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Chile First To Approve Net Neutrality Law
Sir Mal Fet writes "Chile has become the first country in the world to approve, by 100 votes in favor and one abstention, a law guaranteeing net neutrality (Google translation; Spanish original). The law states [submitter's translation]: 'No [ISP] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.' The law also has articles that force ISPs to provide parental control tools, clarify contracts, guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever. This is a major advance in the legislation of the country regarding the Web, when until last year almost anything that was performed online was considered illegal."
The "send" part eludes most U.S. discussions. Most major ISPs in the US block many outgoing ports to prevent you from running a server. What I do with my bandwidth is my business thank you very much, including serving up HTML.
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What Chile does: (what looks like) Decent Net Neutrality
What America does: Massachusetts Bids To Restrict Internet Indecency
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It's not actually law yet. The last sentence of TFA states (my translation)
The Chamber of Deputies sent the present bill to the Executive so that it might comment or proceed to promulgating it as a Law of the Republic.
However, the Executive are quoted earlier as approving of it, so this should be a formality.
"guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever"
These two conflict. establishing privacy and safety require the users behavior and software be carefully configured and updated, and that impedes on ones liberty to have absolute control over their own behavior and property.
What's different about Chile as a nation compared with the "western world"? I mean in the regard that these allegedly "less-successful" countries seem to vote in people who genuinely want to make their country a better place for all its people rather than corrupt half-wits?
"No [ISP] can block... legitimate use conducted through the Internet."
Anybody else see the problem here?
Chilean politicians are remarkeably net savyy when compared to their UK counterparts. Did they ask why debate the protection of voters from luncheon meat? Probably not, but then they have just approved a document which appears to be the exact reverse of the UK's Digital Economy Act.
I know that most people here are internet techies, but why do most of you not understand that net neutrality is a BAD thing. With net neutrality you only have one option for internet access: untampered internet. With net neutrality you will have many options, some with peer2peer tampering some without. The ones with tampering will be cheaper. The ones that do other dodgy things like insert adds will be ever cheaper. The neutrality of a ISP will be reflected in its price and people will vote with their feet. Net neutrality is a bad idea because it allows a minority (heavy peer2peer users) to force their taste for internet onto the majority (average users). If net neutrality was implemented it WILL WITH CERTAINTY increase internet costs for all users, which is disproportion to their usage, only heavy users should bare the increase. Why do you think companies do all these things like shaping of only peer2peer? For fun? They do it because if they didn't prices would have to go up.
And coming from places you would hardly expect, considering their history. US influence on the wane, and look how freedom really blossoms.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The article states that the ISP can't restrict "legitimate service through the Internet", but doesn't that mean they can restrict "unlawful" activities? So how is this really different from what other western countries like Australia is trying to do where officially they say they are doing it to restrict illegal activities like child pornography or bit-torrent (which politicians still don't seem to understand is not illegal by itself)?
Can Chile criminally charge the American executives of an ISP that is filtering traffic now?
I looked at the translation of the bill and it appears to be a one page bill. I only skimmed it, but I can support such a bill. There's no place to hide things in it. Unlike the "net neutrality" bills that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
att DSL lets you have them!them
Uhmm,
I believe Canada passed a similar law about 8 months ago?
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/10/20/crtc-net-neutrality-ruling.html
Is it strange that I read this as China first off!
Far less sensationalist to read second time around
on everything, including you freedom
when someone tries to block child pornography, for example, you are not witnessing some horrible slippery slope to fascism. no, really. to believe so is to be a hysterical twit and absolutely no credit whatsoever to an authentic fight for freedom
"Anybody else see the problem here?"
no, not at all. are you a paranoid schizophrenic?
the fight for freedom must be patient, shrewd, and wise. not a bunch of halfcocked lightweights spazzing out at every wisp of smoke
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most techies don't understand that the internet is a negative right, not a positive one. No one owes you internet, you simply have the right to pursue it. This means that if an ISP wants to limit the bandwidth to your home apache server or they only let you go to a limited range of IP Addresses, you should switch to another ISP. The only responsibility TWC or Comcast has is to fulfill their portion of the agreement (that's the long terms of service you probably didn't read), which may require unfettered internet access, or it may be limited based upon the plan that you choose. I don't see why a private company shouldn't have the right to do this. This legislation is not a step toward internet freedom, which should be driven by consumer demand, but rather a step in internet control via Government.
The term used to be associated with "impoverished." Now it is more like "laws not yet fully rewritten by and for corporations."
Okay, so the Chilean ISP is not to mess with your traffic in any way, or even look at it. Yet, they must filter porn and ensure your privacy and security? Idiots.
And here I thought Pinochet died in 2006.
Maybe the spanish translation needs help, but how can you guarantee privacy and safety without restricting liberty? What if I WANT to pay some Nigerian a bunch of money for zero return? What if I'm a security researcher looking for a virus to download and test?
Slippery slope, folks.
And good luck to your country! ;-) I like Chilean wines anyway, maybe I should look into moving there!
Paul B.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm
Read from the bottom up for chronological order, which goes roughly like this:
Pre election: Allende may align himself with the Communists, so prepare for divestment and possible action if he's elected. We cannot tolerate any example of an OAS country independent and working with Russia or Cuba, or in any way harming US interests.
Post election: Now that Allende has been elected, here are the options for getting rid of him. Propaganda campaigns have already begun.
Post assassination: "Chile's coup d'etat was close to perfect."
Post political executions: This telegram, written by Ambassador Popper and directed to the U.S. Secretary of State, reports on a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State Jack Kubisch, and Chile's foreign minister General Huerta on the controversy over two U.S. citizens--Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi--executed by the military after the coup. Kubisch notes that he is raising this issue "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult."
Allende, who was the elected president of Chile before the coup, gave a final speech while British-made jets dropped bombs on the presidential palace on 9/11/73:
My friends,
Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.
My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police]...
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason. --Salvador Allende
Most techies don't understand that the internet is a negative right, not a positive one. No one owes you internet, you simply have the right to pursue it.
Maybe not Stateside, but the folks over in Finland now have a legal right to 1Mb Broadband Internet access.
I'm not sure that I agree that direct legislation is the right answer here, but it's hard to deny that the average person doesn't have the same ability to choose providers of broadband hard-wired Internet access as they do to choose gas stations, supermarkets, or brands of automobile.
If the government really wants to see innovation and choice in customer access to the Internet/Voice and Video communication/etc..., they should seriously consider how they're allocating spectrum and make sure that they're setting up a market where small companies can jump into the market and provide novel services (such as symmetric up/down pipes), should (read: when) the larger companies drag their heels.
coding is life
We've got fairly sane copyright legislation from Brazil recently too. South America has been tooling under European and then American hegemony ever since the Spanish conquistadors. Brazil was the country that ensured sane prices for aids medications throughout the world by threatening to break American patents. China otoh does extreme long term harm by paying lip service while ignoring all the content. We'll all have better lives if South American, India, and Eastern Europe replace China for any given economic activity currently outsourced to China.
Btw : Did you ever try sleeping with a Spanish woman? You know they're currently still kinda in their 70s after their 60s after their dictator Franko died, right? I'm just saying, if I had any influence over my boss for his choice of outsourcing destinations, then I'd be mentioning Chile.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The government can run 50-fiber bundles under all the streets, and then lease each of those lines to a different company. The customers would be able to choose among multiple ISPs: Comcast, Cox, Time-warner, AppleTV, Verizon, Virgin, Mom&Pop Cable, whatever. If one ISP sucks or blocks a website you want, just switch to a different ISP. You'd have upto 50 to choose from.
Why would 50 ISPs enter a small rural or suburban market of say 500 households - something to be split 50 ways?
There is no profit in that for anyone.
Why should the government commit to such a ridiculously out-sized investment in infrastructure?
nt
...or "legitimate" service through the Internet, as well as any activity or "legitimate" use conducted through the Internet...
----
Isn't the word "legitimate" up for interpretation here? Is porn a legitimate use of the internet? Is copyright infringement a legitimate use? Is spying on your wife a legitimate use? Is preaching scientology a legitimate use? Is preaching Christianity a legitimate use?
First, there was Ecuador being a badass and throwing their president out for trying to violate the constitution.
Then Brazil barring claiming copyright on public domain.
Now Chile. Who would have thought that South America would be leading the charge for freedom and consumer rights in the digital age?
Key weasel word inserted: legitimate.
Laws (or even worse regulations) listing what content is "legitimate" soon to follow. This is not a victory, it's the first step to an erosion of freedom.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
when someone consumes child pornography, they drive the creation of pornography
why do paparazzi follow celebrities around? because their photos get cash, to be put in media to be bought, because those photos appeal to someone
if some dude makes some photos of sex with children, he is able to get money for that, because a marketplace exists for the consumption of that media
therefore destruction of that marketplace is a perfectly valid way to fight child pornography, because if that dude can't sell his pictures, he's disinclined to make them
when you possess child pornography, when you distribute it, you are helping to feed a criminal activity, and you should be punished
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wow, Chile must have a great educational system if every non-native English speaker writes English "properly". And you're very clever to catch him in such an obvious lie: he doesn't write English well, clearly he can't be Chilean!
Just sayin'.
expandfairuse.org
No, I don't work for Comcast. My work would be much less popular with the Slashdot community,
That would be Green Dam, then?
Just kidding, just kidding.
Sure, it would restrict their options, but if the law is interpreted as you suggest that this would likely lead to attempts to notify the customer. Also, restricting liberty can be interpreted to being different to restricting speeds and so on - cutting down speeds and notifying the customer to fix their computer is most certainly annoying (and has it's own problems), but could fall within a legal solution to the dilemma - force the customer to fix the infected PC if they want their speed back.
Just a disclaimer, I don't personally believe in the solution that I offered. I'm just saying that there doesn't necessarily have to be a conflict.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
The law. Duh. Or are you just so scared of ISP's having to play fair that you're going to scare up a whole lot of FUD to keep it away from you?
If I download KP over HTTP, the KP is not legitimate HTTP traffic: it's illegal.
If I download pictures of kittens over HTTP, that is legitimate.
Just because you can get KP over HTTP doesn't mean they can block HTTP.
Same with bittorrents.
Net neutrality doesn't mean you should be able to download illegal content and the ISP cannot do anything about it. It doesn't mean that you can sit there DoSing a business for extortion or spamming email boxes either. These are not legitimate uses of internet traffic because they are illegal.
The ISP cannot decide that torrents are not legitimate traffic: the law says what is legitimate.
sorry, that snide comment was meant to deride the Americans. Its a national pass time in Canada. Some of my best friends use axes to cut meat.
One thing that many people don't understand is that you have a VERY different Internet situation based on the country you are dealing with. Here in the USA, the Internet STARTED as a government project linking military and research universities together. Since it was government, the idea that it is paid for by the PEOPLE of the country implies that citizens should have equal access to it.
What changed is that once you start adding private companies to the network, you start to get into the area of who should have control over those private networks, even when they are connected into the primary Internet backbone. At this point, the section of the Internet that is run and controlled by the Internet is actually very small. So, we go back to the original definition of what the Internet itself is: A network of networks. From that perspective, each private ISP SHOULD have the right to set policy for that private network. Customers can choose their ISP in many markets, with the choice of cable or DSL service, or even fiber optic, and this SHOULD allow for a freedom from "monopoly" laws. If you don't like the policies of one ISP, you go to another, the same way proper competition SHOULD be.
Now, things get a bit tricky in other countries, where the government actually has paid for the majority of the network deployment. People constantly point to how low the installed broadband percentage is in the USA compared to other countries, but if you look at why this is the case, you see the US Government has done very little when it comes to getting the Internet out to the public, and how much money has been spent in the private sector to get the Internet to where it is today. So, in those other countries, if the government deployed the cables for Internet access, it makes more sense that the government has the right to set the policy for that network. The more the government does, the more of an accepted right it is for the government to set policy for that service.
Net Neutrality is a nice idea, but it requires that those who spent millions or billions of dollars to deploy an infrastructure give up their rights to control what they have put in place. In most cases, companies here in the USA have been pretty fair, where IF they have the bandwidth to allow fully unlimited use, they provide it, but those who are capacity restrained have been trying to keep people from using so much so heavy users do not limit those who use less.
but, like much of the rest of your argument, you project assumptions without any genuine logic
murder images are of interest to anyone with a macabre personality. but child pornography is of no interest to anyone except pedophiles
i agree with you in one respect: the exchange of images and drawings shouldn't be so much shut down... as left open, and baited and tracked. why? for the purpose of catching pedophiles
i'm sorry, but pedophilia is real. i'm not getting in the argument about sex with a physically mature (but mentally immature) 15 year old or sex between a 14 year old and a 15 year old... i'm talking about adults with a sexual desire for prepubescent children... i hope that shuts down your red herring arguments i already see coming
homosexuality is a natural modification of desire, but it is harmless, because it occurs between consenting adults. pedophilia is the same: a natural deformation of normal sexual cues such that the wrong cues are seen as arousing. impossible to act on because it is logically impossible for a child to act with INFORMED consent in a sexual scenario with an adult. a pedophile can only do one thing: damage children psychologically. and can one live their entire lives with their sexual inclinations permanently locked up? can we trust that they can keep their desires locked up?
so being a pedophile is sort of an innate tragic sentence, like being born with cystic fibrosis or huntington's disease: you are genetically endowed with a life-deforming handicap. its not anyone's fault, but it is what it is: a desire that renders someone incompatible with society
cutting off their balls doesn't work. jail time doesn't work (when you let them out, they are still pedophilies: you can't be cured of an innate desire), so anyone with a sexual desire towards children is a time bomb waiting to go off
i for one wish that we could just round these tragically deformed people up and send them to some antarctic island
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"May not limit the right of a user to enter or use any class of instruments, devices or appliances on the network, provided they [...] do not [...] harm [...] service quality."
That isn't a catch, it totally invalidates the entire thing. That is precisely the justification being used. Viz: "We can't allow you to use BitTorrent or other high data volume services because they harm service quality for other users."
This isn't a net neutrality law but a net neutrality except for services that don't deserve neutrality law.