Internet in Peru: Road to the big depression Thanks to Cisco and Ookla, is formalized a known mouth to mouth truth:

We have not only the second worst internet service in Latin America, but we have one of the worst services in the planet. And this situation threatens to perpetuate due to a lot of bills and trade agreements that promotes censorship and impunity for the bad services that intentionally wrecks communications, making them worse than they already are. This an english version and resume from a lot of articles in spanish (some made by myself or other sources) about the sad situation about telcos and privacy in Peru. I will resume them in three points. 1.-Piracy is not the problem (much less here). The problem is greed and ineptitude. As i said, we have the second worst internet service in Latin America. As result, ecommerce is minimal in Peru due to distrust in our services and banks, that doesn't provide the right media to use them. Only 10% of people in Peru has internet access (mixing this data with this other). To this i add the abuses from ISP against their consumers, blocking services/sites at their whim (even VPN services), applying traffic shaping policies and even tricking/blocking tests that proves that measures (like Glasnost test), despite that is illegal in Peru. The article 283 from Criminal Code forbids any form of interruption against communications, but is dead letter. One of that providers (America Movil aka Claro) wanted impunity against this by a cybercrime bill, that free Claro from two cases of abuse, one related to a mexican drug cartel (the Rosendo Arias case). Claro is currently in Bad ISP List from Bittorrent client Vuze due to it's attacks to net neutrality and business freedom, not only Bittorrent traffic. http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs#Per.C3.BA Going back to e-commerce, the advertising from mouth to mouth (sharing music/links can be an example) has a lot of relevance in Peru. A lot of blogs and even tv shows grew up thanks to it. And foreign artists/bands took advantage of this too. Recently, a korean pop group came here with a lot of acceptation, despite no data of them in local media. Legal offer is really low due to whimsey from copyright industry. However, despite of it's sucess, that mouth to mouth is at risk of dissapearing.

2.-Free trade = deafness and thuggery This sounds like an european issue, but we have more. Last week, our Foreign Trade/Tourism Ministry (MINCETUR by it's acronym in Spanish) Jos Luis Silva, called a open discuss about a bill to regulate liabilities on Internet Service Providers (since now, ISP) and even created with a known lawyer a site to gather/publish info about it (responsabilidad-isp.pe, now dead). For the sensitivity of the issue, that discuss was called as SOPA Criolla o SOPA peruana (peruvian SOPA), referring to it's extinct U.S. equivalent. This week, the process was sabotaged by their own promotors. Last Monday, one day before first journey to discuss this, responsabilidad-isp.pe site and it's Twitter page was cleaned.

And things was getting worse since then. Erick Iriarte, an IP-specialized lawyer, owns the business that made resposnabilidad-isp.pe and was one of the spokesmen that call this as a open discuss, but he disclaims when i asked for that issue. This makes doubts about his words. And MINCETUR offers no explanation about this issue, blindly trusting on it's little diffusion. However, i asked for it in their Facebook page, they disclaims any liability...

despite that they promoted the idea.

This website is part of the work required by the MINCETUR and is under the IDB's support for dialogue on Responsibility of ISPs in copyright and related rights in the digital environment in Peru. Rescued from Google cache of responsabilidad-isp.pe, before their elimination. And MINCETUR with Silva at head, has a bad history about transparency. Last June, we alerted about a dangerous article in the EU Trade Agreement. The article 254 has measures that forces any service provider to bring personal data and activity from their clients to third parties with the excuse of piracy. The MINCETUR ignored it and signed the agreement the day 26th Now is pending it's ratification, planned to December 10th and this agreement is being impulsed by the ACTA lobbyist Karel De Gucht. Be careful. The article 254 paradoxically is known as "No general obligation to monitor", but it's measures ignores any disclaimer from ISPs enabled in other articles. 1.-A Party shall not impose a general obligation on service providers, when providing the services covered in articles 251, 252 and 253, to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation to actively seek for facts or circumstances indicating illegal activities. <here comes the creepiest part> 2.-The Parties may ESTABLISH OBLIGATIONS for services providers to promptly inform the competent public authorities of alleged illegal activities undertaken or of information provided by recipients of their service, or obligations to communicate to the competent authorities, upon request of such authorities, information enabling the identification of recipients of their services with whom they have storage agreements.

This sounds like ACTA, right? Unfortunately, with the eyes from people in other bills that menaces speech freedom (like negation law) and collectives like Anonymous with their eyes put on other trade agreement that menaces privacy (the Transpacific Agreement, TPP/TPPA), this issue doesn't got noticed despite the risks.

3.-Impunity, censorship and more. And here is when i relate the first and second point. We don't have transparency about trade agreements and paranoid bills, with no possibility of involvement; these measures are not in accordance with reality and even seek to further impoverish our terrible reality in telecommunications, because all this provides impunity for bad providers and more fear to use technology due to copyright paranoia and terrorism as excuses. Local press is an accomplice of this situation, closing the mouth when the claims come out and even release the dogs when something goes well. And as our ISPs and the MINCETUR (via Marca Peru campaign) are sponsoring most of media, they do not want to talk about that which benefits the impunity of their sponsors. They are sold and know that people do not seek to know something of their own (Rick Falkvinge explains this phenomenon in an article). This is internet in Peru, a potential copyright haven for any lobbyist that want an excuse to do fear anyone. Be careful with us. P.S: A local cartoonist, Alvaro Portales, portrayed well our identity. And sorry if some links are in spanish.