Dear all, this is another alarming information from the IRP list from Ginger. May be our friends from LACRALO can follow-up on this. Kind regards, Wolf Ginger Paque wrote Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:06:

Hi Lisa and all,

There are two troubling projects in current discussion in the Venezuelan parliament, the one Lisa mentions, and one seeking new Internet regulations. They are both likely to pass this week. These merit international review and discussion:

After Legislative Setback, Venezuela's Chavez Plans to Legislate by Decree http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=381328&CategoryId=10718 Chavez announced that he will ask his lame-duck National Assembly (where he will lose his unchallenged majority on January 5) to pass an “Enabling Law” that will allow him to dictate by decree for 18 months -- bypassing the incoming Opposition legislators. ... ... In the next 165-member National Assembly, the ruling party will have the majority of lawmakers but not, as it has had up to now, the two-thirds majority necessary to approve organic laws or extraordinary measures such as granting special powers to the president.

A Venezuelan newspaper account: Venezuelan govn't seeks media law to regulate the Internet http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/12/10/en_pol_esp_venezuelan-govnt-se_10A...

Global Voices has a comment on the Resorte (Internet law) here, although it does not take into account yesterdays discussions: http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/12/12/venezuela-law-for-internet...

Ginger (Virginia) Paque IGCBP Online Coordinator DiploFoundation www.diplomacy.edu/ig

The latest from Diplo... http://igbook.diplomacy.edu is the online companion to An Introduction to Internet Governance, Diplo's publication on IG. Download the book, read the blogs and post your comments.

On 12/16/2010 5:44 AM, Lisa Horner wrote: Hi all

 

Please see below information about the worrying bills that have been presented in Venezuela.  Is there anything we can do on this?

 

Apologies for cross posting.

 

All the best,

Lisa

 

From: Pedro Less Andrade [mailto:pedroless@google.com] Sent: 15 December 2010 23:34 To: Kurt Opsahl; <katitza@eff.org>; Sonja Gittens-Ottley; Sebastian Bellagamba; Raúl Echeberría; Alejandro Pisanty; OscarM; Cynthia Wong; Ruth Puente; Lisa Horner Subject: Re: [URGENT] Internet Censorship in Venezuela. Bill on Social Responsibly of Internet service providers and electronic media + Creation of National Internet Exchange Point

 

Hi all,

 

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Office of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression just sent a press release today on the Venezuelan issue. 

http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2010/122-10eng.htm

http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/Spanish/2010/122-10sp.htm

 

It has very good paragraphs on freedom of expression and Internet.

 

Please, circulate this among your contacts and the Internet community. 

Best,

 

Pedro

 

 

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Pedro Less Andrade <pedroless@google.com> wrote:

Dear all,

 

You might heard about these two bills that are going to be debated at Venezuela National Assembly next Tuesday.  Those represent a serious threat to free expression online. It will be interesting the possibility to have a strong coordinated response from the Internet Community.

 

Please find below a report that I prepared about the two bills:

 

On December 10, we learned about a two new attempts to censor Internet in Venezuela:

 

1.  A new bill that will go to parliament next week to amend the Law of Social Responsibly for Radio and Television and adds special provisions for Internet service providers and electronic media. Please find the text of the bill here from the National Assembly website (also attached). The National Assembly scheduled the debate of the new bill for Tuesday December 14. 

 

2. There is another bill to reform the National Organic Telecommunications Law. Section 212 of the bill established a National Internet Exchange Point (IPX or NAP).  This will be a way for the government to have a centralized Internet point of access to the country an control the traffic get in and out of the country. Please find the bill here (also attached).

 

Manuel Villalba, a lawmaker from President Hugo Chavez's Socialist Party, said the law was aimed at protecting citizens.

"Nowhere is the restriction of access to the Internet suggested. There should just exist protection of citizens' moral and ethical honor," said Villalba, who heads the National Assembly's media commission.

 

The bill allows the government to restrict access to websites if they are found to be distributing messages or information that incite violence against the president.  The bill also applies limits on content in "electronic media" according to the time of day, with adult content reserved for programing after midnight.

 

I made a preliminary assessment of both bills:

 

 

1. About the Bill on Social Responsibly:

 

Section 1: The "purpose" of the bill is to establish the social responsibility of providers of radio and television services, Internet service providers and electronic media, advertisers, independent national produces, and users to promote democratic equilibrium between their

 duties, rights and interests for the purposes of promote social justice and contribute to citizenship formation, democracy, peace, human rights, culture, education, health and social and economic development, in accordance with the rules and principles of constitutional law for the integral protection of children and adolescents, culture, education, social security, free competition and the Organic Law of Telecommunications.

 

The bill is very ambiguous and vague because it extends the application of the prior law (aimed to regulate Radio and TV) to the Internet sphere. It is not clear what applies to Internet Service providers and electronic media and what not.

 

The bill defines 4 elements to be classified: language, sex, health and violence. And categorized each element into different levels of publishing or broadcasting: A, B, C, D and sometimes E. 

 

Section 8 defines the prohibitions for Radio, TV and Electronic Media in connection with content that:

contain elements of sex type "E" health "D" and violence "C".   may incite hatred or promote religious, political,  gender intolerance or racism or xenophobia. incite or promote and / or justify crime. could be war propaganda may be handled and designed by media to promote unrest in the citizenship or disturb public order.  may be destined to ignore the legally constituted authorities, disrespect to the authorities or persons carrying these charges. could lead to president assassination. could incite or promote breach of law. offend good customs.   use visual techniques, sound or contexts that prevent or hinder the users to perceive them consciously. Internet Service Providers should establish mechanism to restrict, without delay, the dissemination of and access to content subsumed under the prohibitions contained in paragraphs 2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 9 and 10,  when requested by National Telecommunications Commission in exercise of its powers. The National Telecommunications Commission may order Internet Service Providers to restrict access to messages and reported portals.

 

Internet service providers will be responsible for the information and content prohibited referred in this Article, in cases that they originated the transmittion, modified the data, selected the recipients fail to limited the access to them in response to the request made by bodies with jurisdiction in the matter.

 

Section 28 subsections 3 and 4: extend sanctions to ISPs. Penalties could range from 3-4% of their annual gross income. Those penalties has a particular focus on advertisement associated with different activities (professional services without the proper national certification, beneficial institutions without the proper registration, tabacco, alcohol,sexual services and products, ads against transport law (I imagine speeding, radars detectors) among others.  

 

Section 29 established additional penalties, suspension and revocation of government concesions to provide their services. 

The penalties could go up to 10% and suspensions of services up to 72 hours, when providers disseminate the following type of messages:

 

a) Those that promote, advocate or incite war b) Those that promote, advocate or incite public disturbances; c) Those that promote, advocate or incite crime; d) Those that may incite hatred or promote religious, political,  gender intolerance or racism or xenophobia. e) Those that may be discriminatory f) Those that may be contrary to National security; g) Anonymous messages. h) Those that could be war propaganda i) Those that could be handled and designed by media to promote unrest in the citizenship or disturb public order.  j) Those that are intended to ignore the legally constituted authorities, disrespecting the public authorities or persons carrying these authorities. k) Those which could lead to president assassination

  

Revocation will take place when providers subject to this law repeated the conducts sanctioned above. 

 

 

2. About the Bill amending the National Organic Telecommunications Law:

 

New Section 212: Creation of National Exchange Point or Network Access Point for Internet Service Providers in Venezuela

The State create an Exchange Point or Network Access Point for Internet Service Providers in Venezuela in order to manage the traffic from and to Venezuela with the purpose to having a more efficient use of the networks in the country, given the strategic nature of the sector. The governing body (National Telecommunications Commission) will determine the State enterprise that will be responsible for installation, operation and maintenance of the Exchange Point or Network Access Point for Internet Service Providers and will issue, by resolution, the rules applicable to determine the model, constraints, requirements, implementation schedule and any other matter necessary to achieve the conditions that may be appropriate for proper implementation.

 

If the government force all the national ISPs to connect to the IXP/NAP the will have the technical ability to inspect, filter and block internet traffic from and to Venezuela. 

 

Conclusions:

 

This constitutes a flaflagrant violations to the OAS Inter-american Convention of Human Rights, particularly sections related to freedom of speech and indirect censorship.  

 

If both bills got passed, Internet services, particularly web 2.0 platforms, will  face increasing blocking and filtering in Venezuela, at ISP level.

 

 

Useful links:

 

Press:

http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE6B90SA20101210 (Reuters, English)

http://fromtheold.com/news/internet/chavez-plans-censor-internet-20933 (English)

http://www.codigovenezuela.com/2010/12/noticias/politico/la-censura-para-int...

http://caracas.eluniversal.com/2010/12/10/pol_ava_gobierno-creara-punt_10A48...

 

Blogs:

Internet censorship in Venezuela: the real objectives (in English): http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2010/12/internet-censorship-in-venezuel...

 

Venezuela's National Assembly Website:

Proyecto de Ley de Reforma de la Ley Orgánica de Telecomunicaciones  Proyecto de Ley De Reforma de La Ley de Responsabilidad Social en Radio y Televisión  

 

Best,

 

Pedro

-- Pedro Less Andrade ■ Gerente Senior de Asuntos Gubernamentales y Políticas Públicas / Senior Policy Counsel ■ Google ■ Latin America O: +54 11 5530 3209  ■  M: +54 911 6242 4153 ■ pedroless@google.com

-- -- Pedro Less Andrade ■ Gerente Senior de Asuntos Gubernamentales y Políticas Públicas / Senior Policy Counsel ■ Google ■ Latin America O: +54 11 5530 3209  ■  M: +54 911 6242 4153 ■ pedroless@google.com

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