Peru
Overview
Nearly four in ten Peruvians regularly access the Internet, mostly via cybercafes. The country has introduced several plans to expand Internet access in rural areas, and at least one region has taken to social media to lobby for faster access. The government has passed several laws that restrict minors from accessing pornographic material. Mainstream media remains more popular than digital sources of information, but journalists face threats and violence. Peru’s blogosphere is a venue for political activism and citizen journalism, and bloggers have been subject to hacking and other threats.
Access
Peru is roughly average amongst other Latin American countries in terms of its ability to provide Internet access to its citizens. Most Peruvians access the Internet through cyber cafes, though growth in the number of ISPs may result in more affordable home access in the near future. The government and the Spanish company Telefónica operate Telefónica del Peru, the country’s dominant telecommunications company and one of its largest ISPs. Peru’s government renewed its contract with Telefónica in January 2013. The contract, good for 18 years and 10 months, includes such social provisions as half-price telephone service for the nation’s poorest citizens, expanded mobile telephone coverage across the country, and free Internet access to local governments, police stations, health centers, and public schools. In 2008, the government invested USD 11.5 million that it had collected in telecommunication fees to build Internet centers in more than 1,000 rural locations, and it is working to expand broadband access in 6,000 rural towns. After ICANN began accepting applications for generic top-level domain names, the governments of Peru and Brazil appealed to prevent the company Amazon from obtaining the .amazon domain.
Control
Several laws restrict the availability of pornographic material online, especially for minors, but OpenNet Initiative testing found no evidence of filtering. The criminal code bans minors from accessing content that portrays pornography, contradicts morality, threatens health, or disturbs privacy, and laws require public Internet spaces to have child-only sections, to ensure parents or guardians observe children on the Internet, and to prohibit any adult except a child’s parent or guardian from accompanying a child in an Internet cafe. A July 2013 proposal would create a commission to review pornographic web content and decide what ISPs should block. People have questioned whether the bill would infringe freedom of expression and how the government will ensure that material wasn’t also blocked for adults.
Activity
Social networking sites are popular in Peru, with Facebook and hi5 the most commonly used. A homegrown network called Peruanos Online emerged in 2011 and aims to attract 1 million users worldwide. Residents of Iquitos, the largest city in Peru’s rainforest region, launched a social media campaign in 2012 to lobby for faster Internet access. According to the Open Society Foundations' Mapping Digital Media project, the number of blogs in Peru increased eleven-fold between 2005 and 2010, and as of early 2014, Blogger was still more popular than Wikipedia and Twitter in the country. Peru's blogosphere includes several blogs in the indigenous language Quechua. The government response to bloggers is not always positive: in 2010, the government sentenced blogger Jose Alejandro Godoy to three years in prison and a USD 125,000 fine for defaming a former politician.
Peru is roughly average amongst other Latin American countries in terms of its ability to provide Internet access to its citizens. Most Peruvians access the Internet through cyber cafes, though growth in the number of ISPs may result in more affordable home access in the near future. The government and the Spanish company Telefónica operate Telefónica del Peru, the country’s dominant telecommunications company and one of its largest ISPs. Peru’s government renewed its contract with Telefónica in January 2013. The contract, good for 18 years and 10 months, includes such social provisions as half-price telephone service for the nation’s poorest citizens, expanded mobile telephone coverage across the country, and free Internet access to local governments, police stations, health centers, and public schools. In 2008, the government invested USD 11.5 million that it had collected in telecommunication fees to build Internet centers in more than 1,000 rural locations, and it is working to expand broadband access in 6,000 rural towns. After ICANN began accepting applications for generic top-level domain names, the governments of Peru and Brazil appealed to prevent the company Amazon from obtaining the .amazon domain.
Several laws restrict the availability of pornographic material online, especially for minors, but OpenNet Initiative testing found no evidence of filtering. The criminal code bans minors from accessing content that portrays pornography, contradicts morality, threatens health, or disturbs privacy, and laws require public Internet spaces to have child-only sections, to ensure parents or guardians observe children on the Internet, and to prohibit any adult except a child’s parent or guardian from accompanying a child in an Internet cafe. A July 2013 proposal would create a commission to review pornographic web content and decide what ISPs should block. People have questioned whether the bill would infringe freedom of expression and how the government will ensure that material wasn’t also blocked for adults.
Social networking sites are popular in Peru, with Facebook and hi5 the most commonly used. A homegrown network called Peruanos Online emerged in 2011 and aims to attract 1 million users worldwide. Residents of Iquitos, the largest city in Peru’s rainforest region, launched a social media campaign in 2012 to lobby for faster Internet access. According to the Open Society Foundations' Mapping Digital Media project, the number of blogs in Peru increased eleven-fold between 2005 and 2010, and as of early 2014, Blogger was still more popular than Wikipedia and Twitter in the country. Peru's blogosphere includes several blogs in the indigenous language Quechua. The government response to bloggers is not always positive: in 2010, the government sentenced blogger Jose Alejandro Godoy to three years in prison and a USD 125,000 fine for defaming a former politician.