Chile First To Approve Net Neutrality Law 293
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."
Re:OK (Score:3, Interesting)
One Page bill (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I don't work for Comcast. My work would be much less popular with the Slashdot community, but I can't really discuss it anyway. But, just to play devil's advocate, if, say, port 80 traffic were completely unfettered in a bi-directional manner and incomming connections were allowed without a previously established outgoing connection, chances are quite high that would be abused by malware authors for command-and-control and botnet node intercommunication. I don't think that's much of a stretch at all, and its not as if the typical end user is going to know or care to secure their node.
Re:OK (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:there are actually are limits in this world (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>when someone tries to block child pornography, for example, you are not witnessing some horrible slippery slope to fascism
(1) Possession of children having sex should be no more illegal than possession of murdered people. You did not commit the crime. The molester or murderer is the one who committed the crime and should be arrested, not you for mere possession of an image.
(2) Neither should parents be arrested for posting photos of their family trip to the nudist or topless beach. But it has happened.
(3) Neither should artists be arrested for creating DRAWINGS of children in sex act. There's no victim; hence no crime.
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:3, Interesting)
But I use my personal web server as part of my network-centric cloud storage system -- I ssh into my machine and move files I need into public_html, then I can download them from my web browser. You got a problem with that?
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or what about an user-configurable firewall at the ISP? Have it block port 80 by default, but any user who wants to use it can simply go to the web site and enable the port.
Exactly.
That's what my ISP does (in Australia). You can run all the servers you want with them. It's your connection. But they do want you to explicitly turn it on. I think that is a Good Thing (TM), especially for port 25.
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:1, Interesting)
this has zero to do with allowing malware or opening ports, jackass. It has everything to do with not allowing you to spontaneously throttle a client's connection with no reason provided.
If there's a botnet, cut them off. Nothing in net neutrality concepts prevent this nor does it have anything to do with it. Or, I don't know, call your customer and let them know? That's not a new concept.
This isn't saying that people can't prevent bad things. It's saying you can't discriminate aka anticompetitive.
Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score:1, Interesting)