[WSIS CS-Plenary] Let the Music Play in Brazil - Sign the Petition for Balanced Copyright Law in Brazil

[Robin Gross]

Sign the Petition for Balanced Copyright Law in Brazil!

FGV Law School - Center for Technology & Society (Brazil), IP Justice, 
Derechos Digitales (Chile), CPSR-Peru and others have launched an online 
petition for balanced copyright law in Brazil to permit personal use 
copying of music. Thanks to music-industry lobbying, it is illegal to 
copy your own music CDs onto your own iPod for your own personal use in 
Brazil. Sign the petition to stand-up for individual rights to use 
digital media!

Petition available for signature in English, Castellano, and Portuguese at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/netlivre/

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Excerpt of petition:

[...]

Copyright law should not make criminals out of the millions of 
Brazilians online — the Brazilian copyright law must change to prevent 
actions like these.

*Sign the Petition Online for Amending the Brazilian Law*

It’s time to face the fact that in today’s world, copyright law is not 
adequate to the current technological reality. Our current copyright 
regime makes any internet user a potential criminal and copyright infringer.

The Brazilian Copyright law enacted in 1998 suppressed all the rights of 
private copy. For instance, if you copy a CD that you legally bought in 
a store to your iPod in Brazil, you are violating the copyright law. The 
former copyright law that was in force during more than 25 years, from 
1973 to 1998, expressly protected the right of private of copy. In other 
words, the old law is better than the new one, and the old provisions 
must be reinstated. Additionally, it is important to build a 
constructive solution for offering internet users a legal way to use P2P 
programs while ensuring that artists get paid. And this solution will 
not come from lawsuits against music fans, but from the discussion of 
more sophisticated and rational business models.

Numerous institutions like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, IP 
Justice, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law 
School are working with models that allow artists to be compensated at 
the same time that users have their rights to use technology respected.

If the millions of intenet users in Brazil start to organize themselves 
to protect their rights of acess and to use technology, the Brazilian 
law can be modified as a result of this action. Sign the online petition 
to modify the Brazilian copyright law, requesting Congress to approved 
the proposed bill written by the Brazilian Intellectual Property 
Association (ABPI), transcribed below, and that tries to reach a balance 
between copyright and access to knowledge and the overall interest of 
society.

* PROPOSAL FOR CHANGING ARTICLE 46 OF LAW NO. 9610/98 *

Article 46 would have the following reading:

Art. 46. It does not constitute an offense to copyright the partial or 
total reproduction, the distribution, and any form o utilization of 
intellectual works that, according to their nature, fulfill two or more 
of the following principles, respected the moral rights set forth by 
article 24:

I - have as the objective criticism, commentary, news, education, 
teaching, research, production of legal or administrative proofs, 
exclusive use on the part of visually impaired people, and any other 
procedure in any support to them, preservation or study of the work, or 
yet, to the demonstration to consumers in commercial establishments, 
provided that these establishments also commercialize the support and 
the equipment which allow for the use of the works, in the extension 
justified to reach these ends;

II - its finality is not essentially commercial to the recipient of the 
reproduction and to those who are benefited by the distribution and 
utilization of the intellectual works;

III - the effect in the potential market of the work is individually 
immaterial, not producing harm to the normal exploitation of the work;

Sole Paragraph - The application of the item II of this article is not 
justified only by the fact that the recipient of the reproduction or 
those who are benefited by the distribution and utilization of the 
intellectual works be a governmental company or a governmental body, 
foundation, association or any other non-profit organization.

*Petition available for signature in English, Castelano, Spanish at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/netlivre/ *

*The following institutions support this document:*

Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade / Escola de Direito do Rio de Janeiro 
da Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brasil) - www.direitorio.fgv.br/cts / 
www.culturalivre.org.br / www.direitodeacesso.org

IP Justice (EUA) - www.ipjustice.org

Free Culture (EUA) - www.freeculture.org

Association des Audionautes (Franca) - http://www.audionautes.net/

Derechos Digitales (Chile) - http://www.derechosdigitales.org/

iRights - http://irights.info/

CPSR-Peru (Peru) - http://www.cpsr-peru.org

Alternative Law Forum (India) - http://www.altlawforum.org