Bill No. 130/2020 changes the Brazilian Traffic Code, provides penalties for application providers that fail to remove media related to traffic violations and creates monitoring obligation for infringing content

On February 2, 2022, the House of Representatives approved Bill No. 130/2020, that among its provisions prohibits the dissemination of photos or videos of serious traffic violations, of conducts that jeopardize individual or third parties’ safety in traffic or that constitute traffic crimes, as established in the Brazilian Traffic Code (Law No. 9.503/97).
 
According to the Bill, the dissemination or publishing on social networks or any other digital or printed means, of visual records of these events are expressly prohibited, and can subject the person responsible for the post or publication to fines, criminal prosecution and to seizure of his/her driver’s license.

The Bill of Law expressly establishes a specific term for platforms to comply with take down orders, requires platforms to take measures to prevent new publications or postings of the same content and creates additional penalties in case of non-compliance. Platforms and other internet applications must comply with any court order to take down such type of content within 24 hours, and failure to comply within such timeframe can subject the platform or internet application to a fine of 50-times that applicable to serious traffic (approx. USD 5,000), and to an additional penalty as described below. The take down must also be informed by the company to the user responsible for the publication, specifying the reasons why it was removed.
 

Also, the Bill of Law creates an obligation for platforms and other internet applications to monitor by taking measures to prevent new publications or postings of the same content. And it expressly sets forth that, in addition to the Code of Traffic’s penalties, failure to comply with take down orders may subject platforms and other internet applications to the following penalties of the Brazilian Internet Legal Framework: a warning and a fine of up to 10% of the net income of the economic group in Brazil in the last fiscal year, considering the economic condition of the company and proportionality of the measure. Under the Internet Legal Framework, however, those penalties are applicable only when there is a violation of the privacy obligations established by its Articles 10 and 11. Therefore, this Bill of Law extended the applicability of the penalties to instances where the applications fail to timely comply with take down orders, regardless if there is any privacy issue (e.g., regardless if the content of publication includes the identification of persons involved in traffic violations or other personal data).

 
The obligation for platforms to monitor and take measures to prevent new postings of the same infringing content was removed when the Bill of Law was voted in the Senate, but the House of Representatives rejected Senate’s amendment and maintained the obligation. Now, the Bill will be sent to the presidential sanction, when vetoes may be applied.
 
Our team will continue to monitor the sanction of this Bill and whether there will be relevant vetoes that may impact activities of platforms and internet application providers, and is available for any queries.