Rapporteur waves to religious people when slicing PL from Fake News – 05/17/2023 – Power

The rapporteur for the project in the Chamber that deals with artists’ copyrights, deputy Elmar Nascimento (União Brasil-BA), included in the text criteria for the remuneration paid by big techs to journalistic companies, including vehicle audience and original content.

Elmar also nodded to religious people —mainly evangelicals— by including in the proposal a device to include preaching among protected intellectual works, in addition to establishing that artists who interpret religious works will be covered by the law.

The copyright project is a slicing of the Fake News PL, which deals with the regulation of platforms, but which has faced resistance from deputies in the Chamber.

The expectation is that the urgency of the copyright bill will be voted on by the Chamber this Wednesday (17). The request seeks to shorten the processing rite, removing the requirement to go through other commissions. With that, the project could be voted directly in the plenary.

The bill under analysis is authored by deputy Jandira Feghali (PC do B-RJ).

Elmar Nascimento, who is leader of União Brasil, inserted in his opinion some devices on remuneration to journalism companies that were in the Fake News PL, reported by Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP), and added others detailing criteria for this.

Elmar Nascimento’s opinion indicates that the remuneration should consider, cumulatively, the volume of original journalistic content produced, the vehicle’s digital audience and the investment in journalism measured by the number of journalism professionals regularly hired by the journalistic company, registered in the payroll and submitted to Rais (Annual List of Social Information).

The rapporteur predicts that journalistic content used by providers in text, video, audio or image formats will generate remuneration for journalistic companies. According to the text, the remuneration should not burden the user who accesses and shares journalistic content on his profile or account.

The text suggests that broadcasting companies and other companies, even individual ones, created at least two years ago may receive remuneration. The report says that they must produce original journalistic content on a regular, organized, professional basis and have a physical address and responsible editor in Brazil.

The proposal indicates that, if the provider and the newspaper company do not reach an agreement on remuneration, arbitration may be adopted before the Private Arbitration Chamber or with an arbitration commission organized by the Ministry of Justice —if there is a provocation by the journalistic companies.

The arbitration process may not exceed 90 days. In addition, the newspaper company may, two years after the decision in the arbitration process, submit a request for review of the established remuneration.

According to the deputy’s opinion, Cade (Administrative Council for Economic Defense) will curb acts of violation of the economic order in the area of ​​copyright.

There are divergences between the communication vehicles about the form of remuneration for journalistic content originally foreseen in the Fake News PL. Entities such as Abert (Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters), Aner (National Association of Magazine Editors) and ANJ (National Association of Newspapers), which brings together the main media outlets, including Sheet, defend the bill; Smaller vehicles fear losing funding because they have less bargaining power.

Elmar Nascimento’s text exempts remuneration for content posted by third parties in private conversations carried out in messaging applications.

The initial forecast was that the urgency of the project would be voted on the 9th, but disagreements within the government itself postponed the vote on the application.

Government parliamentarians differ on the effect of voting on Jandira’s project on the Fake News PL reported by Orlando Silva. Some estimate that slicing can have a positive effect, by reducing resistance in relation to the points that were in the original project. Others think that, with the split vote, the proposed regulation of big techs may lose strength.