Brazil: Amplified conversations to fight the Digital Crimes Bill

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    Date: 
    11 June 2009

    On May 14th a protest [pt] against the Digital Crimes Bill proposed by Senator Azeredo to typify crimes on the Internet took place in São Paulo to promote debate. On May 25th, it was time for a demonstration in Porto Alegre. On June 1st, a similar protest happened in Minas Gerais and a new one is being planned now in Rio de Janeiro.

    These protests have been called “Against the Digital AI-5” after the Brazilian dictatorship's Institutional Act Number Five or “AI-5“, the fifth, and considered the most cruel, of seventeen decrees issued by the military dictatorship in the years following the 1964 coup d'état in Brazil. Issued in 1968, AI-5 abolished freedom of expression by introducing the preliminary censorship of music, films, theater and television. Any work considered subversive to the political and moral values of the country was censored and artists jailed. AI-5 marked the transition to the toughest period of human rights violations in Brazilian history.