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."

Comments

I love the wording in the above translation.

[pecosdave]

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.

Re:I love the wording in the above translation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Residential customers don't need a web server, though.

You are not competent to decide that for me, and neither is my ISP.

Re:I love the wording in the above translation.

[pecosdave]

Listen in many countries we have laws protecting our freedom to do as we please. Yes, it's debatable rather we really have those freedoms or not, but that's beside the point.

One thing that we generally have laws about is our personal freedoms end at the point that we utilize them to restrict someone else's freedom.

If you're botnet infested you are out there doing denial of service attacks and trying to hack other systems into joining your bot net. At this point your freedom is being used in an attempt to restrict someone else's freedom.

That's what jails are for, or in this case being cut off until you fix it.

I see no "one rule for you, one for the rest of us" as you say. I see "don't attack someone else". Don't attack someone else is a pretty good rule I think.

Re:I love the wording in the above translation.

[LordLucless]

So do what my ISP does (Australian, not US). By default, ports 80 and 25 are blocked. If I want to open them, I log into my ISP, hit up my control panel, and turn off filtering. I've been running my own servers on my Internode connection for years.

Re:OK

[bsDaemon]

From the Nixon administration through the first half of Bush 41's term, Chile had Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator. They might tend to look at freedom with slightly less jaded eyes than Americans who have had it "too good for too long." Small things like that can tend to have major effects on perspective. Just saying.

One Page bill

[Attila Dimedici]

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.

Re:OK

[PopeRatzo]

What Chile does: (what looks like) Decent Net Neutrality

I'm telling you, there's a real progressive wind blowing through South America. Brazil, Chile, Argentina and others are moving to the Left and having great success. There economies are growing and it's not just the rich that are doing better. Socially, they've got a long way to go, but at least they're moving in the right direction, using the European socialist model as a starting point, not an end in itself.

We're going to read a lot in the coming few years about the success stories in the Southern Hemisphere. They're going to be a shining example for what free societies can look like in the 21st century: prosperous, fair and free.

Even Hugo Chavez, who has gone off the rails as is common among very strong politicians who have great success, did a great deal of good for his country before he got drunk on power. But he'll be gone soon and there's a healthy crop of decent leaders waiting to take over.

Don't think for a second that the financial and social successes in South America don't scare the hell out of the USA.