Brazilian PLC 89/03

Dom Jul 6 10:12:59 UTC 2008

On Jul 5, 2008, Richard M Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:

> These issues are important because they threaten citizens' rights.  It
> is vital not to do them wrong, and yet the Senate is rushing things.

> Block it now, so that the issues can be considered better in the
> future.

Thanks.  I tried to fit these ideas in the draft below.

> desper

??  This e-mail was apparently unfinished or corrupted.

Anyhow, here's a draft press release.  It would probably be wise to
publish it on Monday, so we don't have much time to polish it further
and translate it.  Nevertheless, comments (and hopefully board
approval) are welcome.

I'll probably work on translating it to Portuguese after getting some
sleep.  Help in translating it to Portuguese and Spanish are
definitely welcome.

Thanks in advance,

== Stop authoriterrorism.net.br

Brazil, July 7, 2008---Pressure from banks against on-line fraud,
already covered by existing law, is being used as excuse to push
through major threats to society. Puppets in the Brazilian Senate are
about to approve a bill supported by banking and copyright profiteers
in detriment of freedom and privacy of the people they were elected to
serve and represent. Bill 89/2003 criminalizes day-to-day Internet
activities, and it is likely to be voted in the Senate this week.
 http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/2008-07-05-surpresa,-sou-contra (in Portuguese)

The bill introduces on-line surveillance, demanding networking service
providers to record customers' every on-line activity, and to share
with authorities logs and received reports of possibly-illicit
activities.  The wording is so broad that providers may be heftily
fined if they fail to retain, for at least 3 years, a copy of every
packet that crosses its network.  Even more serious than the costs and
risks, imposed on service providers, is the danger to users' privacy,
ensuring the possibility of retroactive wiretapping of every VoIP
phone call, every e-mail or instant message sent or received, every
visited web-page and every on-line transaction.

It further establishes jail time for such broad activities as
unauthorized access to computer systems, networks, and data stored in
them.  In spite of being justified and promoted by banks on the
grounds of stopping criminals from obtaining, selling or destroying
information through fraud or exploitation of vulnerabilities, it is
worded so broadly that it can be easily abused by suppliers of
electronic equipment (computers such as servers, desktops, laptops,
video games, cell phones, digital cameras, media players and
recorders, etc) and of digitally-encoded information (text, audio,
video, software, etc).

Abuses may range from legal threats to actual jail time for people who
unlock video games or cell phones to install software not approved by
the supplier; who work around deliberate defects in media players or
recorders to gain access to songs or movies stored in them; who use
copyrighted works in ways that do not infringe on copyrights, but that
authoriterrorists would like to outlaw.
 http://defectivebydesign.org/
 http://drm.info/

Authoriterrorism is the practice of (i) mislabeling as property a
limited monopoly granted by society to get, after an originally short
period of deprivation, more creative works available for all to enjoy
and build upon; (ii) promoting the extension of the monopoly and other
authoritarian laws that grant authoriterrorists technical and legal
means to steal from society the fulfillment of the goal of copyrights;
(iii) using these technical and legal measures and scare tactics to
stop people from using works in ways that fall outside the scope or
the period of the monopoly; (iv) brainwashing people so they believe
they don't and shouldn't have the right to use works in these ways,
that it would somehow harm authors (as if authoriterrorists didn't),
and that it is the moral equivalent of invading ships, stealing the
cargo and enslaving or murdering the tripulation.
 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml
 http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/2008-07-02-against-DRM-law-in-Canada
 http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/PIFAQ (in Portuguese)

But just think for a moment about who is invading our homes, building
spies and policemen into our electronic equipment; tying our hands,
and putting on blinds and gags on us through this same equipment,
stealing through force our fair use rights and the public domain;
enslaving us by ensuring we can only do what they want us to do, and
killing our wish to fight for our rights by fooling us into feeling
guilty.  Who are the real pirates, and who is really being harmed?

Bills that would give even more power to the powerful authoritarian
intermediaries, that exploit authors and terrorize society, appear to
not be in short supply these days. Rushing them to approval, avoiding
public debate, is a common trait for such bills that harm the society.
 http://www.defectivebydesign.org/fight-the-canadian-dmca
 http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-72379/european-parliament-rushes-towards-soviet-internet
 http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1117

Representatives in democratic governments ought to remember what
democracy stands for, that the law in a democratic state is supposed
to benefit society, and resist the pressure and the lobbying to grant
any authoriterrorist even more power over the people they represent.

Fraud, blackmail, violation of privacy and of trade secrets are
already crimes, regardless of whether they're perpetrated on-line, and
they haven't prevented Brazilian banks from making huge and growing
profits.

Permanent on-line surveillance is too much of a privacy threat to be
regarded as a potential solution for these crimes, rather than a
problem on its own, and there is no doubt that the availability of all
this information will be abused by authoriterrorists as well.

We beg for help in bringing this urgent issue to the public's
attention, lifting the apparent gag order upon the national press, and
bringing to public shame any representative who sells out and votes
into law this anti-democratic weapon of mass criminalization.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}