Brazil's Emerging Roadmap for Internet Governance

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2014

This thesis is an examination of the roadmap Brazil is drawing to govern the Internet domestically, and potentially extend to other countries and the international system as a whole. This map includes the development of institutions and regulations to govern the infrastructure and information communications technology (ICT) used collectively and individually by Brazilian citizens. The principal means of depicting this roadmap are an exploration of the Marco Civil da Internet, a Bill of Rights for the Internet, and the Comitê Gestor da Internet, an Internet Steering Committee that governs and administers aspects of the country's national network. Through this examination of two principal examples and a number of secondary ones, Brazil's shows how to connect technical codes with political ideals to govern the new realities of the information age. To explain how this coexistence of political and technical ideals translates to policy objectives, this thesis will examine the legal code and history of the Marco Civil, the membership and objectives of the CGI, and the tenets created by the CGI instilled in the bill that now governs Brazil's Internet today. It also integrates the work of scholars that have developed theories to explain how governments collaborate with citizens through democratic, multistakeholder models that manage these new systems through technical means, such as the coordination and assignment of root level domains or the changeover to IPv6. The Internet is a revolutionary new mechanism to achieve objectives such as to innovate and develop economies, ensure security, network neutrality, freedom of expression, privacy and human rights. By constructing and administering ICT infrastructure through a revolutionary democratic model enabled by the strongest network possible, the Marco Civil contains both technical and political elements to build and maintain a stronger civil society, democratic system and economy simultaneously. This is what makes these new Brazilian regulations and institutions revolutionary, pioneering examples of how to approach our new reality.