Chile First Country to Guarantee Net Neutrality
posted Sunday Jul 18, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo
We've talked about net neutrality since this show started over three seasons ago and have been following the developments in business, federal and international policies and laws regarding it. New to net neutrality discussions or need a brush-up on some of the topics? Here's some reference:
AT&T Won't Let the FCC Let Google Be
Some Readers Won't Digest the FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
Comcast Plans To Screw Consumers More, Where's The Romance?
Republicans and Democrats Agree: Net Neutrality Up to Congress
All caught up? Good. Now, the consensus for the consumer community is that we all want net neutrality and the freedom to post what we want, where we want it, within the confines of ethical, moral and legal principles. ISPs, however, absolutely despise even the notion of such freedom and things of that sort. The politicians in the now amazing country of Chile and their Board of the Chamber of Deputies, though, have concluded that they absolutely love net neutrality!
Follow the break to see what they've done.
The Chilean politicians almost unanimously passed Bulletin 4915, which, among other things, leaves an ISP no option but 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.
Awesome. Now, there are provisions as well that make ISPs protect user's privacy and all that jazz, but we are amped for the network neutrality stuff! I won't be surprised, though, when Chilean ISPs start claiming that huge bandwidth-drawing websites will pose a potential risk to user's systems.
At any rate, we have the provisions to the Telecommunications Law here for you, roughly translated to English.
- Prohibition 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 network;
- It requires ISPs to provide parental control services;
- Forces to provide clients with a series of written evidence for it to correctly identify the contracted service;
- Forces to ensure the privacy of users, virus protection and network security;
- 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.
So Chile has now set an international precedence regarding what ISPs can and cannot do. Maybe other major countries should take note and follow suit, especially considering the Internet is IN the United States.
