<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<font face="Verdana">Hi All<br>
<br>
My analysis of WCIT outcome, as an op-ed for 'The Hindu'.....
parminder <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-broken/article4222688.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-broken/article4222688.ece</a><br>
<br>
</font><br>
<font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/"><img
src="cid:part1.03060006.05090007@itforchange.net" alt="Return
to frontpage"></a><br>
<br>
</font><br>
<div> <font color="#000000"><span class="breadcr">
<h3 class="artbcrumb"> <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/">Opinion</a> » <span><a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/">Lead</a></span>
</h3>
</span></font> <font color="#000000"><span class="dateline"> <span
class="upper"> </span> December 21, 2012 </span></font> </div>
<h1 class="detail-title"><font color="#000000">A false consensus is
broken</font></h1>
<font color="#000000"><span class="author">Parminder Jeet Singh</span></font>
<div class="detail-info">
<div class="article-links"> <font color="#000000"><a id="click"
href="javascript:toggle();">Share</a> · <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-broken/article4222688.ece#comments"
title="Comment">Comment</a> · <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-broken/article4222688.ece?css=print"
title="Print">print</a> · <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-broken/article4222688.ece#"
onclick="javascript:increaseFontSize();" title="Change Text
Size" id="inc">T+</a> </font></div>
</div>
<font color="#000000"> <br>
</font>
<div class="related-column">
<div class="related-section"> </div>
</div>
<div class="articleLead">
<p><b><i><font color="#000000">The U.S. rejection of new global
telecom regulations should not overshadow the need for an
Internet-powered social agenda for the world</font></i></b></p>
</div>
<font color="#000000"> The United States’s decision to walk out of
the International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on
International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai along with some
of its allies last week could represent a turning point in global
Internet governance. These countries refused to sign the new
International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) that contain
some basic principles governing the technical architecture of the
global communication system. They said they could not agree to the
ITRs, and the ITU’s remit, extending to the Internet. However, the
new ITRs contain no reference to the Internet, all such language
having been assiduously weeded out over the two weeks of intense
negotiations. Also, the ITU has been undertaking Internet-related
activities for more than a decade, with the U.S. participating in
them. </font>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> In a full-blown Internet age,
the new ITRs make no reference to naming and addressing the
system of the Internet or its routing structures, make no effort
to make ITU ‘the’ Internet standards making body, and make a
clear statement that ‘content is not included’ in their remit.
This could, in fact, have been taken to be a significant
acknowledgement of the existing naming and addressing regime
(ICANN) and Internet standards making processes (IETF or
Internet Engineering Task Force). However, the U.S. remained
adamant. </font></p>
<p class="body"> <font color="#000000"><b>Diplomatic blunder<br>
</b></font></p>
<p class="body"> <font color="#000000">Both the U.S. and the ITU
will take a hit from this meltdown of what was in any case a
make-believe consensus. The U.S. seems to have said, well, the
kid gloves are off and we are done with making polite noises
about ITU. The old order is dead and the new has taken over.
What if it is U.S.-centric; most people the U.S. likes to talk
to seem to be happy with it. The walkout by the U.S. and its
allies can also considerably damage the ITU. It has practically
been told by these countries that they see no role for the ITU
in an age when all communication systems will soon be
Internet-protocol based. This suddenly leaves developing
countries without any existing global forum to turn to for an
appropriate role in global governance of the Internet. It is
expected that this will lead to a hardening of their position on
the existing U.S.-centric global Internet governance regime,
something most of them have been lazily going along with. With
the walkout on the ITRs, the U.S.’s diplomatic ability to defend
the substantial control it has over the existing privatised
Internet governance regime will go down considerably. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> It is unclear whether the
U.S. had come expecting a deadlock but hoping it would happen in
such a way that the blame could be pinned on authoritarian
countries with an extreme agenda of statist control over the
Internet. These countries did bring in highly problematic drafts
which were all rejected or withdrawn. By the end of two weeks of
negotiations, as noted by Eric Pfanner in the <i>New York Times</i>,
“the United States got most of what it wanted, but then it
refused to sign the document and left in a huff.” It may turn
out to be a diplomatic blunder. Despite valiant statements from
the U.S. about having defiantly stood for freedom of expression,
the blame for the failure of the treaty process, and the
consequent breakdown of the ‘false consensus’ on global Internet
governance, will have to be borne by the U.S. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"><b>Sequence of events</b></font>
</p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> The real reasons for this
sudden shattering of the uneasy calm over ‘who governs the
global Internet’ lie in the larger, long-standing structural
issues, the kind which often come to a head when a definitive
text has to be signed, as happened at the WCIT. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> With less than two days to go
before the end of the conference, the more active developing
country actors began to get restive. The draft had gone
bare-bone with hardly anything new in it compared to the
existing ITRs. They felt that they had made all the concessions;
included text that ‘content is not covered,’ agreed to human
rights language in the preamble, and had withdrawn all proposals
with explicit mention of the Internet, and also the more radical
ones that would have taken the ITU into ICANN and IETF
territory. As a delegate said in exasperation, “It is
unacceptable that one party to the conference gets everything
they want and everybody else must make concessions, and after
having made many concessions we are then asked to suppress the
language which was agreed to.” </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> Rather than seeking to give
the ITU a new role with regard to the Internet, many countries
legitimately feared that if the ITRs contained nothing at all
about the Internet, this would be taken as the basis for pulling
the ITU back from even its existing Internet-related activities.
All along, the refrain from the U.S. side had been that it is
fine for the ITU to keep doing what it already does with respect
to the Internet, but it would not accept any mention of the
Internet in a binding treaty like the ITRs. In this background,
it was a rather legitimate compromise that the Internet be kept
out of the ITRs but be mentioned in an appended resolution which
does not have the force of a treaty. The resolution was merely a
set of instructions to member states and the ITU’s Secretary
General for a continuation of existing Internet-related
activities and role by the ITU. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> This resolution mostly
repeated agreed language from the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS). It was adopted by a show of hands
past midnight of December 12, the second-last day of substantive
negotiations. Its purpose seemed to be to make clear that the
absence of the Internet from the ITRs should not be seen as
taking away the kind of role that the ITU already plays in the
Internet area, and/or as compromising the WSIS mandate in this
regard. But the U.S. and its allies were very unhappy with the
resolution, and the first indication of an impending breakdown
emerged.<br>
</font></p>
<p class="body"> <font color="#000000"><b>Right of access</b></font>
</p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> The real flash point,
however, came on December 13, on a proposal to include text in
the preamble seeking the “right of access of Member States to
international telecommunication services”. It is difficult to
see what a global telecommunication treaty would mean without
such a basic high-level principle. The U.S. took it to be aimed
at the unilateral trade sanctions that it applies against some
countries. Since this text had been hotly debated many times
during the preceding days, and was in and out of the draft, Iran
sought a vote on it. A gentleman’s agreement at the meeting had
indeed been to not go for a vote and seek consensus. But an
equally important point to note is that the U.S. was standing
against a simple statement asserting a collective right of
people. As the proposal to insert this text in the preamble was
carried 77 votes to 33, the U.S. declared it would not sign the
treaty. The U.S. was immediately followed by the U.K., and the
process broke down. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> The U.S. does claim in its
post-WCIT statements that, apart from the above two reasons, it
was the inclusion of some language on security of networks and
spam that made it walk out. However, this language does not seek
anything that could be taken as getting into content regulation,
which the U.S. says it is afraid of, especially if read along
with the clear text in the preamble that excludes content
regulation. The WSIS had associated security and spam issues
with the ITU and the ITU already works in these areas. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> Even if somewhat contingent,
the point of actual breakdown makes a telling statement. The
U.S. will have to explain why it walked out on what was a simple
assertion of the right of all countries to access global
telecommunication services. If it cannot agree to even such a
basic statement of principle, it has lost all legitimacy for
overlordship of the global Internet, which it claims as its
‘historic role.’ Its legitimacy will now be more easily and
openly questioned by other countries. </font></p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> The fallout from Dubai may
also significantly compromise the ITU’s role in the foreseeable
future. The appended ‘Internet resolution,’ which was one of the
main reasons for the walkout, contains many areas that the ITU
is working on substantially at present. A very important ITU
meeting — the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum — to be
held in May 2013 is mostly about the Internet. It remains to be
seen how the U.S. and its allies will interact with the ITU from
now on, especially regarding the latter’s Internet related
activities.<br>
</font></p>
<p class="body"> <font color="#000000"><b>Positive agenda</b></font>
</p>
<p class="body"><font color="#000000"> The real problem with the
WCIT was that there was no real positive agenda on the table,
which is surprising given that we are on the cusp of an ICT
triggered social revolution. It finally became just a battle
between two sides, both with a largely negative agenda. One side
wanted to prevent the U.S. from making a historical point that
the Internet is to remain an entirely unregulated space —
whereby its new global domination strategy leveraging its
‘control’ over the Internet remains unchecked. The other side
was trying to prevent China, Russia <i>et al</i> from changing
the basic nature of the global Internet into a tightly
state-controlled space. There was no constituency oriented to
any positive agenda in the global public interest. The fact that
the clash ended the way it did was perhaps expected. It can be
taken as an opportunity for progressive actors — from among
civil society and many countries from both the South and the
North — to begin shaping a positive agenda for the global
communications realm. </font></p>
<p class="body"> <font color="#000000"><i>(Parminder Jeet Singh is
Executive Director, IT for Change)</i></font> </p>
</body>
</html>