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."
A Law That Guarantees (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
In one word -- GREED!
Re:Safe Haven? (Score:3, Insightful)
From Specifics Upwards (Score:4, Insightful)
"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:A Law That Guarantees (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes. We are part of America. I believe you are thinking of USA.
Re:Safe Haven? (Score:2, Insightful)
Glad to see the FUD campaign wrt Net Neutrality has achieved its goals. The meaning of the concept has been distorted beyond all recognition in certain countries.
Re:From Specifics Upwards (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
The argument for net neutrality (Score:2, Insightful)
If this works out and their internet access appears to have been improved as a result, then I will support the concept of net neutrality. However, I doubt I will support and US implementation of it. I don't like the FCC. Anyone know anything about the regulatory commission that enforces net neutrality in Chile? Hopefully they are less political than our FCC.
Re:"applications or legal services over the Intern (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree, strongly. As one of the unlucky comcast customers who was caught up by their throttling for months, its very much a big deal to me. Especially when they kept insisting they weren't doing any of the kind of shit they eventually got caught doing, and to this day they still lie about the crap they were pulling. "Reasonable network management", my ass! Comcast claimed they weren't blocking anything, but when I had a torrent going (of ANYTHING) my downloads (on ANYTHING) dropped to almost nothing within 5 minutes, even at 3am! They throttled all traffic going to my computer because they saw one piece was something they didn't like (torrent traffic). The whole point of network neutrality is to keep them from pulling this kind of shit. They are welcome to throttle when I hit a certain amount of traffic for the month. They are NOT welcome to start throttling my fucking connection 5 minutes into a LEGAL BSD ISO download and turn the torrent, as well as the rest of my connection to crap to save themselves a few pennies on data transit costs. That is bullshit. Pure bullshit.
I can not wait for the US to implement mandatory network neutrality. And I'm not talking about Google+Verizon's underhanded back door deals that let them only do it where its favorable to them. It's either that, or force comcast, the bells, and any other company that's ever been given tax breaks and subsidized land from the city for their equipment and for their lines to force them to provide wholesale access to their wires to other isps. That way, consumers really do have a choice on who they can get internet from and whether they are going to put up with this kind of crap or not.
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:0, Insightful)
I find it funny that people's solution is to then have the government get more involved, especially sense they ARE THE PROBLEM. Oh right I must be a conservative not job (I saved you the post :) )
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed. Harry Browne said it best about government:
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:1, Insightful)
Viva la Interweb! Move to Chile!
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Great News Everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
It's regulations like this that keep free markets free.
Re:From Specifics Upwards (Score:3, Insightful)
countries can make laws about anything they want to.
and their are lots of laws that exist to make other laws illegal.
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Um...I agree with you that lack of competition probably has a lot to do with it...but they don't just throw a datacenter at some random place. One of the key things they would look for is cheap bandwidth. Plus, when you're moving huge quantities of data, it's easier to get a good deal. It's like anything else.
I once had a girlfriend whose mother was a regional manager for a restaurant chain. She got hundreds of dollars of free food every month. Does that mean that, if there was more competition in the restaurant industry, we could all get hundreds of dollars of free food? No. When you have certain locations and deals and jobs, you get things cheaper. So to say that bandwidth to your home should be cheap because bandwidth to a datacenter is cheap is a pretty poor argument.
Re:"applications or legal services over the Intern (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Just like they were before.
No shorter (if ever) than before the law.
Certainly not by any sane legal definition.
...which has what to do with Net Neutrality?
What if an ISP started throttling/blocking something a little less beloved than torrents? How much support would you get if they blocked, say, terrorist propaganda? Every one of the slippery slope arguments applied to government (not that I've heard a convincing one yet) can be applied to companies.
Again, no more than without Net Neutrality.
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:4, Insightful)
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:"applications or legal services over the Intern (Score:3, Insightful)
So does that mean illegal services (such as torrent sites on a blacklist) might be blocked?
Well, what do you think? Were illegal services all fine and dandy beforehand? Use your brain.
And how long is it before that changes to "must be blocked" due to being a signatory on an international copyright treaty...
OK, so throw out the baby with the bathwater. Also, that's pretty off-topic.
Or does it mean companies can no longer filter websites they find inappropriate? They after all a form of ISP in a way.
Huh? Are employees consumers?
Any time you let the government decide what is permissible on your network you will be sorry in the end.
This isn't the great firewall of China, in fact it's quite the opposite but "government bad! government will make you sorry!" is not a compelling argument.
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?
Comcast won in the end in case you forgot here's a link [businessweek.com], and they were resetting traffic with RST packets. If you dont think that was a test of what they could get away with, you're crazy. It was precedent setting.
"Network Neutrality" sounds so happy and awesome at first, but it hides a greater problem than you'll ever see from throttling.
I'm sorry this is going to sound rude but.... your post was either a complete troll or one of the stupidest things I have read on Slashdot in a long time. You warn of fixing a problem that doesn't exist and try proving your point with a bunch of unrelated "what-if" scenarios peppered with existential "you'll be sorry" fear mongering.
Re:Furthermore, VOIP is screwed (Score:3, Insightful)
The standard QoS bits are basically useless across any administrative boundary (such as the connection between you and your ISP, or your ISP and their upstreams/peers). Otherwise, you very quickly get people realizing they can just set all of their traffic to the "high priority" class. The only way an ISP could reasonably do QoS is by port or packet inspection.
Re:From Specifics Upwards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bandwidth for the ISP should be even cheaper for the ISP than what the OP pays for it. Where do you think your home connection ends up going to? A large datacenter run by your ISP that is located strategically to allow for the ISP to reap cheap bandwidth. On top of that, they possibly don't even pay for much bandwidth at all & instead setup peering agreements with backbone providers. Yet broadband prices keep going up. The last mile is not cheap to maintain, but a lot of the intiail costs have already been recouped as far as setting up initial infrastructure & the ISPs are very slow at upgrading or even maintaining their network.
Prices keep going up because there is no reasonable competition. Usually it's either cable for $X or DSL, that after you are forced into getting a POTS line put in and then their addt'l fees is just as much yet half the speed.
Re:If Chile can do it, why can't we do it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hurrying to your own demise (Score:2, Insightful)
when I had a torrent going (of ANYTHING) my downloads (on ANYTHING) dropped to almost nothing within 5 minutes, even at 3am!
I can almost certainly guarantee that within four years of a network neutrality regulation being passed that at 3am your torrents would not slow - they would stop, at any time, because your ISP will be required by the FCC to not pass BitTorrent traffic from RIAA blacklisted sites.
Do not give them the very foothold they can use to get in your door.
I am a Comcast customer too. I had the same issues as you. And having had a taste of it in no way do I want that kind of thing permanent across all ISP's.
I can not wait for the US to implement mandatory network neutrality.
I almost year for you all to get just what you are asking for, so I can laugh and laugh and laugh. But as I said, I too enjoy the use of BitTorrent and I think I would be more sad to lose that than to be proven so completely how right I was...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Law That Guarantees (Score:4, Insightful)
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.