The rapporteur of the Fake News bill, MP Orlando Silva (PCdoB-SP), said on Tuesday 25, that the proposal should be voted on next Tuesday, 2, on the plenary of the House. The information was given shortly after a meeting of party leaders with the Speaker of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL). The idea is that the deputies vote on the emergency request of the project this Tuesday. If approved, the text is voted on directly in plenary, bypassing the committees.

“I made a presentation to the leaders of all parties in the Chamber of Deputies and to Speaker Arthur Lira on PL 2630/2020. fair,” Silva said. Earlier, the issue was also discussed in a meeting with the leaders of the government base in the House.

After the leaders’ meeting, Lira is expected to meet the President of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Minister Alexandre de Moraes, to discuss the project. Moraes also has a scheduled meeting with Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG).

Text of the proposal

The text of the proposal deals, for example, with accountability, identity verification, transparency, monetization and content enhancement. In practice, this lengthens the list of what must be removed from the air before a court decision. The Ministry of Justice and Public Security has already sent the Congress proposals for the text, which have been handed over to the rapporteur of the project. According to the Chief Minister of the Secretariat for Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha, the government’s dialogue with Congress to deal with this file is open, and a rapid approval is expected.

“We need a definitive solution so that what is prohibited in real life is not allowed in virtual life. The Congress must take inspiration from this. I think the rapporteur is inspired by this for the report. A important project for situations like the front page directly related to the attacks on schools and attacks like those of January 8 do not continue in our country,” he said.

Liability of service providers

The text also deals with the responsibilities of Internet service providers. Computer scientist Henrique Faulhaber points out that the proposal is not intended to censor social networks. “In a matter that involves opinion, companies cannot be allowed to take out of the air what they think could result in a fine and with that create censorship,” he said.

The proposal also provides for the creation of an Internet Transparency and Accountability Council, made up of 21 councilors – including representatives from the Legislative Assembly, the National Council of Justice (CNJ), the Management Committee of Internet in Brazil and Civil Society. . The lack of regulation of big tech, the companies responsible for social media and search engines, has been discussed around the world, and in Brazil the subject is covered in the Bill of Fake News. The proposal is that these companies pay for the journalistic content they publish, as is already the case in Australia.

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Compensation for journalistic content

In an interview with R7, Orlando Silva said the legislation is important to promote appreciation for professional journalism in the digital age. “Journalism is even used to provide traffic to social networks, to search engines, and that’s why I think that when there is journalistic content indexed, published on social networks and search engines , there must be remuneration for this work.”

The parliamentarian mentioned the debates taking place in the world with the aim of finding a balance between the sustainability of the press and big tech. Australia is a pioneer in terms of approving regulations on the subject. Two years ago, the Media Negotiation Code came into force in the country. This Australian law provides that companies remunerate the producers of content broadcast on the platforms on the basis of an agreement between the parties. The government only intervenes when there is no consensus – which, so far, has not happened.

With the legislation taking effect, news companies across the country have taken in more than $200 million a year from Google and Facebook, according to an article by Rod Sims, a professor at the Australian National University. The model has inspired other countries, such as Canada. The Canadian Parliament is expected to vote on the rule later this year. India, Indonesia, Spain and the United States are also discussing regulatory models.

Thinking about the financial compensation of the media that produce content on the part of the platforms is considered by specialists as fundamental to recover the role of journalism in democracy. Australian legislation was drafted with this in mind, but there have been deadlocks.

Senior researcher at the Rio de Janeiro Institute of Technology and Society (ITS), João Victor Archegas points out that Facebook, for example, argued that it had no meaningful compensation for making journalistic content available on the platform. Therefore, due to the new Australian law, he spoke of suspending the possibility of sharing this material on the social network.

“At first, therefore, the settlement ended up having a negative effect. The situation in Australia only moved towards a solution when the platforms and the government reached an agreement that this issue would be resolved through negotiations in a sort of arbitration chamber”, contextualized Archegas, pointing out that the model allowed for bilateral agreements between the parties. Archegas warned that the Fake News PL should align the deal between the parties to avoid a backfire, as happened at the start of the Australian talks.

For Leonardo Lazzarotto, an advertising and marketing specialist, the important thing is to find a balance, especially with regard to the distribution of digital advertising. He said that Google and Facebook alone account for 81% of digital advertising investment worldwide. “The challenge of these new times is to find the balance so that the press continues to play its indispensable role, with enough income to maintain the activity, with the participation of big technologies and all their digital solutions for society” , said Lazzarotto.