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

A Law That Guarantees

[WrongSizeGlass]

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

In Chile. If the servers are not in Chile then this law doesn't apply.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[WrongSizeGlass]

In Chile. If the servers are not in Chile then this law doesn't apply.

That was worded poorly. If the traffic doesn't originate in Chile then it is subject to arbitrary and/or discriminatory blocking or throttling before it gets to Chile.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[Anonymous Coward]

In Chile. If the servers are not in Chile then this law doesn't apply.

You expect Chile to enforce its will on foreign countries?

What do you think they are, AMERICA?

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[cappp]

Google and I have joined forces to provide the following description of what the law seems to cover:

1Prohibition for ISPs (those that provide Internet access) to interfere with, discriminate or interfere in any way the content, applications or services unless measures to ensure the privacy of users, virus protection and security the network;
2.It requires ISPs to provide parental control services;
3.Forces to provide clients with a series of written evidence for it to correctly identify the contracted service;
4.Forces to ensure the privacy of users, virus protection and network security, and
5.Forces to ensure access to all types of content, services or applications available on the network and offer a service that does not distinguish content, applications or services, based on the source of it or their property. Also prohibits activities that restrict users' freedom to use the content or services unless the specific request of users.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[LiquidPaper]

Well, yes. We are part of America. I believe you are thinking of USA.

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

[shoehornjob]

If the traffic doesn't originate in Chile then it is subject to arbitrary and/or discriminatory blocking or throttling before it gets to Chile.

You would pretty much expect that your packets are at the mercy of whomever is routing them anyway so this is no big deal. At least they are taking a step in the right direction. In this country (USA) that'll never happen because there's either too much consumer apathy or excessive control by those who have the most to lose. Sad but true.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[Runaway1956]

With all this outsourcing and exporting of jobs, we can't afford rich schools or middle class schools. We are stuck with poor schools and poor geography and poor math and . . . .

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.

Re:A Law That Guarantees

[rtb61]

Does that really matter. A slow down of foreign content will simply drive the production of local content. Plus network neutrality is all about open politics, maintaining an equally accessible public discourse, about gutting the ability of mass media to dominate public consciousness. That needs to work on a national level before you push it on an international level.

Chile

[MarkRose]

That makes sense. When I eat chile, I never have trouble with traffic flow or port blocking.

If Chile can do it, why can't we do it?

[LinearBob]

In one word -- GREED!

Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it?

[MarkRose]

Greed and monopoly. If competitors were permitted in cities, I bet you'd see a return to unrestricted access. Where I have my hosting, I get transfer for under $0.01/GB. A TB of transfer is less than $10. Bandwidth is no longer a major cost of doing the ISP business. So why can't I get that at home? Lack of competition. Cities get fat checks for restricting competition, and we all pay for it.

Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it?

[Securityemo]

The government must restrict monopolies. Without a government, the monopoly holders would find some other way to stop upstarts besides putting pressure on the local offices. A truly free market will devolve into a pit of snakes very fast, taking in both those who have and those who have not.

Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it?

[hairyfeet]

Well Mr Anon Coward, or AC for short, the problem we have seen again and again with the whole libertarian "let the market take care of it" philosophy is this- without regulation one or two players will simply use their wealth to crush everyone else and then destory any free market that once existed there. If you would like examples I suggest you look into how Intel was able to force the higher electric and heating bills of Netburst onto the public by bribes to OEMs and thus removing free choice, or for an oldie but a goodie how MSFT crushed competition by tying windows to computers sold and not computers installed with Windows.

When we are talking about things with huge startup costs as barriers to entry, such as CPU fabs or in this case millions of miles of cable or fiber, it really doesn't take much for the biggest player to simply wipe out any competition and lock the market up for themselves. Thanks to the massive deregulation that has happened in this country we have gone from the tons of little players we had under dialup to a few massive regional monopolies, that can simply use predatory pricing to crush anyone that dares to enter a market or simply refuse to allow them access to the backbones (which they own).

In my own area I have watched three different smaller ISPs be crushed by getting screwed out of backbone access, and talking to one shortly before it went under their lawyer made it clear that while there was a good chance they could win, it would cost them in excess of 10 million in lawyers fees and a decade of litigation to find out. THAT my dear AC is how come we need the government to open up broadband to competition. Because as it is now you will simply be destroyed by the local incumbents if you try to compete. Sadly instead we will most likely see guys like you demanded even more deregulation and we will fall farther and farther behind as ISP impose caps rather than upgrade infrastructure, because they know their "customers" simply have nowhere else to go.

"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.

From Specifics Upwards

[DynaSoar]

"Chile is the first country of the world to guarantee by law the principle of network neutrality,"

Isn't passing a law that makes something originally outside the law to remain outside the law rather oxymoronic? It's like the US requiring members of sovereign nations that exist within its own borders prove to the US that they are valid members of said nation before the US will recognize them as such; such is the requirement for tribal membership for Native Americans. To pass such a law Chile only proves that it an make laws regarding net neutrality. If it can make them, it can remake them. If net neutrality were an objective fact, no country's laws would matter. Since they obviously do, even a 100% granting of neutrality by all concerned is no more than lip service. And being international, such a law would require a treaty. Check out for yourself how many treaties get signed by all involved, and how few of those actually get honored. TFA is the appropriate first step, but unless it's followed with some far more powerful and reaching reforms, say, putting worldwide network administration under a UN component with the power to actually act, it's strictly superficial regardless of intentions.

Re:From Specifics Upwards

[Jedi Alec]

Isn't passing a law that makes something originally outside the law to remain outside the law rather oxymoronic?

Hmm, is it? I vaguely recall a set of laws that certain things shall remain outside the law to be rather highly thought of somewhere...

"Congress shall make no law" sound familiar?

Re:"applications or legal services over the Intern

[sjames]

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?

REALLY?

You seem to forgotten that there was a lot of complaining and a lot of people finding no competition to turn to and then the FCC smacked Comcast for throttling torrents.

In other words, exactly the opposite of what you said.

Re:Furthermore, VOIP is screwed

[Sigma 7]

He explained that suppliers must provide a service "which makes no distinction arbitrary content, applications or services based on the source of their origin or ownership."

In other words - no VOIP traffic prioritizing or in fact traffic shaping of any kind. Sorry Skype users, you'll have to stick with the big business telcos!

There's a set of bits in IP meant to adjust QoS, which is a non-arbitrary way of handling things. Thus, Bittorrent can claim itself to a minimal QoS, which is announcing to nearby routers that they're the first ones to go if there's a problem. Likewise, an RSS feed may declare it to be a low QoS, and defer to a normal QoS (such as from an HTTP browser), or a high QoS (such as real-time video conferencing or telephony.)

In this case, it's the applications themselves that volunteer to be dropped as issues arise from QoS, rather than being arbitrary.

Great News Everyone

[Strange Ranger]

Zoidberg aside, this IS great news. Despite the "free from government" leanings here on slashdot, because of the way the market and the legal system works (despite our ideals), this is great news.

It's regulations like this that keep free markets free.

Re:The argument for net neutrality

[Alexandra Erenhart]

The entity in charge of regulating this is probably the SUBTEL,(Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, subsecretary of telecommunications perhaps is the translation?). I don't know if you have any idea about politics in Chile, but we have several political parties over there, not only two. Yeah, there are like 3 or 4 that are bigger and with more power than the others, but they don't get to bend government entities the same way political parties in the US do. So in a way, by being more political (more parties), they are less political (the power is more spread). I don't know if that makes sense, but it sounds pretty haha.

Chile doesn't have states like the US. The main divisions are regions. They have their own governmental entities but they're all controlled by the central ones in Santiago, the capital. So regions don't get to do whatever they want either, meaning that if the government creates a law, all the rest of the regions have to follow, and individual regions can't make their own laws.

I hope that helped somewhat to understand a bit how Chile works. Of course, the real question is if the SUBTEL is going to care enough to reinforce the law in all its extent. That's a completely different deal.

Bad translation

[dolmen.fr]

The diario oficial is not "the official newspaper". It is in fact the public journal of the country, where laws are published.