Brazil is once again at a crossroads on internet policy. In recent weeks, lawmakers in Brasília have accelerated work on PL 2331/2022, a sweeping bill that would impose Brazilian-content quotas, expanded contributions to the Condecine audiovisual fund, and new investment obligations on streaming platforms. At the same time, ANATEL — Brazil's telecom regulator — is preparing recommendations on whether large over-the-top (OTT) services should make 'fair-share' payments to network operators, echoing a debate that European regulators have largely abandoned as evidence-free.
The instinct behind these proposals is understandable. Brazil's audiovisual sector has been transformed by global streaming, and policymakers want to make sure local creators, languages, and stories are not crowded out. But the bills now moving through Congress and the consultations open at ANATEL risk stacking compounding obligations on a single segment of the digital economy — without strong evidence that the resulting burdens will achieve their stated goals, and with serious risks for the open internet Brazil has cultivated since the Marco Civil da Internet (Law 12.965/2014) was enacted.
What's actually on the table
Three regulatory tracks are converging at once:
- Streaming quotas and Condecine reform. PL 2331/2022 would extend the Contribution for the Development of the National Cinema Industry (Condecine) to video-on-demand services and require a fixed minimum share of Brazilian and independent content in catalogues, with prominence rules for how titles must be promoted on home screens.
- Fair-share contributions. ANATEL's consultation on the relationship between OTTs and connectivity providers is exploring whether platforms should compensate telecom operators for traffic they generate — a proposal that mirrors the EU's now-stalled 'fair contribution' idea.
- Online-safety overlays. A revived version of PL 2630 — the so-called 'Fake News bill' — is being repackaged into narrower duty-of-care obligations, but with significant compliance overhead for any platform with a meaningful Brazilian audience.
Taken individually, each measure has defenders with serious arguments. Taken together, they amount to a major rewrite of the digital regulatory environment that Marco Civil and the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD, Law 13.709/2018) established only a few years ago.
The fair-share idea has already failed its evidence test
The fair-share levy is the most economically consequential element of the package. It would force large content platforms to pay telecom operators for the cost of carrying their traffic — even though end users already pay for the connectivity they consume. Europe spent two years studying an almost identical proposal. In its 2023 preliminary assessment of data traffic and the future telecom environment, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) concluded that there was no demonstrated market failure and warned that mandatory payments would risk net-neutrality violations, higher consumer prices, and reduced investment in content services.
Brazil should learn from that exercise rather than repeat it. The country's broadband market has grown rapidly precisely because Marco Civil enshrined non-discrimination in Article 9 and because OTTs invested aggressively in local content delivery networks and peering — investments that already reduce telcos' transit costs. A fair-share levy would tax those efficiencies and ultimately be passed through to Brazilian consumers and creators.
Quotas and prominence rules: well-intentioned, badly designed
The streaming quota regime in PL 2331/2022 is animated by legitimate cultural-policy goals. Brazilian audiovisual production is world-class, and ANCINE data show that Condecine-funded titles travel well internationally. But hard quotas — one fixed catalogue percentage applied to every service, regardless of business model, audience, or genre — are a blunt instrument. They penalise niche services (a children's-education platform, a Japanese-anime app) for failing to commission Brazilian telenovelas, and they create perverse incentives to license cheap filler content rather than invest in flagship local productions.
A proportionate alternative already exists in Brazilian law: the investment-obligation model used to fund Condecine via tax credits under the Audiovisual Law (Law 8.685/1993), recently extended by Congress. Coupling a modest, revenue-linked Condecine contribution with platform-level investment commitments — verified by ANCINE rather than micromanaged in legislation — would deliver more Brazilian content with far less compliance friction.
What proportionate regulation looks like
For Brazil, the path forward should rest on four principles:
- One regulator, one rulebook. Splitting OTT oversight across ANATEL, ANCINE, the Ministry of Culture, and a future digital authority guarantees overlapping mandates and contradictory guidance. Congress should designate a single coordinating body before adding new obligations.
- Sized to the platform. Obligations should scale with Brazilian revenue and audience, not apply uniformly. The EU's Digital Services Act tiered model offers a usable template.
- Evidence before levies. Any fair-share or content-investment requirement should be preceded by an independent impact assessment showing demonstrable consumer or cultural benefit.
- Preserve Marco Civil's foundations. Net neutrality, intermediary-liability protections, and the safe-harbour framework in Article 19 are why Brazilian start-ups can scale at all. They should not be casualties of unrelated streaming debates.
The stakes for Brazil's innovation economy
Brazil is one of the most consequential digital markets in the Global South. It has a thriving fintech sector, a growing creator economy, and an audiovisual industry that punches above its weight globally. Stacked, uncoordinated obligations on streaming platforms — particularly fair-share levies that European peers have already rejected — would send a chilling signal to the very investors Brazil needs.
The opportunity now is to design a streaming framework that supports Brazilian creators without re-litigating Marco Civil. That means modest, proportionate Condecine contributions, flexible investment obligations, and a firm rejection of network-usage fees that lack any empirical foundation. Lawmakers can move quickly without moving recklessly.