FORUM SHOPPING, BIG TECHS AND DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY: REGULATORY ASYMMETRY, NORMATIVE FRAGMENTATION AND THE CHALLENGES TO BRAZIL

Abstract

This article examined the practice of regulatory forum shopping by Big Techs as a strategy to circumvent personal data protection and Brazilian digital sovereignty. It investigates to what extent this jurisdiction arbitrage compromises the effectiveness of the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD), notably oversight, sanctions and the protection of data subjects' rights. The hypothesis holds that regulatory forum shopping — a category distinct from judicial forum shopping — partially compromises these dimensions through three mechanisms (corporate fragmentation, foreign forum selection and geographic dispersion of data infrastructure), mitigable by strengthening the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), international regulatory alliances and autonomous technological capacity. The research, qualitative, bibliographic and documentary, compared the GDPR, the CCPA and the LGPD. The results showed that the asymmetry between these frameworks creates structural incentives for regulatory arbitrage and that Brazil has advanced in the normative sphere, although its effectiveness is limited by informational regulatory capture, infrastructural dependence and the asymmetry of resources between regulator and regulated. It was concluded that forum shopping persists as a structural phenomenon, requiring coordinated measures on the three proposed fronts.