Violation of Internet neutrality denounced after censorship by the Court in Paraguay

Users of betting sites in Paraguay can no longer access these platforms, or at least most of them. This is because the Supreme Court of Justice banned access to all portals of this type operating in the country, with the exception of Apostala. Faced with this, users denounce that the neutrality of the Internet is violated and a monopoly is validated.

The provision of Paraguayan justice was made known on July 8 and is signed by the Criminal Court of Guarantees No. 2, based in Ciudad del Este. In the letter, addressed to the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) details of the betting pages that are prohibited in Paraguayan territoryincluding internationally renowned platforms. This is, the resolution expresses, an emergency precautionary measure that was presented by Apostala, whose absence in the list was pointed out by twitter users.

This betting site, owned by the company Daruma Sam S. A., has the “exclusivity” for the exploitation of the gambling of sports betting in the territory of Paraguay since March 2018, as he says at the foot of the home from your website. According to this explanatory text, the license was obtained from a public tender made in 2017 and approved by the National Gambling Commission of Paraguay.

Net neutrality, in check by censorship of the Court of Paraguay

The whole thing would seem like a mere trade dispute, but it goes beyond that. The user @ arquiguru expresses in the Twitter thread cited above that the provisions of the Justice “violate article 26 of resolution 190/2009 of its own regulation on net neutrality”.

This resolution of CONATEL establishes the obligation to respect the neutrality of the Internet for all service providers in Paraguayan territory. In other words, this means that they cannot intercede on traffic to one or more sites, but the user has all the power to decide which pages he wants to visit.

In that same social network, also, a theory is woven about the origin of this agreement that, according to them, does not conform to the law of Paraguay. Several users claim that there is a political network between Daruma Sam president Manuel Lugo and Senator Javier Zacarías Irun to obtain these regulatory benefits for the platform.

In fact, even national media in Paraguay have confirmed the link between the two people, although it cannot be said that their meetings (which coincide with the date of the public tender for the exploitation of sports betting in 2017) have been linked to this issue.