Sign the Online Petition for Balanced Copyright Law in Brazil

Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade, Escola de Direito da Fundação Getulio Vargas /
FGV Law School, Center for Technology & Society
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

17 October 2006

Petition available for signature in English, Castellano, and Portuguese at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/netlivre/

A2K Brazil
www.a2kbrasil.org.br

To Brazillian Congress / Congresso Brasileiro:

The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the Associa��o Brasileira dos Produtores de Disco (Brazilian Association of Record Producers � ABPD) have just announced in Rio de Janeiro a new round of legal measures against file-sharing, this time not only in the United States, but also in Brazil.

In the United States, the RIAA (Recording Association of America), a member of the IFPI, is launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. Now the IFPI and the ABPD are threatening to take the same course of action in Brazil. After over 18,000 lawsuits in the United States against P2P users, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like 12 year-old Brianna LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being caught in the crossfire. The time has come now that the Brazilian citizens will start to face the same sort of challenges.

According to an EFF report surveying the RIAA lawsuits in the US over the last two years “The [lawsuit] targets were not commercial copyright pirates. They were children, grandparents, single mothers, college professors-a random assortment of the tens of millions of American music fans using P2P networks….The lawsuits, however, are not working. Today downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of the lawsuits. After two years, one thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.

This crusade is not only irrational, but it also does not generate a single penny for the artists that the RIAA and similar institutions claim to protect. The IFPI, the ABPD and the RIAA should be working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love. Artists are increasingly turning against the lawsuits, and the time has come to discuss other alternatives and business models, rather than just suing Internet users.

Copyright law should not make criminals out of the millions of Brazilians online — the Brazilian copyright law must change to prevent actions like these.

Sign the Petition Online for Amending the Brazilian Law

It’s time to face the fact that in today’s world, copyright law is not adequate to the current technological reality. Our current copyright regime makes any internet user a potential criminal and copyright infringer.

The Brazilian Copyright law enacted in 1998 suppressed all the rights of private copy. For instance, if you copy a CD that you legally bought in a store to your iPod in Brazil, you are violating the copyright law. The former copyright law that was in force during more than 25 years, from 1973 to 1998, expressly protected the right of private of copy. In other words, the old law is better than the new one, and the old provisions must be reinstated. Additionally, it is important to build a constructive solution for offering internet users a legal way to use P2P programs while ensuring that artists get paid. And this solution will not come from lawsuits against music fans, but from the discussion of more sophisticated and rational business models.

Numerous institutions like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, IP Justice, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School are working with models that allow artists to be compensated at the same time that users have their rights to use technology respected.

If the millions of intenet users in Brazil start to organize themselves to protect their rights of acess and to use technology, the Brazilian law can be modified as a result of this action. Sign the online petition to modify the Brazilian copyright law, requesting Congress to approved the proposed bill written by the Brazilian Intellectual Property Association (ABPI), transcribed below, and that tries to reach a balance between copyright and access to knowledge and the overall interest of society.

PROPOSAL FOR CHANGING ARTICLE 46 OF LAW NO. 9610/98

Article 46 would have the following reading:

Art. 46. It does not constitute an offense to copyright the partial or total reproduction, the distribution, and any form o utilization of intellectual works that, according to their nature, fulfill two or more of the following principles, respected the moral rights set forth by article 24:

I - have as the objective criticism, commentary, news, education, teaching, research, production of legal or administrative proofs, exclusive use on the part of visually impaired people, and any other procedure in any support to them, preservation or study of the work, or yet, to the demonstration to consumers in commercial establishments, provided that these establishments also commercialize the support and the equipment which allow for the use of the works, in the extension justified to reach these ends;

II - its finality is not essentially commercial to the recipient of the reproduction and to those who are benefited by the distribution and utilization of the intellectual works;

III - the effect in the potential market of the work is individually immaterial, not producing harm to the normal exploitation of the work;

Sole Paragraph - The application of the item II of this article is not justified only by the fact that the recipient of the reproduction or those who are benefited by the distribution and utilization of the intellectual works be a governmental company or a governmental body, foundation, association or any other non-profit organization.

Petition available for signature in English, Castellano, and Portuguese at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/netlivre/

The following institutions support this document: