Brazil: Community Radio Stations Fight Paying Hefty Fines

Representatives of community radio stations in Brazil are waging a legal struggle against having to pay multiple copyright fines, sometimes in excess of US$12,000 dollars, leveled by the Central Office of Collection and Distribution.

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One of the organizations is the Brazilian Association of Community Radio broadcasting. It defends exemption for the initial tax community radio stations are forced to pay and copyright fines since they don't sell advertisements and operate as non-profit organizations.

“If we don't act on this problematic issue related to ECAD, it will become the main body shutting down community radios in Brazil,” said Wagner Sales Souto, ABRAZO's national coordinator of communication.

He plans to collect enough signatures in an attempt to institute the Community Radio Broadcasting Service, effectively allowing community radio stations to operate without the imposition of exorbitant fines and the possibility of being shut down.

Roughly 5,000 community radio stations, all of which function at low frequencies, reaching a distance of four kilometers, are authorized to broadcast in Brazil.

In 2014, Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that copyright payment must be applied to all radio broadcasters regardless if they operate as a non-profit, according to Brazil de Fato.

Fines and threats of being shut down by authorities is “a constant fear that surrounds us,” said Reginaldo Jose Gonzalves, a community radio coordinator for Radio Heliopolis, which has been broadcasting to the working class community in the city of Sao Paulo since 1992.

Meanwhile, Cleber Silva, a member of community radio Valente FM in the state of Bahia said there is absolutely no criteria for applying copyright fines, arguing that small community broadcasters are charged the same as large commercial radio stations with broad funding.

He also noted that it's “not clear where all this money goes. We play numerous local artists, I know various musicians who don't know how to read or write, but they play their music from memory and don't receive a dime from copyright laws.”