Network Neutrality Is Law In Chile

An anonymous reader writes "Chile is the first country of the world to guarantee by law the principle of network neutrality, according to the Teleccomunications Market Comission's Blog from Spain. The official newspaper of the Chilean Republic published yesterday a Law that guarantees that any Internet user will be able to use, send, receive or offer any content, applications or legal services over the Internet, without arbitrary or discriminatory blocking."

Comments

"applications or legal services over the Internet"

[SuperKendall]

So does that mean illegal services (such as torrent sites on a blacklist) might be blocked?

And how long is it before that changes to "must be blocked" due to being a signatory on an international copyright treaty...

Or does it mean companies can no longer filter websites they find inappropriate? They after all a form of ISP in a way.

Any time you let the government decide what is permissible on your network you will be sorry in the end.

All this to solve a problem that doesn't even exist. The only time we saw torrent throttling (not even blocking!!) in the U.S. was Comcast, and they got smacked down for it. The market worked, why do we need regulation when there is no problem?

"Network Neutrality" sounds so happy and awesome at first, but it hides a greater problem than you'll ever see from throttling.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[sjames]

Only because of less progressive jurisdictions. However, most of the non-neutral routing is on the client ISP side which IS in Chile.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[Alexandra Erenhart]

They do teach poor geography. The rest of the world knows that there's ONE continent called America, that has 3 different sections: North America, Central America and South America. US people like to join together central and south america and call it Latin America, but that's only them. The rest of us know geography. If you look at wikipedia, the english section refers America as the US, while the spanish section shows you America as the ONE continent. Is a cultural difference, but it hurt us non US citizens in the way that we feel americans, but not in the way the US thinks about it. It feels like they robbed us of our continent's name.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[Tacvek]

I believe the part that said "interfere with, discriminate or interfere in any way" forbids both blocking and discriminatory QOS.

Also see the phase "and offer a service that does not distinguish content, applications or services, based on the source of it or their property", which also implies discriminatory QOS is forbidden.