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Censura Não!: Brazilian Bloggers Protest New Cybercrime Bill

amina — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:11:04 -0400

Brazil’s blogosphere has been overflowing with dissent over the most recent cybercrime legislation proposed by Senator Eduardo Azeredo. At the Blog Carnival Against Censorship this Saturday, bloggers expressed their overwhelming opposition to the Digital Crimes Bill. Global Voices Online recently summed up bloggers’ opinions on the bill, which introduces 13 new, punishable cybercrimes. Reporters Without Borders expressed concern over the bill’s unclear wording, warning that the bill is a serious, potential threat to online free speech and has encouraged Internet users to sign an e-petition calling for more transparency in the bill.

Originally introduced in 2005, the bill first received widespread censure from the online community in 2006 for a stipulation that would force users to give detailed information about themselves to their ISPs before being allowed to use the Internet. The legislation was viewed not simply – as Azeredo claimed - an attempt to “discourage hackers, libel, and to stop cybercrime,” but also as a way for ISPs and government agencies to track Internet use; a threat to users right to privacy. Despite the online community’s victory in blocking the bill in 2006, today the bill has taken on a more stringent form, adding to its list of punishable web activities and increasing government surveillance and control.

Despite the Senate’s claim that the bill is intended to curb cybercrime and prevent child abuse, and its titling of a recent Cybercrimes Project report “Threat to the Freedom of Expression of Internet Users in Brazil,” bloggers remain skeptical of their government’s intentions. At the “Carnival,” bloggers such as J.C. Caribé compared this piece of legislation to the authoritarian practices following the military coup of 1964, accusing the Brazilian Congress of “chorando lagrimes de crocodilo” or “crying crocodile tears.” By not clearly defining punishable offenses, the bill provides loopholes for the government to trample on individual rights to privacy and freedom of expression, a dangerous trend which has been common place in a country whose recent history has been dominated by military dictatorships.

Brazil court orders ISPs to block access to Wordpress blog

sally — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:25:58 -0400

ISPs in Brazil have been ordered by the court to block a Wordpress blog that holds apparently defamatory material. This is the second time a court order has been handed to Brazilian ISPs – the first targeted a YouTube video in January of 2007, which resulted in a 24-hour block of YouTube. In this case, a private party requested an injunction, specifically for the blog to be blocked, and received it.

According to Marcel Leonardi, a Brazilian lawyer and cyberscholar, ISPs have determined that it is not possible for them to block the single URL; they must block the entire Wordpress.com domain. Blocking a specific URL requires special filtering software and routing – somewhat more expensive technology that ISPs have not yet been required to implement, and for which there are few market incentives for adoption without being required. IP blocking, the most likely method to be used, is rather simple to implement, but carries high collateral costs, particularly in this case, by filtering the entire domain and any other web sites also associated with that IP address.

This situation arises in countries that have not required investments in sophisticated filtering, normally because they have chosen not to filter. However, in cases such as this, the ensuing collateral damage from filtering is often much higher. Brazil> doesn’t normally filter the Internet, and neither ISPs nor the government have seen reason to invest in sophisticated filtering apparatus. With this court order, there are three choices for the ISPs, none of them particularly desirable:

Block the whole domain using IP blocking or DNS tampering

Invest in filtering technology that they don’t want

Refuse the order

It is possible that at some point investing in filtering software might be a good business decision if enough blocking is being requested that the ability to keep a domain available outweighs the loss of the sites that are blocked. However, ISPs have not yet gotten to this point. By describing that they cannot block the single URL, they are laying bare the undesirable effects of ordering such a ban. Thus far, the block has not been implemented by ISPs, presumably because they await specific, formal notification from the court.

It is surprising that the parties chose to request the site be blocked, rather than requesting that the writer be prosecuted under defamation law. Many of the details of this case have not yet emerged, and we continue to follow its development.

Wordpress and other blog hosting services such as Blogspot have been blocked in a number of other countries, including China, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey. In a similar case from 2006 in India, a number of blogs were required to be blocked, and ISPs complied by removing entire blog service domains. The reaction was fierce, and the blocks rescinded.

YouTube Does Brazil

Rob — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:54:58 -0500

In September of last year, while on the beach in Spain, Brazilian supermodel and TV personality Daniela Cicarelli was filmed taking part in intimate acts with her boyfriend, Renato Malzoni, a Brazilian banker. The video naturally appeared soon thereafter on YouTube. A sympathetic judge agreed with the couple that the video was an inappropriate invasion of their rights to privacy and directed YouTube to remove the offending clip. The company then complied with a Brazilian court injunction to remove the video after the couple sued. YouTube appears to have made a good-faith effort to purge the clip from their site, except that the clip was repeatedly reposted by other users. Malzoni returned to court in December to argue that YouTube’s systems for blocking content were inadequate. Meanwhile, the clip had become the most watched clip on the video-sharing site in Brazil with over 5 million viewings. The judge agreed that further action was needed and Brazilian Internet service providers (ISPs) were subsequently instructed to ensure that the video clip on YouTube could not be accessed in Brazil. The ISPs, in no position to do better than YouTube in blocking a specific video clip, then moved to block the entire YouTube site on January 4th.

By the time that this step was taken, the clip had already propagated to numerous other video-sharing sites around the world, rendering the ban of YouTube in Brazil largely ineffective in protecting the right to privacy of the couple. The clip can be found easily by anyone interested in watching it.

Blocking YouTube entirely was clearly an overreaction and was soon reversed by the same judge. This case points out that the issue of balancing free speech and the right to privacy on the Internet is far from being settled. Indeed, there is no obvious resolution. With current technologies, removing inappropriate, offensive, or illegal content from the Internet is impossible in practical terms.

Law suits are one potential avenue for addressing this issue. After purchasing YouTube, Google represents a very large target for a wide range of possible law suits related to the posting of materials by individuals from around the world. However, holding YouTube or ISPs liable for damages associated with material that is libelous, impinges on copyrights or infringes on one’s right to privacy would come at a prohibitive cost; the impact of this on free expression would be profound. These private companies would be forced to preemptively filter anything that suggested trouble, producing a heavily sanitized version of the world.

In the United States, this impact is reflected in laws that limit liability for ISPs and online service providers. Section of 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides a safe harbor to online service providers if they expeditiously remove material that is alleged to violate copyright.

Individuals might be held liable in such cases, although this can be extremely difficult to enforce across international borders. This offers little comfort to Cicarelli and Malzoni. The irony being that their efforts to limit exposure fueled the publicity and popularity of the video.

The future of this is unclear. The next round will be fought under a new set of technological realities. Jonathan Zittrain points out that technology, though it does not now exist, might be developed to fingerprint a specific video clip. The policies of private companies such as Google and ISPs will adapt to these new possibilities and new legislation may be proposed. And Internet users will find new ways to circumvent the best intentions of both.

For those hoping to limit the free distribution of information on the Internet, the lesson in this is that the better publicized, more interesting, and perhaps more prurient the content, the harder it will be to limit. This is not unambiguously good news for free speech advocates. The tools, laws and policies that are developed to apply to these high-profile cases are easily adapted to more subtle and wide-reaching censorship of the Internet.