Slashdot Mirror
VoIP Legal Status Worldwide?
Cigarra writes "There was much public debate going on during the last several months here in Paraguay, regarding the 'liberation of Internet,' that is, the lifting of the restriction on ISPs to connect directly to international carriers. Up until this week, they were forced to hire wholesale service from the State run telco, Copaco. During the last month, when the new regulation was almost ready, the real reason supporting the monopoly made it to the headlines: Copaco would fight for the monopoly, fearing VoIP based telephony. Finally, the regulator Conatel resolved today to end the monopoly, but a ruling on VoIP legal status was postponed for 'further study.' I guess this kind of 'problem' arose almost everywhere else in the world, so I ask the international slashdotters crowd: what is VoIP's legal status in your country / state / region? How well did incumbent telcos adapt to it, and overall, just how disruptive was this technology to established operators?"
Hopefully, this situation will help to drive the Bell Telephone Company of Canada into the ground, which could be sooner than we think as it was not bought by the Ontario Teacher's Fund.
And we have regulators who would go after any telco who tried to block it.
In fact, many major ISPs are now offering VoIP as part of your Internet connection
If the government tried to ban VoIP in this country, they wouldn't survive the next election.
Maybe thats the problem for people in countries in Latin America and Africa and elsewhere where telephone and Internet service is controlled by state-run/state-backed monopolies. Maybe the people in these countries need to kick the government out (although that assumes that there is a government running the country and not a military general and an army with orders to shoot anyone who has such unclean thoughts as "lets kick the government out" or "lets fight the state-run telco")
In most of the Western world, Governments decided in the 1980's and 1990's that competition was good for the consumer, and government telecommunications monopolies no longer exist. In those countries, VoIP is just seen as a natural evolution of healthy competition, and though individual operators might try to make life difficult for independent VoIP operators, and lobby for regulations to be imposed based on E911 (ie the ability of emergency services to find), there is no government support for banning healthy competition.
In markets where there is still a government backed monopoly, there might be more inclination to protect that monopoly, but ultimately it is not good for the consumer or the overall economy to protect a dying technology and business model.
Residential User:
Mexico - Illegal if you don't buy from one of the Telmex concessionaires.
Nicaragua - Illegal. You go to jail for it.
Honduras - Illegal. Jail.
Costa Rica - Illegal. Fine.
Dominican Republic - Illegal. Jail.
Panama - Legal. Do whatever you want.
Colombia - Illegal. They disconnect your Internet line if they catch it.
Venezuela - Legal. Chaves Monopoly.
Brazil - Legal. Plenty of providers.
Argentina - Legal. Plenty of providers.
Chile - Legal. Plenty of providers.
Termination (to leak, connect a VoIP gateway to phone lines or ISDN lines and provide termination to guys like Arbinet):
Mexico: Illegal. Jail.
Nicaragua: Illegal. Fine and Jail.
Costa Rica: Illegal. Fine and Jail.
Honduras: Illegal. Fine and Jail.
Colombia: Illegal. Fine.
Dominican Republic: Illegal. Fine and Jail.
Venezuela: Illegal. Fine and Jail (and some worse stuff...)
Brazil: Illegal. Fine and Jail (They just closed a huge leak there with 12 Cisco 5350s. Guys got fined in 2 million bucks)
Argentina: Legal. You may get problems with your ISP.
Rest: I don't know.
I was with you right up to that point. Speaking as a person who has served in the Navy, with lots of friends in the Army and Marine Corps, I can say with a high degree of confidence that you are an idiot. How's that armchair of yours? Comfy?
I've had to sit and listen to too many soldiers tell me stories about rape to believe your anecdote. They invariably are a story of grief and remorse about how they didn't stop someone else from doing it. When you add to that that the published stats for rape of female military inductees in the Navy is over 25% - while rape statistics are nearly always under-reported, and rape allegations are almost never false although other kinds of abuse are potentially over-reported.
The simple truth is that occupying militaries pretty much always commit rape on a broad scale, and ours is no exception, nor has it ever been. In addition, the use of prostitutes who were forced into the business in response to the devastation of the local economy due to war can only be seen as a kind of rape, and that is very much SOP for all soldiers anywhere, making war in any time and any place.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
rape allegations are almost never false
How exactly do you determine this? Most rape cases are complete "he said, she said" cases. Given that in 25% of the rape cases where DNA evidence is available the main suspect is exonerated, I'd say your "almost never" is completely wrong. And that's not even counting cases where 1) no DNA evidence is available or 2) consensual sex is followed by a cry of rape.
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