Brazilian Media Giant Realizes It Can Use The DMCA To Censor Criticism Of Its Coverage

from the what-a-wonderful-censorship-tool dept

As we’ve explained over and over again, copyright and censorship go hand in hand. People who want to censor seem to love the power that copyright conveys on them. Take, for example, the Brazilian media giant Globo. As you may have heard, there’s a big political fight down in Brazil, as the Congress there looks to impeach the President, Dilma Rousseff. It’s a big political mess, made even more ridiculous by the fact that many of the leading voices looking to impeach Rousseff have themselves been indicted for corruption or are being investigated for corruption. Last week, David Miranda wrote an article for the Guardian, arguing that the whole thing is political, and that the corruption claim against Rousseff is just a pretext for an opposing party to gain power. In that article, he blames the major media properties in Brazil for supporting the fiction in pushing an anti-Rousseff story.

The story of Brazil?s political crisis, and the rapidly changing global perception of it, begins with its national media. The country?s dominant broadcast and print outlets are owned by a tiny handful of Brazil?s richest families, and are steadfastly conservative. For decades, those media outlets have been used to agitate for the Brazilian rich, ensuring that severe wealth inequality (and the political inequality that results) remains firmly in place.

Indeed, most of today?s largest media outlets ? that appear respectable to outsiders ? supported the 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of rightwing dictatorship and further enriched the nation?s oligarchs. This key historical event still casts a shadow over the country?s identity and politics. Those corporations ? led by the multiple media arms of the Globo organisation ? heralded that coup as a noble blow against a corrupt, democratically elected liberal government. Sound familiar?

Globo TV was apparently not happy with that and asked the Guardian to post its response, written by the company’s Chair of the Editiorial Board, Joao Roberto Marinho, who apparently is the heir to the Globo empire.

Miranda then responded to Marinho over at the Intercept, to show why Globo has been extremely biased in pushing one side of the story in Brazil. Miranda goes through Globo’s somewhat sordid history as a propaganda arm, and then goes point for point debunking Marinho’s claims. Towards the end he tries to show just how one-sided Globo’s coverage has been:

For more than a year, one Globo-owned Epoca magazine cover after the next used manipulative, demonizing art to incite the public in favor of impeachment. The Twitter feeds of Globo?s stars ? both news and entertainment ? are filled every day with pro-impeachment propaganda. Even when Jornal Nacional tries to deny that it is placing its heavy finger on the scale in favor of pro-impeachment protests, it cannot help itself: It glorifies those pro-impeachment protests and gives them far more airtime than their pro-democracy counterparts:

After this, he linked to a video demonstrating all of this… but soon after his article went up, that video became this:

Yup. Globo suddenly decided to make a copyright claim on the video that was being used in an article demonstrating how its coverage has been incredibly biased. That video had been up for months before that with no problem, but just a little while after it was included in Miranda’s article it was gone. Poof.

And people still want to claim copyright isn’t regularly used as a tool for censorship?

Yes, the content in the video is content from Globo. But it’s not taking it down over any concern over licensing issues or “piracy.” It issued the takedown to clearly hide the video from the public viewing Miranda’s article. It is purely a censorship move, and copyright is just a convenient tool. Thankfully, others have been reuploading the videos elsewhere, but just think what will happen if the legacy entertainment industry is successful in pushing a “notice and staydown” regime? This kind of censorship will become much, much more effective.

Filed Under: brazil, censorship, copyright, criticism, david miranda, dilma rousseff, dmca, impeachment, joao roberto marinho
Companies: globo, youtube