Last Wednesday (03), the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) began the general repercussion trial of the Extraordinary Appeal (RE) no. 1,010,606 about the existence or not of the Right to be Forgotten and its compatibility with the Brazilian Constitution, personality rights, and freedom of speach.
In this case, the Extraordinary Appeal was filed by the relatives of Aída Curi, an 18-year-old girl who was murdered after an attempted rape in the 1950s, in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Besides the brutal crime, the case received huge attention because, after a long lawsuit, the three perpetrators were declared not guilty of the murder by jury court. Two of them were sentenced to a violent attack of decency and one of them was a minor.
50 years later, Rede Globo de Televisão produced an episode of the Linha Direta Program, using images from the archive and dramatization of the crime reconstruction. Facing the pain of reliving the crime, Aída Curi’s relatives invoked the Right to be Forgotten because, after all this time, the family has the right to not be remembered for this violent crime which, for so long stigmatized them.
According to the Reporter Judge Mr. Dias Toffoli, the Right to be Forgotten is “the intention to prevent the disclosure, whether on traditional or virtual platforms, of true and lawfully obtained facts or data which, due to the passage of time, would have become out of context or devoid of relevant public interest”.
So far, only the vote of the Reporter Judge has been pronounced, which dealt, among other subjects, with the international discussion on matter, the relation with other personality rights, the legality of the information obtained, and the right to freedom of speach. The Reporter Judge understood that, in the Brazilian legal system, there is no space for the right to be forgotten and restrictions on freedom of speach and information as it should be expressed in the Constitution itself or laws, and cannot derive from the judiciary branch.
The judgement will be reopened on February 10, 2021, with the vote of the other Judges of the Supreme Court’s painel and the final decision render by them will be applied to other similar cases.
More information (in Portuguese): http://www.stf.jus.br/portal/cms/verNoticiaDetalhe.asp?idConteudo=459955