[kictanet] The UN : A Threat to the Internet freedom?? and WCIT-12

[Alice Munyua]

Hi McTim  and all,

Our assumption is the national position on the upcoming WCIT-12 will be 
developed with stakeholder input and we should all look forward to 
contributing to shaping our national position before the second Africa 
regional meeting in 21-24 May 2012 in South Africa.

More information on WCIT Visit: 
http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/Pages/default.aspx

best

Alice
-------------------
A different view on the article:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/119481-fcc-fires-fud-at-the-idea-of-a-un-controlled-internet


    FCC fires FUD at the idea of a UN-controlled internet

In a recent editorial at The Wall Street Journal, FCC Commissioner 
Robert McDowell blasted the upcoming ITU World Conference on 
International Telecommunications (WCIT-12). According to McDowell, 
Russia, China, and their allies at the ITU want to monitor all internet 
communications, allow foreign companies to charge for international 
internet traffic "perhaps even on a per-click basis," impose economic 
regulations, take over ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names 
and Numbers), and conquer the Internet Engineering Task Force.

McDowell reaches a bombastic crescendo 
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577229074023195322.html> 
by claiming that the treaty will more-or-less destroy everything, 
everywhere, writing: "Productivity, rising living standards and the 
spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, 
would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become 
politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body."

The FCC Commissioner's threat assessment is completely out-of-step with 
the US government's opinion, as shown in a leaked memo 
<http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2012/1/30/4988735.html> 
from January 23, 2012. The memo notes that while there was "great and 
widespread concern" a year ago that WCIT-12 would be a battle over the 
role the ITU should play in internet governance, the US spent 12 months 
working to limit the scope and nature of the issues that will be 
considered at the treaty negotiations. As a result, "There are no 
pending proposals to invest the ITU with ICANN-like Internet governance 
authority. Neither cybersecurity nor Internet governance predominate 
discussion in any region."

Among the charges leveled at the ITU are claims that the treaty could 
"Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, 
terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping 
agreements known as 'peering.'" As we've said, there's literally no such 
agreement under consideration --- but the inclusion of this point sheds 
light on why certain parties are so interested in keeping this issue in 
the news.


Under the current unregulated peering system, foreign ISPs pay US ISPs a 
fee to carry internet traffic, which means US companies make a tidy sum 
of cash off foreign access. If internet servers were truly decentralized 
--- the "Balkanization" McDowell fears --- US ISPs would end up paying 
considerably more money to their foreign counterparts.

Those bright white lines aren't just revenue sources, they're control 
linkages. If you work for the MPAA/RIAA or back laws like SOPA and PIPA 
<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114411-sopa-blackouts-begin-as-mpaa-calls-foul>, 
those links are absolutely vital. Any attempt to create an international 
system of internet governance would weaken the RIAA and MPAA's efforts 
to implement SOPA-style censorship. Both bills were aimed at restricting 
and controlling /foreign/ internet traffic, which means both 
intrinsically assumed that such traffic would be flowing through the 
United States.

An equally distributed intra-planetary internet would still take 
geolocation into account for routing and access purposes, but would 
effectively eliminate the concept of "foreign" websites. SOPA and PIPA 
were meant to be palatable to the general US population precisely 
because they exploited an us/them mentality and claimed to be protecting 
America. If internet control were to shift towards nations that favored 
fewer copyright restrictions, internet access as a human right, and 
limited punishment for piracy, it would be a serious threat to content 
distributors.

McDowell's claims are factually inaccurate and hyperbolic. They paint a 
false dichotomy between the idea that the internet today is a 
free-wheeling, uncontrolled frontier, while the alternative is a fascist 
state. The internet, as it exists today, is highly regulated. Some of 
that regulation was inherited or expanded from the old laws governing 
telephone access 
<http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/107527-att-slams-fccs-t-mobile-merger-investigation-as-lacking-all-credibility> 
and line-sharing, some of it is applied via laws like the DMCA. ICANN is 
not a direct arm of the US government, but it's a far cry from a private 
corporation. The publicized debates around net neutrality and the FCC 
last year are further evidence that the idea of an unregulated internet 
is a fallacy.

At the other end of the equation, no one advocates handing over complete 
control of the internet to the likes of Russia, China, Myanmar, and 
Iran. There's no reason not to open internet governance slowly and 
gradually, unless you represent a faction who views such a process as an 
unacceptable loss of control. Regardless of how you feel about the 
issue, McDowell's editorial only clouds the debate with demagoguery. 
It's a blatant attempt to fire people up emotionally with virtually no 
grounding in objective fact. The internet is going nowhere, regardless 
of what happens at the upcoming meeting. Ultimately, however, this isn't 
a debate about whether the internet is regulated, but an argument over 
who should control the regulatory process. If US lawmakers continue 
pushing bills like SOPA and PIPA, they may find an increasing number of 
US citizens who think the UN is a more attractive alternative --- a 
concept editorials like this are meant to thwart.


> Hi,
>
> I am wondering what the offical KE position on this is going to be in
> the ITU, especially in the upcoming WCIT meeting where the ITRs will
> be re-negotiated.
>
> Anyone with insider knowledge?
>

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