The 3-Line Summary
- CGI.br convened the first Fórum da Internet no Brasil (FIB 1) on 13–14 October 2011 at Expo Center Norte in São Paulo, drawing 784 participants from across the country.
- Six tracks — freedom, governance, universality, diversity, standardisation and the legal environment — put the newly introduced Marco Civil internet bill of rights and net neutrality at centre stage.
- The forum launched Brazil's on-equal-footing multistakeholder dialogue and seeded the debate that produced the Marco Civil, later a global reference for internet-rights legislation.
Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on 1st Brazilian Internet Forum (I Fórum da Internet no Brasil) draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.
Conference at a Glance (from official records)
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Official name | 1st Brazilian Internet Forum (I Fórum da Internet no Brasil) |
| Dates | 13–14 October 2011 |
| Venue | Expo Center Norte Convention Center, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Theme | Regional governance themes |
| Participants | 784 |
| Tracks | 6 |
| Host | Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) |
(See the source list at the end of this article.)
Discussion Digest — from the Session Records
Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.
1. The Marco Civil Bill — A Crowdsourced Internet Bill of Rights Heads to Congress
Sessions: Track on the legal and regulatory environment and security
- Held weeks after the Marco Civil bill — drafted through online public consultations in 2009–2010 — reached Congress in August 2011, making it the core topic of the legal-environment track [2][4]
- CGI.br later summed up the forum's key consensus: no regulation or law should alter the freedom of expression and freedom of technological creation that have defined the internet since its origin [2][4]
- Whether online copyright disputes should go to courts or to online arbitration was among the questions tabled (paper by Pedro Paranaguá) [2][4]
2. Net Neutrality — A Warning Against Turning the Internet into 'a Giant Cable-TV Network'
Sessions: Track on standardisation, interoperability, neutrality and innovation
"If telecom operators are allowed to filter and prioritise traffic, the internet will turn into a giant cable-TV network"
— Sérgio Amadeu (CGI.br board member, sociologist) [2]
- Participants debated writing into the Marco Civil the neutrality principle from CGI.br's 2009 'Decálogo' — its ten principles for internet governance [2]
- Civil-society voices warned that letting infrastructure operators pick and choose traffic would put innovation itself at risk [2]
3. A Multistakeholder Experiment — Four Sectors at the Same Table
Sessions: Overall format (six parallel tracks)
- Each of the six tracks was co-coordinated by representatives of the four sectors that make up CGI.br — government, business, academia and civil society — by design [1][2][5]
- Live streaming and chat participation were offered from the start, making it a hybrid national dialogue [1][2][5]
- It was positioned as the first of Brazil's annual 'pre-IGF' meetings feeding national views into the UN Internet Governance Forum [1][2][5]
4. Privacy and Personal Data Protection — Ahead of Any Law
Sessions: Co-located 2nd International Seminar on Privacy and Personal Data Protection (13–14 October)
- In parallel, CGI.br, the Federal Prosecution Service's ICT working group and FGV Law School co-hosted an international seminar on privacy and data protection, with a keynote by Prof. Yves Poullet (University of Namur) and updates on the revision of Council of Europe Convention 108 [3]
- Speakers included Danilo Doneda of the Ministry of Justice — later a key architect of Brazil's LGPD data-protection law — covering IPv6, IoT, cloud computing and health-data systems [3]
- The debate predated any comprehensive Brazilian data-protection statute, coming seven years before the LGPD of 2018 [3]
Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered
Q. What was this gathering, exactly?
A. Brazil's national version of the UN Internet Governance Forum. CGI.br, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, launched it in 2011 so that government, business, academia and citizens could debate internet issues as equals — not to make binding decisions, but to shape policy proposals.
Q. What was the hottest topic?
A. The Marco Civil, Brazil's 'internet bill of rights', which had just been sent to Congress. How to protect free expression, net neutrality and privacy dominated the discussion.
Q. Why does it matter?
A. Brazil's crowdsourced approach to writing a foundational internet law became a global reference point — and this forum is where that national conversation formally began.
What Is Brazil IGF? (for first-time readers)
Brazil IGF is a National or Regional IGF Initiative (NRI), aligning local internet governance discussion with global IGF principles.
Why It Matters to You
What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2011 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.
Sources & References
- I Fórum da Internet no Brasil — TI Rio (accessed 2026-07-11)
- Discutir o presente e o futuro da rede: I Fórum da Internet no Brasil — BaixaCultura (accessed 2026-07-11)
- Comitê Gestor da Internet promove Seminário sobre Proteção à Privacidade e aos Dados Pessoais em paralelo ao I Fórum da Internet — CGI.br（プレスリリース） (accessed 2026-07-11)
- Recife sediará o II Fórum da Internet no Brasil（第1回の参加者数784人と成果に言及） — CGI.br（プレスリリース） (accessed 2026-07-11)
- Edições — Fórum da Internet no Brasil — CGI.br（FIB公式サイト） (accessed 2026-07-11)
Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.
Related links
- IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
- Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
- Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/
Revision History
Rev. 1 — published 15 August 2011, 16:00 (Article published)
Rev. 2 — updated 16 July 2026, 20:09 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))
— 中澤祐樹
