Brazil govt, judiciary oppose online censorship bill

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Brazil govt, judiciary oppose online censorship bill

BRASILIA Brazil's government and judiciary on Tuesday objected to big tech firms campaigning against an Internet regulation bill aimed at cracking down on fake news, alleging undue interference in the debate in Congress.

The Fake News Law, a bill related to internet companies, search engines and social messaging platforms, requires the Internet companies to find and report illegal material, instead of leaving it to the courts, charging steep fines for failures to do so.

Tech firms have been campaigning against the bill, including Google LLC, which had added a link on its search engine in Brazil connecting to blogs against the bill and asking users to lobby their representatives.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino ordered Google to change the link on Tuesday, saying the company had two hours after notification or would face fines of one million reais $198,000 per hour if it did not.

This is not a media or an advertising company, the minister said, calling Google's link masked and misleading advertising for the company's stance against the law.

Google quickly pulled the link, though Google defended its right to communicate its concerns through marketing campaigns on its platforms and denied altering search results to favor material contrary to the bill.

We support discussions on measures to combat misinformation. All Brazilians have the right to be part of this conversation, and as such, we are committed to communicating our concerns about Bill 2630 publicly and transparently, the government said in a statement.

The proposed plan to penalty firms for not reporting fake news was due to be voted on on Tuesday in the lower house of Congress but its fate is uncertain due to resistance from conservative and Evangelical lawmakers who have sided with big tech firms against the government and its allies.

The bill's opponents say it needs a wider debate because it was too hastily drawn up, allow censorship and will have the opposite result of rewarding those who post disinformation since the bill proposes that companies would have to pay content providers and copyrights on material posted on their sites.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked Google, Meta and Spotify to testify within five days about their conduct regarding the bill.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes said such conduct could configure, in theory, abuse of economic power on the eve of voting on the bill by trying to illegally and immorally impact public opinion and the vote in Congress.

Cade, Brazil's antitrust regulator, said it will investigate Google and Meta's campaigns against the bill.

The Brazilian proposal is shaping up to be one of the strongest social media legislations globally, similar to the Digital Services Act enacted last year by the European Union.

One of the bill's authors who will report on it to Congress, Representative Orlando Silva of the Communist Party of Brazil, said the law is needed to curb fake news that has poisoned Brazilian politics and impacted elections.

Fake news led to the storming of government buildings on January 8 and has caused an environment of violence in our schools, he said.

The bill quickly progressed to the lower house after a series of fatal attacks in schools that social media allegedly encouraged, and new articles added to the bill have not been debated in Congressional committees before going to the vote.

Silva said that the original draft of the bill included the creation of a state agency to monitor illegal content, but this was dropped due to resistance in Congress.