SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s president signed into law on Wednesday a “Bill of Rights” for the digital age that aims to protect online privacy and promote the Internet as a public utility by barring telecommunications companies from charging for preferential access to their networks.

The law signed by President Dilma Rousseff at a global conference on the future of Internet governance puts Brazil in the vanguard of online consumer protection and what is known as “net neutrality,” whose promoters consider it profoundly democratic in part because it keeps financial barriers for innovators low.