US and other countries pull out of UN Internet talks

[nsane.forums]

The United States as well as a number of other countries, have said they will not sign a treaty that they feel will give too much control over the oversight of the Internet to the United Nations.

When it comes to who will oversee the running of the Internet, the United States and other countries feel that giving too much control to the United Nations would be a bad idea. This week, the United Nations tried to come up with a treaty that would establish a worldwide policy over the Internet, but that plan went up in smoke on Thursday.

Reuters reports that, during the UN's conference in Dubai, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and other major world nations refused to agree to the treaty. It will still be signed by other nations today, but since the US refused to sign on, there's little chance that it will be enforced.

Terry Kramer, the US representative to the UN conference, said there were a number of problems with the current treaty, including having the UN's International Telecommunication Union play a larger oversight role. The US also objected to a part of the treaty that, in theory, would cut down on the amount of Internet "spam" email. Kramer said that part of the treaty could be used by other governments as a way to monitor and possibly block emails that have religious or political messages.

Without the participation of the US, it's likely that the Internet will work in different ways in different countries. Russian representative Andrey Mukhanov said, "Maybe in the future we could come to a fragmented Internet."

View: Original Article

[Ambrocious]

If this is true then I'm glad. But I have heard that Obama already signed a secret document that Congress wasn't allowed to even see in regards to this very thing back in October. One thing I do know for sure is that if enough people world wide speak out about this, they can't do things like sign over the rules and regulations of the Internet to something so evil like the United Nations.

Since the Internet is what connects us all together around the whole Earth, if it was regulated by the UN, that would be the equivalent of the One Ring to Rule Them All in Lord of the Rings. The United Nations (metaphorically) becomes Sauron. One system to rule them all. I don't think so gentleman....

[DKT27]

@Ambro: Sad thing is, instead of UN, US is ruling the internet. AFAIK, the root servers remain with US. And all the laws that US makes are somehow international laws and if the website doesn't follow, it cannot operate in US. This is not limited to just copyright, almost everything.

[DKT27]

Looks like India didn't sign. :D

The UN's telecom conference is finally over. Who won? Nobody knows.

Vint Cerf says, "The good guys did not win," while ITU head dismisses concern.

Fadi Chehadé, the president and CEO of ICANN, addressed delegates at the opening ceremony earlier this month.

After two weeks of negotiations, the delegates at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12, or “wicket twelve”) in Dubai produced a 30-page document that 89 countries have signed—except the United States and many allies. So the good guys won, right? It depends who you ask.

“The good guys did not win—the terms are defined in such a way as to allow a significant amount of mischief in the Internet space,” Vint Cerf, the co-author of the TCP/IP protocol, and a founding father of the Internet itself, told Ars.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way.

“The ‘good guys’ (the US, and its allies including Canada and the UK) succeeded in keeping the [international Telecommunication Regulations] away from the Internet, and yet inexplicably chose to dump the whole thing at the end,” Milton Mueller, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, told Ars. “This was a mistake, in my humble opinion, and will make us look isolated.”

Meanwhile, the head of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Hamadoun Touré, had yet another opinion.

“This conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance,” he said in the closing sessions on Friday. “Let me repeat that: this conference was not about Internet control or Internet governance. And indeed there are no treaty provisions on the Internet.”

For some odd reason, the only official list of countries that did or didn't sign the agreement at the conference is this French-language chart. Assuming it's correct, the "Final Acts" at WCIT-12 has 89 signatories, including Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Senegal, Venezuela, Jamaica, Jordan, Singapore, and many others. Who didn't sign? The US, the UK, Canada, the European Union, Peru, the Philippines, Malawi, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, and others.

Skeptical Vint Cerf is skeptical.

It's all about control

On Friday, the WCIT-12 delegations approved a 30-page document (PDF) entitled “Final Acts,” nearly all of which encompasses the “International Telecommunication Regulations”—in short, making sure that the existing international telecom infrastructure continues to work properly.

But the word “Internet” does not even appear until page 24, under the non-binding appendices, under the title “To foster an enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet”.

And there, under section 1, is this lovely little sentence:

“[WCIT-12 resolves to invite member states] to elaborate on their respective positions on international Internet-related technical, development and public-policy issues within the mandate of ITU at various ITU forums including, inter alia, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and ITU study groups.”

Because so many countries agreed to this document, experts fear that the Internet—whose governance has traditionally been de facto limited to technical and policy bodies like International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)—could take its first baby step toward being controlled and/or regulated by the ITU. The reality is, of course, that there is no one body that has ultimate authority over the Internet. It is, by design, decentralized.

“What was happening at a really big picture level was that these countries are very interested in continuing to put serious controls on the way that their citizens can use the Internet,” Ellery Biddle, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Ars. “They're bothered by the US Internet Freedom agenda and they're bothered by the fact that the bodies that do make policies are US-driven and US-centric bodies.”

By not signing, the refuseniks have drawn a line in the sand saying that the ITU should not even be a forum to talk about Internet-related issues.

“The fact that the resolution exists, what they're signalling is that the UN is a place where we can discuss rules,” Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told Ars. Brito is also the co-founder of WCITLeaks.org, a site that publishes leaked documents from the conference.

“It's a trojan horse,” he added. “[The signatories are saying] we can eventually adopt binding rules. To this point, if you wanted to discuss matters related to the Internet, [you were limited] to IGF or ICANN. It's about [...] who has a seat at the table. Countries like China [and] Russia have a difficult time steering IGF, whereas at ITU they have a much easier time.”

Russia, China, Iran, and many other authoritarian countries have repeatedly tried to push for international legitimacy for practices that they already engage in—increased national control, surveillance, better attribution and identification of users, filtering, and other real-world consequences for what is said and done online.

Brito pointed out that currently, the IETF, the engineering body that makes many technical decisions about the underlying architecture of the Internet, has a very open governing structure. So open, in fact, that anyone (yes, anyone) can just show up and join. They have ongoing e-mail lists and twice-yearly meetings. But their motto is “rough consensus and running code.”

“That's difficult for China or Russia to come in—they would get laughed out of the room,” Brito added, pointing out that at the ITU, it’s one country, one vote.

Sweden came out strong against the WCIT-12 document.

Reservations abound

On Thursday, WCITLeaks published a 41-page document (PDF), appropriately entitled “Declarations and Reservations.” (This document is longer than the “Final Acts” itself).

This list of 84 countries includes some countries that would normally be considered obvious American allies, including Germany, Finland, Kuwait, Senegal, and many others. It also includes the reservations of less-obvious delegates, including Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

But this document significantly differs from the official list on the ITU site, suggesting that there may have been some last-minute signing or voting changes.

In those documents, Sweden clearly distances itself from all of the Internet-relevant portions.

“Sweden notes that ‘Resolution PLEN/3 (Dubai, 2012) To foster an enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet in the International Telecommunications Regulations’ does not address the full picture of the environment and situation of the Internet and Internet Governance,” the country wrote.

“Sweden therefore considers that this resolution does not do justice to all stakeholders involved in Internet related matters, and that it does not recognize the fully working, self-­developing, bottom-­up multi-stakeholder formats that work and evolve today on the Internet. Sweden also considers that the public Internet and other Internet Protocol-­based networks and services, whether governmental, public or private, are outside the scope of the International Telecommunication Regulations.”

On Friday, on an official website, the Swedish government (Google Translate) said it was refusing to sign.

"Sweden will not contribute to limiting the free and open Internet," Anna-Karin Hatt, Sweden's IT and Energy Minister, said in a statement.

Could the Internet split in two? (It already has.)

The ultimate fear, of course, is that the Internet will split—an outcome that remains remote. On the other hand, one could argue that given China's highly restricted Internet and Iran's attempt at a "halal Internet," it already has.

“[Through the] IETF, it would never happen—through the UN, it might,” Brito added.

“If China, Russia and some bloc of countries adopted some certain standards that they required their ISPs to meet. Why not? This could happen. It's not a certainty. I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they split the Internet. But is it possible? Yes, it's possible.”

On a Thursday conference call with reporters, Ambassador Terry Kramer, who led the American delegation at WCIT-12, acknowledged this extremely difficult, but not insurmountable, possibility.

“Now, if a country says, listen, I want to have a different standard, I’m going to have a different approach, then they can go proceed with that,” he said.

“Candidly, they could still do that under national sovereignty. But they’re going to have to deal, again, with a more and more interconnected environment. And so I think our job in all of this is to continue to espouse the benefits of an open Internet, of free content, of low costs here, of all the things that entrepreneurs do with the Internet. We have to keep advocating that, and that will create a natural bias or momentum in favor of it. And again, at the end of the day, if somebody wants to develop a different standard approach, it’s obviously that country’s prerogative. But we’re hoping that’s not an easy task.”

View: Original Article

[ck_kent]

Of course the US wouldn't let the UN control the internet, they want it for themselves alone. :P

[Ambrocious]

The people of the world should control the Internet, not the UN, not the United States, Not China, Not Russian, Not Japan, not ANY country. We all use it therefor it belongs to us. Shouldn't we get ANY say over it at all?

[nIGHT]

Why would the US hand over the internet where he already mostly controls it? That's stupid.

But China has a valid claims over the internet because in their ancient map it told that the internet belongs to them;

so as the diamond planet that has just been discovered. :lmao: