New Version of Brazil’s Marco Civil Submitted to the House of Representatives · Global Voices
Nathalie Gazzaneo

Despite the request of urgency, the Marco Civil – a one-of-a-kind law aimed at protecting key rights of internet users in Brazil – has not been finally voted by the Brazilian National Congress yet. President Dilma Rousseff requested urgency in the examination of that draft bill on September 12, 2013. Thus, under article 64 of the Brazilian Constitution, it was expected to be finally voted by the end of October, 2013. Nevertheless, due to the fact that the draft bill raised a number of opposing interests, it was not yet possible to reach a final deliberation upon it.
On December 11, 2013, congressman Alessandro Molon (PT-RJ), the reporter of the draft bill, submitted to the Brazilian House of Representatives a new version of the Marco Civil. Some of the changes incorporated in this new document were meant to accommodate telecommunications companies’ interests. For instance, although without compromising the so-called “net neutrality” principle, the new version of the draft bill expressly allows for the “freedom of business models carried out in the Internet”. As a consequence, telecom companies are free to offer to consumers data packets with different speeds. They must not, however, in each of the different packets offered, discriminate the information accessed in respect to its content, origin or destination. That is to say, they must treat equally [pt] the information accessed by internet users.
Check out the new version of the Marco Civil (changes to the original text are highlighted in yellow) [pt].
This post is part of our special coverage Marco Civil da Internet [pt, es].