"Brazil’s 'Remuneration Right' Strengthens Big Tech and Big Media, At the Cost of Free Expression and a Free Press", 21 March 2022

The remuneration rule in the “Fake News Bill” is a made-in-Brazil installment that is poised to become law, despite the complaints of civil society and independent media associations. EFF has been analyzing and reporting on the bill since its earliest stages in the Brazilian Congress.

The latest text, which has been approved by a working group in the Chamber of Deputies, still contains dangerous language for free expression and digital rights… [T]here is also persistent political pressure to revive the unsettling traceability mandate for private messages. Just as dangerous, however, is the “remuneration obligation” for publishers... In a nutshell, this provision compels platforms to compensate media companies for use of "journalistic content."

As is, the provision, if enacted, will change the way core digital human rights values like free expression and access to knowledge are interpreted by businesses, courts and regulators. There’s the risk that the country's media giant Globo and other big media outlets will capture the regulators who design and enforce the payment system. Even if the obligation to pay is never enforced, the looming threat of its enforcement could be used by big media companies to secure paydays from big tech companies, leaving small media companies behind.

… Brazilian legislators should listen and drop the flawed remuneration obligation from the Fake News bill.