Nicaraguan Congress Approves Law Aimed at Internet Control
The new Telecommunications Law empowers the State telecommunications agency to require a license in order to operate local channels or create internet content.
HAVANA TIMES – On October 31, the Nicaraguan National Assembly, totally controlled by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, approved the General Law of Convergent Telecommunications. Among other things, the law aims to control internet content disseminated by audiovisual creators and other informational media in Nicaragua.
The new replacement for the General Law of Telecommunications and Postal Services, in effect since 1995, was proposed by Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega at the beginning of this year. On March 12, it was sent to the Assembly’s Infrastructure Commission for analysis, and at the end of October it was approved.
In item 10 of Article 5, the new law defines content as: “all information generated under any manner or form of expression that could be distributed by any electronic medium.” In the view of an attorney specialized in telecommunications, such a concept of contents “shouldn’t be included” in the law.
“A telecommunications law shouldn’t regulate content, because it’s oriented towards technological development, not towards the content displayed over that technical structure. Contents in themselves are irrelevant to a regulator,” the legal specialist explained to Confidencial.
Forced to apply for a license
The new norm also grants the Nicaraguan Telecommunication and Postal Institute (Telcor) the power to obligate all local channels and audiovisual creators who generate or provide internet programs and contents, to apply for a license to operate in Nicaragua.
The attorney warned that the form in which this law is worded makes it “a political tool, to get all those not in favor with the Ortega regime off the turf.”
In presenting the rationale for this law, Ortega alleged that the former law, “no longer fits in with the current context, given its very limited capacity to regulate the new and complex scenarios that are outside of its scope and objectives.”
The previous Telecommunications Law “is outdated,” the attorney affirmed, and a new regulation was needed. However, “they’re using a needed legal tool for a purpose that’s different from what the law should be intended for.”
Content regulation shouldn’t lie within the scope of the law
The new law doesn’t offer details of what type of content will be regulated. The telecommunications expert felt it would likely be defined in the regulations that Telcor will emit later.
“Through laws or regulatory provisions, you can establish parameters – for example the controversy about ads with sexual content that arose when television was in vogue, Regulations were established that they could only be transmitted within a determined schedule; but you can’t forbid them from being broadcast,” he explained.
Spain, which has one of the most recent telecommunications laws, approved in 2022, excluded audiovisual services from the scope of the law’s objectives and application.
Digital blockade of the media
In principle, the new law will regulate the local channels that have arisen in the country’s departments and communities, but will also include providers of audiovisual communications services. These include open television, radio stations, and “any other service of audiovisual diffusion utilizing any technology or means of transmission, including the internet.”
“The tendency with this tool is that the regulating body or authority charged with its application can tell a media outlet such as 100% Noticias – whose license was canceled, its studios occupied and everything else – but which is still reaching the country through the internet, that in order to transmit in the country it will need a license,” the attorney believes.
Such restrictions could also be applied to other independent media outlets operating from outside the country, including the large international networks that are viewed via the internet. This is currently happening in Venezuela, where the regime of Nicolas Maduro imposed a digital blockade over 48 media outlets and 78 news sites, without having any legal basis to do so.
Legal uncertainty
The new Nicaraguan law presents lapses and ambiguities that could be used to the regime’s advantage, the specialist pointed out.
In Article 5, services of audiovisual communications are defined in two separate sections. In one, the media that emits these contents are classified as the content providers; but later, the creators who produce them are so defined. That leaves it ambiguous who they’re planning to regulate.
“Audiovisual communications service providers: a natural or legal person that generates or provides programs and content to the general public through different media or in the form of a virtual provider,” reads item 38 of Article 5.
Meanwhile, item 47 stipulates: “the services of audiovisual communications correspond to the different modalities of distribution and diffusion of multimedia programs and contents to the general public.”
“When a law such as this bill includes concepts that permits an official to use one definition or another depending on circumstances or on the person to whom it’s going to be applied, there’s no legal security, no equality. What it does is leave room for the arbitrary application of the functionary in charge,” the attorney commented.
Requirements and charges for licensing
Those who provide audiovisual content services will now have to request a license from Telcor, which will be valid for ten years. Those obtaining one will also have to pay a fee to Telcor for the “recurring monthly right of usage,” with an amount that has yet to be determined. The cost will be defined when Telcor issues the new regulations.
The previous law didn’t authorize Telcor to issue further norms once the law had been established. With the new law, that Institute will be able to add new regulations, via norms created later, without the need to go through the National Assembly.
The decisions that Telcor could define in such norms range from the cost of licenses to possible regulations of content – facets that aren’t specified in the bill.
The new law also repeals Law #670, which had extended the licenses of the companies, individuals or legal entities that operate radio, television or cable stations. The current operating licenses for media and cable have been in effect since 2008.
It also establishes that Telcor will be able to legally or extra-judicially demand the cancellation of pending or overdue payments for administrative charges, fines or any other obligation.
“Telcor, within a maximum term of six months from the effective date of this law, shall replace all the active titles that are in force pursuant to laws 670 and 200,” the bill details.