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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."
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
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But hey, I'm not worried - I still have an acoustic modem somewhere in my house...
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.
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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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.