Network Neutrality Is Law In Chile 180
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."
"applications or legal services over the Internet" (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:1, Interesting)
So it's basically totally different from "network neutrality" as proposed in the US ? In the US network neutrality is not about blocking, but about QOS applied on a "discriminatory" basis*.
Not that I usually expect more from slashdot articles.
* note that applying QOS in a non-discriminatory way will still cause an ISP's own destinations to be better handled, for obvious reasons.
Re:"applications or legal services over the Intern (Score:3, Interesting)
So does that mean illegal services (such as torrent sites on a blacklist) might be blocked?
Perhaps, but before it could be any arbitrary block. Now there's a law that specifically says you can not unless it meets some exception, so I don't see how it could possibly be worse than before.
And how long is it before that changes to "must be blocked" due to being a signatory on an international copyright treaty...
The day YouTube has to shut down because *one* pirated clip is found on their service is the day all sanity has left the Internet anyway.
Or does it mean companies can no longer filter websites they find inappropriate? They after all a form of ISP in a way.
Only if they resell access to individuals or other companies, I would think. An employee is more like a child in your household, I doubt your teenage son can demand you give him unfiltered internet access by this law. I guess there's some ambiguity at college campuses and the like, but that is not a new discussion. Also I'm quite sure ISPs can continue to offer voluntary filtering services, I know at least some ISPs here do.
Any time you let the government decide what is permissible on your network you will be sorry in the end.
And the first amendment means the government decides what you can say in the US? Which is by the way a pretty good response to your first statement, even though there is freedom of speech there are certain forms of speech that are illegal and forbidden. It would be very strange for "speech" over the Internet to be any other way.
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?
The market? Comcast has most their customers trapped or in a duopoly with an equally unfriendly ISP. The only reason they got smacked down was because they were being covert and dishonest about it, if they had been above board then people would be screwed.
"Network Neutrality" sounds so happy and awesome at first, but it hides a greater problem than you'll ever see from throttling.
I think you need better arguments, you sound like Chicken Little who has become convinced the sky is falling. So far I've hardly seen anyone against network neutrality that I would say act with the customer's best interests at heart. Predominantly it's either companies who will lose their ability to double dip and become Internet gatekeepers or MAFIAA-like organizations that have as their stated goal to reach agreements with intermediaries to block unregulated services and offer only a cripple-net of "approved" services. Then there's some shills and quite possibly the most legitimate are the libertarians who claims the government can't do anything right, even though rights like this is a huge counterexample.
Re:"applications or legal services over the Intern (Score:3, Interesting)
They are NOT welcome to start throttling my fucking connection 5 minutes into a LEGAL BSD ISO download and turn the torrent
I agree, but I ask: why should it matter if it's a "legal" download ... or otherwise? I don't expect my telephone company to censor my speech if I say things that someone else doesn't like (although that would certainly be possible from a technical perspective.) Likewise, I don't expect a company that I pay to transmit packetized data from here to there and back again to be in any way involved in determining the legality of said communications.
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Three! All you need is three and you've got a well-functioning free market! And do you know how difficult it is to get authorization? Very, very easy.
I used to be part of an advisory board that dealt with the local charters back when we did have local franchise agreements. In Fairborn, OH all you had to do was negotiate a deal with the city to use their rights-of-way and you could offer service. We still had one cable company. There simply weren't enough people in Fairborn (about 30,000) to keep two franchises profitable.
The problem is that the people selling infrastructure are the same people selling service. Imagine if UPS and FedEx had to build their own roads. We'd have the same problem.
We need publicly owned infrastructure and privately owned businesses selling service over that infrastructure. Remember the good old days of dial-up? You didn't have to buy service from your phone company. You could choose any ISP in the world if you really wanted to. Of course, you were generally limited by the ISPs that had a local number you could dial, but there were more than three. I grew up in a town of about 7,000 residents and we had 5 choices.
I agree that the state of Internet access is a problem, and I'd like nothing more than to see some real competition, but you're not going to get competition until you remove the inherent conflict of interest that occurs when a company owns the infrastructure in a market that lends itself to a natural monopoly.
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Much like there's a continent called Western Europe and another called Eastern Europe, which are collectively known as the Europes.
Oh, wait.