Brazil to Give Away Control of its Own TV Networks?

In spite of strong opposition on the part of consumer groups and civil society in general, Brazil is about to embrace DRM for its new digital television system. The situation is especially worrisome when one considers that TV is the number one network in Brazil, reaching more than 90% of Brazilian households. If the broadcasters succeed, DRM will be installed in all Brazilian set-top boxes, i.e., the digital signal decoders for analogical TV sets.

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To make things worse, the Brazilian Constitution sets forth that television must be “free and gratuitous”. Accordingly, if the DRM is implemented, it directly violates this constitutional definition. In addition to that, Brazilian Copyright Law explicitly allows limitations on copyright that actually allows copying and quoting excerpts of TV programmes. With the DRM, the technology is not able to distinguish between the types of uses that are allowed by law, and the types that are not. Good and bad uses will be dealt with in the same way: they will be equally blocked.

Brazil is set to adopt an American DRM system as mandatory for its national broadcast TV apparatus. This won't stop copying -- most of the foreign programs are broadcast without DRM in the USA and Europe, and will end up on the same Internet that Brazilians use. But it will create a system under which Brazil's culture and technology sector are subject to a veto by a foreign DRM consortium. After Brazil adopts DRM for its TV, local technology firms won't be able to build Brazilian TV equipment (including software for PC-based viewing) without paying license fees to (and getting permission from) the HDCP consortium. At the same time, Brazilian producers will only be able to offer their programs on the terms devised by a boardroom full of foreigners from rich, developed nations.