Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed an Internet Bill of Rights into law yesterday—the first of its kind in the world. The new bill ensures the privacy of its users by restricting the amount of metadata that can be collected and also prohibits companies from restricting certain services by requiring the user to pay more, such as paying additional amounts for access to videos or email
Since its proposal in 2009, hundreds of individuals and organizations, including Google and Facebook, have supported and contributed to the content of the law. After over three years in the Chamber of Deputies, the bill moved to the Senate where it was approved on Monday. Following the signing of the new bill, President Rousseff delivered a speech at the NetMundial conference in São Paulo where she said, “The rights that people have off-line should also be protected on-line.” Participants at the forum represented 85 different countries and discussed the future of the internet. The conference was co-hosted with the U.S. and ten other countries.
One of the participants, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, encouraged other countries to follow Brazil’s lead, stating that they should “develop positive laws that protect and expand the rights of users in an open, free and universal Web.”
Tensions rose last September after the Wikileaks revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on foreign governments, including Brazil. As a result, Rousseff canceled a trip to the U.S. and requested action to require companies hosting data to Brazilians to do so from with-in Brazil.
