Slashdot Mirror
Costa Rica May Criminalize VoIP
chia_monkey writes "Here's an interesting little tidbit about the 'free' Internet. Seems Costa Rica may make it a crime to make Internet-based phone calls. It would be a shame if this sets a precedent of setting legistlation that would seriously stunt the growth of these emerging technologies that should be making communication cheaper and easier, not harder and illegal."
This just seems so wrong : of all central american countries, Costa Rica is the only one without a confusing bloddy story, why would they start now ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Didn't this already happen in another South American country? I thought I read something about a year ago on a similar subject, where VOIP was going to be illegal to protect the state-owned telecommunications company.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
criminalize....it's just the telecom company wants to criminalize it but somehow i think it would be interesting to see how they argue on their point
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
from socialism gone wrong... instead of developing state owned infrastructure to benefit society, develop state owned monopolies to fleece society.
at least some verizon asshat didn't write that law. i'll take politicians writing stupid laws over corporate fascists any day.
But hey, I'm not worried - I still have an acoustic modem somewhere in my house...
Let them try, in the end, any such effort to cripple the net will only end in failure. My big question is why do we elect such dumbasses?
Words to men, as air to birds.
with trying to enforce that policy. Would iChat on Mac OS X (or any other voice/video chat program) be illegal as well?
Might as well throw people in jail for talking. hell lets ban all communication while we are at it. I mean heaven forbid I write a note to someone and hand it to them instead of letting a middle man make money off of it.
Crawl This - http://darkry.net/test/test.php
That's the key to all this. They want it to be illegal because the state might lose money.
VOIP was criminilized in South Africa since 1996. It was illegal to make any voip calls whatsoever, that means no MSN Chat, Skype etc.
VOIP became legal on Feb 1005 only after the Telkom (national telco) regulator started to break up Telkom's monopoly.
it's easy: since the telephone co is owned/controlled by the state, voip is *stealing* from the state.
similar to states that tax alcohol and it's a crime to bring (over a very limited qty) it into the state from other states.
eric
I've not RTFA but from discussion I had with someone 'in the know' it may well come back to the country loosing a significant amount of income from the price they charge for inbound telephony. When you call CR part of the price you pay for the call goes to the CR government. This is vital foreign exchange a country such as theirs cann ill afford to lose.
For a country that needs this income to build its hospitals, social infrastructure (yes and Army, corruption etc) it is a big blow.
If this is the reason I can actually support this. Despite what seem like the majority of the Slashdot crowd think, there is more to life that getting 'free' services from the Internet.
if they have a monopoly, why not just block it at the first router?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I think someone was up on charges in Belarus, I think they got fined, maybe I should search slashdot for a reference...
s ts _americ.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/19/belarus_bu
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
They should also make it a crime to talk to people without using a phone at all. After all you're just bypassing the phone companies systems by doing so which clearly should be a crime.
- What about if I record myself, and post it to the net, then someone downloads it, thats (literally)my VOICE over IP. Will they make that Illegal?
- How about if I write some text and put a Text to Speech engine on my site with my voice loaded into the engine? Will they make that Illegal?
- What about if Costa Rica telcos want to relay their voice calls internally over IP (at any point in the pathway) Will they make that Illegal?
Maybe next they'll make all paketized transfer of voice data illegal? - BYE BYE GPRS. This is what happens when people make laws without consulting unbiased (or unbiased on average) techinal people.Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Actually I'm very ashamed to say that if there's one thing we've led the world in, it is this one. It is currently illegal to provide VoIP services, because the telephone company is government owned and they make loads of money off international phone calls. Heard rumours that this may change sometime in the future though...
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
OK, everyone seems to have some wrong ideas about what kind of country Costa Rica is, so here's a little info from someone who's actually lived there.
CR is not communist, or poverty stricken. It is in fact the most stable and economically successful latin american country, yes, it beats Mexico and Brazil as well.
Most Costa Ricans have cellphones, and DSL internet access either at home, a library, or in the neighborhood internet cafe.
The country is democratic, and very pro-technology. Many US technology companies have moved there because of the pro-technology/pro-capitalism attitude of the government.
The economy is very efficient, and it runs an American-style government on only a 13% tax base. What this means for the individuals who live there is that instead of two people in a family working 50+ hours a week to make a living, one person in a Costa Rican can make a living.
Most Costa Ricans make about $12 per day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but since the public transportation is well designed, no one needs cars. Cars are still a status symbol, however, just like everywhere else. Costa Ricans can afford (with some saving) a car, a house, a cellphone, DSL at home, a vacation to the USA, and pretty much everything else that most people think of as common in a first world country, all on $12 per day.
The country became a first world country only during the last 10 years, and although it's doing amazingly well, the job market is still catching up to the population size, especially in rural areas. The cities are where the jobs are. And most of the business owners are foreign, americans and europeans. More europeans than americans since americans for some reason don't understand what's going on around them.
Americans go to Costa Rica mostly for prostitution, so the people they encounter like to encourage their notions so that it makes the Americans feel superior, and looser with their money.
CR's economy is the fastest growing one in the america's. No small business owner I met had been in the country for more than 5 years, and every one of them had become millionaires (USD) in that time with their restaurants, hostels, construction companies, computer companies, etc.
Things have changed a bit since I've been there, but instead of imagining marxist rebels with AK-47's, imagine people in business suits with laptops and briefcases.
Any other questions, just ask.
i live in kentucky. more than a fair amount of drinking alcohol is fermented, brewed, and/or distilled here.
eric
In Antigua it's already illegal. Cable and Wireless pushed through a law making it illegal. When you sign up for ISP service, you have to agree not to do it, along with the usual AUP.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
There's probably nothing to get excited about here. The Costa Ricans aren't any stupider than anyone else in the world. The local phone monopoly just wants to get some attention, which will set the stage for whatever deal finally comes out of the governing process. Very likely VoIP won't be criminalized in Costa Rica. It will probably have fees attached to it. The only question will be how much these fees are likely to be. I would guess they will be high enough to protect the phone monopoly. Just the usual politics...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
It's Costa Rica for crying out loud. They're not capable of setting a global economic precedent except for maybe the price of coffee.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The only difference between this and what's going on in the US, is in this case, it's a state-controlled monopoly and in the US it's the few remaining Baby Bells doing the same with trying to ban municipal wi-fi.
Unfortunately, it's all about the telecom industry, both in the US, and abroad, trying to consolidate power, and shut out open access, whether it's data or voice.
You'd think they'd have learned something from that about monopolies.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Considering as how it's a state-run telecom, I don't really see where your sarcasm is going. :p
I mean, isn't a state-run anything more socialist than capitalist, despite the fact that it's still working for money?
I've been to Costa Rica four or five times to visit friends. When I was there on my honeymoon fives years back, there were big protests because the government was about to hand the phone system over to the president's brother-in-law - or something like that.
At any rate, the Costa Rican political system tends to be pretty corrupt in the sense that those in power tend to give big favors to their friends in family. I'll bet something like this is going on.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
but a look at the future. If you are a member
of the WTO and have small/fledgling national
industries to protect from unplanned for (and
unregulated) competition, you make it illegal.
You might say that Costa Rica has adopted the
very same measures that the USA's "**AA" have
implimented in the face of new media distribution
modes, and similar tactics that the big regional
USA phone companies have adopted (with big
government help) to protect them from government/
community WiFi competition.
That being said, it seems a shame that a democracy
with a constiuentcy that has a 98% literacy rate
should find the need to penalize its citizens for
the sake of a corporate (nationalized?) entity.
These are the kinds of tactics that a government
with a much lower literacy rate (65%), and can
influence its citizens with massive propaganda
campaigns would be expected to use - like the USA.
Is it possible? Obviously you'd have to avoid trying to get a Costa Rica local number, but for someone with relatives in a foreign country, would this be a plausible solution?
The owner/publisher of Linux Journal moved to Costa Rica some years back and hasn't been subtle for his reasons, namely the DMCA. Now in an ironic twist, the paradise he moved to is considering making VOIP illegal, a technology I'd bet he uses. I'd look for Phil to lead the charge against this one.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
...when phone and cable companies in US are trying to make municipal broadband development. While they're quite as brazen as their Costa Rican brothers, they certainly are trying just as hard.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Costa Rica has always had an army. However, it is very small an unobtrusive compared that of other countries in the area. They don't even call it an army, but it is one anyway. Costa Rica was colonized differently, compared to the other countries in the area: more by settlers looking to build a home rather than plantationers. This made it somewhat more civil than the other places. As for imperialism, during the Soviet proxy wars against Central America during the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets even created a rebel army to attack Costa Rica. It gained little ground, however.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The South African system was made all the more robust by improvements that were forced on them just a few years before this by Y1K compliance.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I was born in Costa Rica and live there (here, indeed) since then... The problem in general is this, there is a big company called the Costarican Electricity Institute (ICE in spanish), it is run by the government and some of their achievments is that thanks to their founders, this was the sencond country in the world with electricity (One-two years later of New York's street lamps innaguration).
:'(
That company holds all the permissions to grant electricity, phone and internet access, and in fact, one of the biggest income is that of telephony, especially international calls.
What they are seeking is to be the only provider of VoIP, not to make it illegal at all, but provide the service and ban or send to jail any company that tries to use internet to send voice packets without a contrat with them, in that case even using Skype can cost you a few days at a prison, the only way to use VoIP is to ask them for a service, yet unavailable, and who knows for how long.
The same has happened with what they call "Advanced Internet" (Basically, ADSL access), they have some sort of pilot program with a few thousan d connections, but the real service will start later this year, whereas in other contries I had seen that optic fiber is beign installed around...
As a summary, we are giving one step ahead and two back in every bureocratic decision, mostly thanks to our government corruption (Heck, we have two former presidents in jail... and precisely for corruption among cellular phone providers contracts and "awards" upon their selection).
The situation is not as nice as the other big comment about Costa Rica, yes, we have not had any civil war or battle with our next countries in about fifty seven years, but there's a lot of delinquence, our streets suck (No more than a hundred meters without a volcanic crater in middle of the street).
But in the pretty hand, we are becoming a sort of "Sillicon Tropical Rainforest", there is an Intel facility at a few minutes from my home, Sun is planning to come here, and there's a lot of other companies that open operation centers around, yes, Microsoft is one of them, and recently donated a full equipped lab to my college, ITCR, before that, the ITCR was a loyal FOSS advocate...
Also there are a lot of natural and beatiful places from beaches to volcanoes, and rain forests in between, we have no army (Remember "Fahrenheit 9/11"?), and the most important thing for the 99% of the population is to have a nice ringtone and that the Costa Rica soccer team get to the World Cup... So, it's very easy for an outsider with great ideas to come here, build a business and get profit as almost no "tico" (As we call ourselves) want to complicate it's live so much just to get a fancy phone... So good luck foreign investors, and you are welcome!!!
Good old Telkom has already declared this illegal in south Africa.
For those of you that don't know the situation; Telkom is the only landline provider in South Africa, but also handily makes the rules deciding who can do what with any telecommunication business. Neat huh?
So what's happening is that there is a constitutionally mandated monopoly on telecommunications. What's happening that a bunch of old farts, the kind that have no fucking clue and are holding the country back, are figuring that VoiP would technically be in violation of said monopoly.
To be honest, it's amazing that there is such a big software industry in Costa Rica, considering that internet access is so crappy and regulated. A lot of people are trying to challenge the ICE monopoly, but it's hard going against the old guard. That's what Costa Rican nerds have to put up with.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
ICE is the name of the only telco in Costa Rica.
...
... on the other hand: I just tunnel it to my server on an unusual port as it was streaming whatever, and they can come and look really close and still see nothing :)
They provide internet, phone landline and cell.
Just to give an idea, GSM network just ran out of free lines, waiting period for a landline in suburban (not off the grid) areas is 6+ months.
I am renting an office to have net, because at my place there is no landline, nor 2-way cable (so you need a modem with dial up and cable, the latter DL the phone for upstream comms)
Back to the topic: Costa Rica has ONLINE casinos, sportsbooks, bingo halls, and they ALL use VOIP.
Call centers use VOIP.
If you make an emergency call int he states and do not speek english, there is a chance, that the call is directed here to a translator OVER VOIP.
I use VOIP to talk to good ol' europe, since the minute rate is $1 + to e.g. Hungary, and almost 2$ the other way.
ICE people do not like to work. They like to strike, and every time they mention privatizing the company, they go to the street and there is no service (there is phone, but no customer service, so if a line breaks or whatever pain you have, you are fsckd)
Well but hey, there is no snowstorms here, just occasional quakes
Ahm why they won't put it thru? The casino industry gives 1000s of jobs to students, so do other companyes who USE VOIP.
I am not worried
I guess I didn't spend enough time in San Jose. If you really want Americans in Costa Rica, try Playa Tamarindo in Guanacaste. There are plenty there surfing and drinking.
no that's wrong. The expression "Third world" is a translation of the french "tiers monde", which is a reference to the "tiers état", litteraly "third state", which used to designate unprivileged people in the kingdom of France, until the 18th century (by contrast with the nobles and the members of the Church).
:/ 1/1/tiers-monde.shtml
The expression "tiers monde" dates back to 1952, and has been forged by demographer Alfred Sauvy, to designate poor countries, implying that the "tiers monde" is being despised and exploited just as the "tiers état" used to be.
See
http://www.linternaute.com/histoire/motcle/2923/a
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
Telefonica (the Spanish group who also owns Terra, some banks and more) is probably yhe largest Brazilian phone company nowadays. They also own the most popular broadband service, Speedy. Until last year their service contract stated you couldn't use VoIP because "it consumed too much band".
The entire discussion on Slashdot has centered around a substantial misreading of the article.
The real point of the article is that the Costa Rican national telephone company wants VOIP regulated as a service, like the other phone lines are. We are having the same debate in the United States. The phone company here was originally designed as a monopoly, and universal service meant subsidies. Find a way around the monopoly, and there's no way to fund the subsidies. So you either regulate it enough to collect taxes or do away with the phone service in rural areas (which is often the basis of internet service in those areas as well.)
Costa Rica has similar regulatory issues. So they're in the phase of "Hey, this ought to be regulated." The regulations are completely undefined as yet, so some reporter speculates that they could in some ludicrous limit case result in criminalizing VOIP and then mentions it in the headline, the lead line, and then precisely once in the actual body of the article.
Whereupon Slashdot copies the headline, and focuses the summary on it. Read into the rest of the article and you might find that most of the time when the Slashdot response to an article is "How could anybody be so incredibly stupid?" the answer is usually, "They're not, they've just been taken out of context."
It may well be that any regulation of VOIP is a bad idea, that the Internet wants to be free, and if it outcompetes the old regime then we'll have to come up with a new plan. In Costa Rica's case, if they lose too much tax money from POTS to VOIP, they'll have to raise taxes elsewhere. Perhaps they'd raise a sales tax or income tax. But talk of criminalizing VOIP strikes me as a hysterical response to a subject that requires actual thought.
Imagine taking this approach 100 years ago. Oceanliners would push for legislation outlawing transoceanic aircraft. Horse trainers would push to abolish internal combustion engines. Theatrical companies would go after movie theaters. And the parcel services would try to eliminate telegraphs.
digital != packet based. GSM is circuit switched. GPRS is run over GSM however.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
The problem with that is confusion. It is fine to call a region Central America, as there is not already something with that name. However, there have been continents named North America and South America for a very long time (even before "Central America" was distinguished). Why call a region North America when this region is a mere subset of the continent that already has this name?
There is a region named used which is "Anglo America" which could be used for US and Canada, but as you can see it leaves out Mexico.
"has dissapeared I am glad I got rid of my school books, apparently they are all "wrong" now"
They were indeed wrong if the mistakenly included the region of Central America as a distinct continent. The word continent means something, and having a "distintive history" is not part of it. This is why Europe, more and more, is considered to be part of the continent of Eurasia.
Where do we find such a map that has CA as its own continent? Something that world geographers ignore? Do Iberians (Spain and Portugal) also have odd textbooks that make Iberia a separate continent even though no-one else recognizes it as such?
"I am a NORTH American..........next time I travel to the US I will say that to the INS agent and see what he says about that"
Go to images.google.com and find one of the many maps which shows what the continents are, and print it out. Flap it in his face. If he insists that you are not from North America, he is probably one of those dumb "United Statesians" who thinks that New Mexico is a separate country from the USA.
Here is yet another nice map of continents.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.