Draft Once; Deploy Everywhere? Contextualizing Digital Law and Brazil’s Marco Civil da Internet

Abstract

On Congressional approval in 2014, Brazil’s charter of civil rights for the Internet, the Marco Civil da Internet, was widely acclaimed as a template for national Internet policy elsewhere in the world. This was the result of a phenomenon I dub “draft once; deploy everywhere,” a pervasive belief in the universality of Internet law. This presumption underpins multiple charters of Internet rights drafted by digital rights organizations and policymakers. By showing how the Marco Civil was bitterly contested by blocks of powerful actors, the role played by Brazil’s recent history of dictatorship as well as its status at the margins of the global digital economy, I problematize the Marco Civil’s status as a global blueprint. This matters because without proper contextualization, the effective transfer of Internet law across national jurisdictions will be harder to realize, and their democratic virtues will prove more elusive.