PL 2630: Deputies will withdraw remuneration from journalism – 05/06/2023 – Power

The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and leaders of the main parties in the House closed an agreement to remove from the Fake News PL the points that deal with remuneration, by platforms, to artists and journalism companies.

The goal is to try to secure a majority for the approval of bill 2630, which had its vote postponed last Tuesday (2nd) for fear of defeat, despite the text having the support of Lira, from the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ( PT) and members of the STF (Federal Supreme Court).

The two points that will be removed from the proposal must be part of another project, authored by deputy Jandira Feghali (PC do B-RJ), and which will be reported by deputy Elmar Nascimento (União Brasil-BA), one of Lira’s main allies .

The information about the withdrawal of points was published by the Metrópoles website and confirmed by Sheet.

According to parliamentarians who participated in the negotiations, in the next few days the urgency of Jandira Feghali’s project (PL 2370/2019) should be voted on, which, if approved, allows its direct analysis in plenary without the need to complete the procedure in the committees of the House.

The project has already had the request for urgency included in the voting agenda of the week in the plenary of the Chamber.

Feghali’s PL deals only with remuneration to artists by way of copyright. By the political agreement sewn by Lira and leaders of the benches, the obligation of the platforms to remunerate the journalistic content produced by the communication companies would be added to this text by the rapporteur, Elmar Nascimento.

Last week, the deputy participated in a meeting of the party’s bench with artists and signaled that, if the Fake News PL did not advance in the House, parliamentarians would look into a separate text that dealt with copyright.

“It is an initiative to meet the demand of artists, who were hitchhiking in the wrong car. Elmar is a person of the center, he will symbolize, as rapporteur, that nobody wants to enter into a dispute between right and left, but that this issue is bigger than what a political dispute. Culture is our country’s greatest asset,” said the leader of the PSB in the Chamber, Felipe Carreras.

“There is a concern to guarantee the rights of artists, authors of all arts and languages ​​and derivative rights, that is, image rights, rights of all areas on digital platforms. The urgency comes from this concern”, said federal deputy Jandira Feghali (PC do B-RJ).

The PL for the regulation of social networks and messaging applications is currently one of the topics that most divides parliamentarians. It was approved by the Senate in 2020 and, if it passes the House now, it will return for the senators’ final say.

With Congress pressured to act after the coup acts of January 8 and the attacks on schools, the Chamber of Deputies accelerated the processing of the project and approved the emergency regime by 238 votes to 192.

After public pressure from big techs, Bolsonarists and the evangelical bench, the vote on the merits of the proposal was postponed.

The current text under discussion brings together contributions from the proposal approved by the Senate and modifications incorporated by the rapporteur in the Chamber, Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP).

Among the main points of the proposal approved in the Senate are the duty of platforms to veto inauthentic accounts, the mandatory disclosure of quarterly transparency reports on content moderation, the possibility for providers to create a self-regulation institution and a fine of up to 10% of the billing of the economic group in Brazil in case of non-compliance with the law.

In the Chamber, the rapporteur included, among others, punishment of big techs for content with violations of the Democratic State Law, civil liability of platforms for any boosted or monetized content and transparency of content recommendation algorithms.

To overcome resistance in the Chamber, the rapporteur removed from the text the creation of a regulatory agency to supervise the platforms and made explicit the free exercise of religious cults and the “full exposure” of their dogmas and sacred books. This was not enough, however, to overcome opposition to the measure.

Meta, Twitter, Google and TikTok call for the creation of a special commission to deal with the issue and criticize the accountability of platforms for third-party content, which could, in the view of companies, lead to “private censorship”.

Google also says that the text could jeopardize the search for quality information and freedom of expression and hinted that it could cut its investments in journalism if it is approved.

The religious bench and Bolsonarist deputies, who oppose Lula, claim that there is an intention to censor social networks based on ideological principles.