Internet Intermediaries’ Liability: A North American Perspective
Carlos Affonso Souza, Mario Viola and Ronaldo Lemos (eds.), Brazil’s Internet Bill of Rights: A Closer Look, 2nd ed. (Editar Editora Associada, 2017)
21 Pages Posted: 22 Mar 2018
Date Written: 2017
Abstract
The Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights established a brand new framework for Internet intermediaries’ liability regarding third parties’ content and activities. As explained in the previous chapter, the new Act provides for generous legal safe harbours to the benefit of Internet access providers and Internet application providers while also framing two derogatory regimes for revenge porn and copyright.
This chapter compares the Internet Bill of Rights with both Canadian and U.S. frameworks and establishes that the Brazilian federal legislator is not the first to set different frameworks for varying matters, such as revenge porn and copyright. As the liability scheme for copyright infringement has yet to be designed, a comparison with Canada and the United States is particularly of interest. Indeed, the two North American jurisdictions have adopted different approaches to the matter. This chapter argues that Brazil should frame the upcoming copyright scheme following Canada’s notice-and-notice approach, considering it is the only one to be consistent with principles set by the Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights.
As such, this chapter will only focus on legal frameworks advanced by statutes and case law. It should be borne in mind that the discussed provisions, while designing safe harbours for intermediaries, doesn’t render them mandatory. Certainly, access and applications providers are free to provide for other mechanisms through their terms of use, notably to streamline their process across jurisdictions. It is worth clarifying that the chapter will only consider intermediaries’ liability with respect to the content of third parties – also known as “user-generated content” –, i.e. content they didn’t directly author or actively contribute to.
Keywords: Internet; Intermediaries; Canada; Brazil; United States of America
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