The plenary of Supreme Federal Court (STF) re-judge on Wednesday (4) the constitutionality of article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet. Ministers will discuss whether or not the big techs are responsible for criminal content posted by users on their platforms.
Article 19 of the current Internet Civil Marco defines that a court order specified to exclude content for internet providers, websites and social networking managers are responsible for damage caused by illegal posts published by third parties.
The decision to be taken by the ministers has general repercussions (theme 987) and occurs within the scope of the Extraordinary Appeal (RE) 1037396, reported by Minister Dias Toffoli. In the present case, Facebook questions a decision of the São Paulo Court of Justice (TJSP) that determined the exclusion of a false profile on the social network.
In another appeal (RE 1057258), reported by Minister Luiz Fux, Google tries to reverse a decision, determined by the Minas Gerais Court of Justice (TJMG), to pay moral damages for not excluding an Orkut community created to offend a person. In both situations, the rapporteurs denied the provision of resources.
Two ministers – Dias Toffoli and Luiz Fux – have already voted to expand the hypotheses of liability of the platforms.
The court’s last discussion on the subject took place on December 18 last year. In the trial, the president of the Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, voted against the filing of appeals and presented three hypotheses: removal by court order, removal by extrajudicial notification and general duty of care.
The trial was paused after the request for a view of Minister André Mendonça.
This week, Minister Gilmar Mendes spoke out about the trial and said the result “could mean at least a sketch of social media regulation.”
Yesterday, at a news conference, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) also opined on the regulation of networks. “We have to make a regulation, whether by Congress or Supreme Court, as soon as possible. Because it is not possible for a guy to try to coup on January 8 and say that this is freedom of expression. You know this country’s lie factory,” he said.
In a statement on the trial, Google says that “abolishing rules that separate civil liability from platforms and users will not contribute to the end of the circulation of unwanted content on the Internet.”
“The Internet Civil Framework can and should be improved, provided that procedural guarantees and criteria that avoid legal uncertainty and indiscriminate content removal are established. Google removes, efficiently and on a large scale, content in violation of the rules of each of its platforms. There are hundreds of millions of content removed per year by the company itself, in line with the public rules of each product,” he explains.
