The Brazilian Ministry of Culture ("MC") made available for public consultation two drafts of Normative Rulings ("NRs") that aim to establish, respectively, the rules for the copyright collection on "digital environments" and the regulation on the provision of information related to music within Brazilian movies and TV shows to collecting societies. Comments to the drafts can be submitted until March 30.

The first NR, regarding the copyright collection over the Internet, introduces four closed categories to describe ways in which protected works can be made available on the so-called "digital environment", and indicates, for each one them, which are the copyrights and neighboring rights to be licensed by the online service provider. The NR definition of "digital environment" is very broad and includes any service (such as streaming), process or commercialization (such as download) on the Internet and, as such, affects any site, platform or application.

The NR provides for the possibility of copyright and neighboring collection by a collecting society, for all the categories created by the NR, subject to the prior registration of such society with the MC to allow such collection.

Specifically regarding music streaming, the proposed NR determines that such service is considered as public execution of its music, and therefore it is subject to the license and related collection to the Brazilian Central Office for Collection and Distribution - the "ECAD". To this effect, the NR is controversial, since there are court disputes currently under trial to determine whether streaming characterizes public execution or not.

One of such disputes, pending before the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice, was subject to a public hearing on December 14, 2015 aiming to address the matter. On this opportunity, it was clear that such understanding was not uncontroverted. However, final decision in this case no. 1.559.264-RJ is still to be granted.

The second NR sets forth the obligation of providing information on music within Brazilian audiovisual works to collecting societies. Such obligation would fall on cinema companies, broadcasters and Pay TV distributors and aim to regulate Decree 8.469/2015 (art. 22, third paragraph).

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