Dear Platform Friends! I honestly did not anticipate this would happen anytime soon, but the Brazilian Congress is actually considering a bill that includes some of the main elements of the Santa Clara Principles. The issue, however, is much more complicated than it may seem. The so-called Fake News bill was rushed through the Senate in the last couple of months and valuable discussion opportunities have been lost. Many Brazilian activists and scholars were being forced to go over new 60+ page reports published by the rapporteur every two days with new versions of the bill, sometimes containing drastic changes. Right now it seems this will repeat itself in the House of Representatives, as news outlets today reported that the House president has declared both his intent to have the bill go through the House in two or three weeks and his belief in the need for stark punishment - including criminal prosecution - of people responsible for disseminating fake news. Because any substantive changes to the bill at this point would require it to go back to the Senate, it is unlikely that we will see multiple versions of the bill being formalized every couple of days. This is good news given how little time civil society in Brazil will have to make its voice heard. It is important to note that most if not all previous versions of the bill contained appalling dispositions that urged Brazilians to sound the alert abroad and I am thankful that many foreign activists and scholars answered and weighed in. While there remain controversial and perhaps even unconstitutional dispositions in the version that emerged from the Senate, none compare in their predictable negative social impact as the previous version of article 7 that would have forced social networks to required picture IDs from any user upon registration, or dispositions that would have increased the jail time for online defamation or even the obligation of social networks to moderate 'disinformation'. The attitude of many civil society groups that did not carefully go over the current version, however, remains one of rejection of the bill in its entirety. With the text changing rapidly, the Senate’s disregard for civil society input and elements of the bill lost in translation, many foreigners who have never had the opportunity to actually read the text of the bill seem to be under the impression that it still contains all of the worst aspects of each version that was circulated. My concern results not only from the fact that this is not the case, but also from my opinion that there are dispositions in the bill that would create much needed guarantees to protect users from social networks. Articles 12 and 13 would enshrine in legislation safeguards that scholars (including in this list) have recommended for years. It is my opinion, therefore, that civil society should use its precious time and efforts to criticize and try to repel specific dispositions (the proverbial bath water) and perhaps save articles 12 and 13, if nothing else - there are other dispositions that are very welcome, such as articles 14, 15 and 18, first paragraph. The team at the Center for Technology and Society at FGV Law School in Rio hopes to allow all non-Portuguese-speaking stakeholders to make up their own mind about the bill. =) We have hastily but carefully translated all of the text to English and made it available here: bit.ly/br_fakenewsbill. While we wholeheartedly welcome suggestions to improve the final result, we hope that a translation manually curated by legal researchers will contribute to significantly enhance the international debate about the bill. I look forward to your thoughts! Best regards, Ivar On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 9:43 PM Nicolas Suzor <nic(a)suzor.net> wrote: