Copyright, open Internet, Access to Knowledge (A2K), data protection, freedom of expression, policy, patent, privacy, and photography

Brazil is currently undertaking a broad, open, and participative reform of its copyright act.

The purpose is to bring the law up to date with the digital age, to strengthen the rights of authors and consumers, and to address issues like private copying, format shifting, remixing, access for educational purposes, preservation of cultural heritage, orphan works, the collecting society’s management, and so on.

After more than four years of intense and broad discussions in numerous conferences, industry meetings and workshops around the country, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture published on 14 June 2010 a draft bill for public consultation (in Portuguese).

Before the Ministry made it available for public consultation, the draft bill was discussed and approved by the GIPI, the Portuguese acronym for Brazil’s Inter-ministerial Group on Intellectual Property (in Portuguese).

As of today, the draft bill has received more than 4,000 comments or suggestions (in Portuguese) for improvement.

The public consultation is open until 31 August. The registration for contributing to the online consultation requires a CPF (a registration number from the Brazilian Ministry of Finance). Nonetheless, making the text of Brazil’s copyright draft bill available in English (PDF file) is useful both for allowing readers outside Brazil to assess what is being discussed in Brazil, and for the ongoing debate on copyrights in countries across the globe.

The English version was kindly made possible due to the efforts of GPOPAI (Research Group on Public Policy for Access to Information) from Sao Paulo University.