Yesterday many websites were in a World-Wide Blackout against The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, and it’s sister bill, Protect IP Act (PIPA), that is currently working their way through the United States Congress and the Senate. These new bills threaten every facet of the internet by letting government regulate what can and can not be seen; a form of censorship - just like China and Iraq does to their Internet users.
Craig's List Blackout in Protest of SOPA and PIPA
Thousands of website owners, webmasters, and SEOs (including Tico Times Directory), joined with the big boys like Google, Craig’s Lists, and Wikipedia and protested for 24/hrs this scary and very unfair bill. The purpose of the blackout was twofold: to raise public awareness, and to encourage people to share their views with their elected representatives.
Fighting online piracy is VERY important and we believe in the copyrights and trademarks protection of others. Unfortunately, SOPA and PIPA bills target the innocent places like American social networks, Blogs and search engines. This alone undermines the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S jobs. In otherwords, those in protest, believe the bill violates a few US Amendment Rights, like the 1st Amendment – Freedom of Speech. Read more... (752 words, 3 images, estimated 3:00 mins reading time)
One again, as the New Year gets started, Costa Rican’s will find themselves paying more to the government.
Ticos by nature are non-aggressive, but this time the government may experience what American’s have seen, “country wide protests” and what some of the Bloggers are writing about, “WTF – The don’t understand land!”
Starting today (Jan 1, 2012) Costa Rica will see ( to name the few) higher traffic Fines, increase in tolls, and new tax(es), particularly on corporations, which is caused a bit of confusion.
Traffic Fines and Vehicle Registration
Just about all traffic fines will go up on average ¢44.000 colones. And for the existing high fines that have not been paid, expect a hike of 14%. In other words, a ¢316.000 fine suddenly becomes ¢360.000.
Private cars and Motorcycles will pay on between 30% to 43% more for registration and general taxes.
Traffic fines can be paid at some banks, but then again, find a bank open on Sunday and without a mile long line, and if you can’t pay, one had better keep a sharp eye for a Tránsito official who will be looking for that missing 2012 sticker on your windshield. Read more... (613 words, 2 images, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)
President Laura Chinchilla
I don’t know if it is just me, but it seems like every time you turn around Costa Rica is having some sort of labor strike.
Last Monday, about 2000 union workers of Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) (government monopoly on power and light company) went on strike, and snarled traffic on several major streets in and around San Jose. They were protesting a bill in the Legislative Assembly to privatize the generation of electricity.
And back in July a meeting was held between the union and officials of the Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social (CCSS) over a strike that centered on reduction of benefits.
So … what could this be telling us?
First, let go to the political party of National Liberation Party, in which ex President Óscar Arias (May 2006-2010) and current President Laura Chinchilla are political members. The National Liberation Party supports [to a point] privatization, which has only been tolerable by unions in this small but creditable Central American country. After Arias, many were saying [because of privatization] it would put an end to National Liberation Party’s, needless to say, they were proven wrong when Chinchilla was voted in, keeping the party in power until 2014. Its evident both were voted into power to help reduce government waste and to promote economical growth. Read more... (719 words, 2 images, estimated 2:53 mins reading time)
Costa Rica is an expats haven, taking advantage of their world class medial & education systems, democratic government, gorgeous tropical climate, diverse economy and of course the affordable real estate.
The ones that top the list are Americans and Canadians. Currently, over 100,000 Americans and 20,000 Canadians live in Costa Rica.
Like the U.S., Canada’s baby boomers are reaching retirement, and with the depress world-wide economy, and living expenses getting higher many elderly Canadians are now looking toward Costa Rica. That scale may start to become more balanced for Canadians vs. U.S. citizens, due to some pending laws that some claim are, human rights violations against their own “elderly” citizens.
Canada’s Heartless Grandparent Scandal
Canada has announced that there are approximately “eleven million” people in Canada who are over the age of fifty. Many of these people are aging parents who want nothing more out of life than to live independently (in something as simple as a basement apartment or Granny suite) in the home of adult child “and with the grandchildren” for the balance of their lives. Read more... (547 words, 1 image, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)
In the last couple of weeks one of our accounts has been having a hard time logging into their server. So after they rebooted the router a few times and then cleaned the ends of the cables the problem still existed. For a while it was driving me a bit crazy why this was happening until suddenly that light bulb clicked on; I remembered the article I wrote back in April, 2010, Net Neutrality For Costa Rica – Throttling Bandwidth Usages and Charging For It.
A Free Trade Agreement signed with the US and Canada (a few years back) ensured that private companies are able to operate in the telecoms sector. State-owned ISP, Radiográfica Costarricense (RACSA) has already formed alliances with the main cable operators to allow them to provide broadband services and ICE has been working feverishly to upgrade their system. Since then, the competition has been going hog wild running fiber optic just about everywhere, which leads one to ask two big questions: Read more... (1073 words, 1 image, estimated 4:18 mins reading time)
- Are some of Costa Rica Internet Service Providers (ISP) starting to throttle bandwidth to save money?
- And could this be the first sign that these companies may start charging their customers for excessive and/or limit bandwidth as we wrote about back in April, 2010?
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