The Coup that they Call a Conversation (because we weren’t in the Senate)

Caetano Veloso invited me, while exchanging e-mails, to meet a group of people that, according to him, had been studying copyright law greatly and had some ideas different to mine. I always enjoyed a good conversation and accepted his invitation, despite not believing that good ideas can come from people influenced by “Vanisa Santiago”.

Internet Bill should Not Fail to Include the Respect for Intellectual Property as a Principle

As you know from other posts here and here, the House of Representatives is debating an Internet Bill which is framed as a “constitution for the Internet” and, as such, it purports to establish fundamental principles which should be followed on the Internet. Among the principles mentioned in the Bill are freedom of expression, privacy protection, neutrality, the preservation of the participative nature of the Internet.

Unauthorized Biography Bill avances in Congress

We have discussed in detail here the Unauthorized Biography bill which aims to avoid the prohibition of release of works based on unauthorized biographies of public persons such as books or movies.

The news is that the bill was approved by the House of Representatives last April 02, 2013 and will now go to the Senate for approval.

Carolina Dieckman Law or The Criminal Law on Invasion of Computer and Similar Devices

Last year the personal computer of a famous Brazilian actress was hacked and intimate photos of the beauty have found their way to the Internet. The whole episode, specially after the public in general realized that our books had no specific law to deal with this kind of problem, motivated Congress to move and approve a Law to deal with the invasion of a computer.

Law 12,737 has entered into force yesterday and will be an important tool to combat this type of criminal practice in the digital environment. It criminalizes conduct specific to this environment and imposes penalties that may discourage behavior such as invasion of computers or computing device.

Antitrust Authority Decision Practically Destroys the Current System of Collection of Public Performance Rights of Music In Brazil

A big question mark?

This is what was left of the current system of collection of public performance rights of music in Brazil after a decision from CADE the Administrative Council for Economic Defense yesterday.

The decision was motivated by a complaint from ABTA, the Association of Television under the subscription model and concluded that the associations which form ECAD, the Brazilian Public Performance Collecting Rights Society, act in a concerted manner to fix the rates of royalties for public performance collected by the Association. ECAD and the Associations which are part of ECAD were fined in a total of approximately 19 million dollars.

The Brazilian government announced a new Minister of Culture: what about the end of the copyright reform?

Adriano Vizoni/Folhapress

The president Dilma Rousseff announced this Tuesday that Ana de Hollanda no longer is the Minister of Culture in Brazil. The hard task of dealing who such affairs – including the reform of the Copyright Act – now pertains to Marta Suplicy, which is a former mayor of São Paulo.

Newborn Pay-TV Law Under Scrutiny

11-16-11 © subjug

The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil (STF) has set up a public consultancy for this semester of 2012, to discuss the law that regulates the pay TV regime locally (law 12.485) .

Coincidence or not, Minister Luiz Fux from STF, which had the initiative of convoking the public consultancy, was also designated the Reporter Judge of three ongoing actions filed by Partido Democrata (Adin 4679) , Associação Neo TV (Adin 4747) and Associação Brasileira de Radiodifusores (Adin 4756) respectively, that questions the constitutionality of the current law that regulates this matter.

Brazilian collection society under scrutiny

The Brazilian music public performance collection society – ECAD – is under heavy fire. In June, 2011 a Congressional Investigation at the Brazilian Senate was triggered to investigate several alleged frauds by ECAD. The investigation started after several complaints regarding ECAD’s lack of transparency, excessive collection and lack of criteria to determine and distribute the collected amounts. One of the complaints, for example, said that an employee of one of the associations that form ECAD (there are 9 in total) used the name of a bus driver to receive more than US$ 75,000.00 due to songwriters and performers.

As a result of the 10-month investigation, with several hearings and the collection of a vast amount of documents, a 350-page report, with more than 3 thousand exhibits was produced. It is a lot to read and to digest. By the end of the day, though, the document requests the indictment of 15 people who are – or were – part of ECAD and of the associations that form ECAD for a number of different crimes, such as misappropriation of funds, auditing fraud, formation of cartel and unjust enrichment.

Tax news is always bad news – CIDE apparently is applicable to copyrights

I believe it is a universal truth that taxes are never reduced or eliminated. In the year 2000, Brazil instituted a new tax called CIDE (acronym for “Contribution of Intervention in the Economic Domain”) which would be levied upon payments originated from contracts that foresee the remittance of royalties, of any nature, to beneficiaries outside Brazil. The purpose of the tax is to foment the technological development of the country. Basically 10% of everything that is remitted abroad under the denomination “royalties” would have to be collected.

But why am I addressing a 12-year old tax now?

2 years old: still young but going strong!

Our first post was published exactly two years ago and our blog still exists. That is a feat in itself, considering the little time we had to invest on it.

But the feedback we have had has been so great and encouraging that, as far as we are concerned, we are here to stay. It also helps that we have been able to bring to the battle front a few other contributors because last year, for various reasons, we let the blog go unattended for several weeks in a row. However, since the end of last year, we have been able to post at least once every week and that is our goal for 2012 and beyond.