“THE best possible birthday gift for Brazilian and global web users” is how Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web, which turned 25 this month, described Brazil’s “internet bill of rights” in an open letter on March 24th. The next day legislators in the lower house of Congress duly approved it.The sweeping bill, which now goes to the Senate, is “pretty much one of a kind”, says Ronaldo Lemos, a lawyer and academic involved in creating the original proposal in 2009. It enshrines the principle of “net neutrality”, which holds that network operators must treat all traffic equally. It also ensures that 100m Brazilian internet users enjoy online privacy (by barring providers from rummaging through their data) and freedom of expression (a court order is required to force the removal of contentious content).Perfect it isn’t, however. Tucked into the bill is article 11, which extends the reach of Brazilian law to any internet service in the world with Brazilian users. A firm based in the United States whose services are used by Brazilians could, for example, be penalised for adhering to its domestic data-disclosure laws if they conflict with Brazil’s—as they often do. Penalties include fines of up to 10% of a firm’s Brazilian revenues or even blocking services.When the European Union mulled something similar following the revelations last year of widespread...
via The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1jRikUd
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