP. He also concluded that the fact that there is an administrative process with SUSEP for the authorization to exercise the activity of the digital platform demonstrates only a future project of the company, and not a mockery of the legislation. He dismissed the indictment for not identifying flagrant illegality or abuse of power that would justify amending Judge Alberto Nogueira J\u00fanior\u2019s last decision. Such considerations have allowed the continuation of Youses\u2019s services up to the present time.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do these cases tell?<\/b><\/h3>\n

In the first two analysed cases, there wasn\u2019t a complete block of the Lulu and Consultasocio.com applications. There wasn\u2019t even a general blocking order of the application, of all its functionalities and affecting all its users. For this reason they are not mapped in our timeline. In the Youse case, even though there was a \u201cblocking\u201d of the platform, the blocking order was directly addressed to the company without the need of using an intermediary. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, all these disputes in the Judiciary have their importance for the topic of internet blocking. They demonstrate the possibility of the judicial determination of <\/span>specific blockades<\/span><\/i>: of certain content, user(-s) or specific tools and activities, to fit the Brazilian legal order, but not blocking a general service in an indiscriminate manner. They also show that blockages need not necessarily involve intermediaries – the company itself may be the target of a judicial action that directly forces it to terminate its activities; when intermediary actors (app stores and Internet providers) are used to implement blockages, there are usually due to other complicators at play (jurisdictional issues, for example).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suggested Citation:\u00a0Barros, Paula P\u00e9cora de; Abreu, Jacqueline de Souza. \u201c’Blockades that are not really blockades’: the cases of\u00a0Lulu, Consulta S\u00f3cio e Youse\u201d in: bloqueios.info, InternetLab, 28.05.2018, dispon\u00edvel em: http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/en\/blockades-that-are-not-really-blockades-the-cases-of-lulu-consulta-socio-and-youse\/\u00a0 .<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paula P\u00e9cora de Barros e Jacqueline de Souza Abreu Translation by Paula P\u00e9cora de Barros   BLOQUEIOS.INFO is a platform that gathers information about judicial proceedings that have led, could have led or can lead to the suspension of Internet applications (web pages or applications) in Brazil. This means that we catalog blocking cases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sem-categoria-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bloqueios.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}