[governance] WCIT melt down

[Milton L Mueller]

From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com]

What exactly was the objectionable provision/language?
"These Regulations recognize the right of access of Member States to international telecommunication services."
caused the vote

[Milton L Mueller] That's what I was afraid of.

So this is a more troublesome and complex issue than it might appear. In essence, countries such as Sudan have been complaining about the ability of the US govt to impose sanctions on them for human rights violations. These sanctions mean that people in those countries - not just the government, mind you, but everyone, innocent and guilty alike - are denied access to Internet services such as Google, Sourceforge, domain name registrars such as GoDaddy, Oracle, Windows Live Messenger, etc.

I can understand why there would be adamant opposition to a claim to a right to access Internet services, because it would mean that the ITRs could be used to compel Internet service providers to serve particular states, when they might choose (privately) not to. However, as a form of imposed state-state action, I am not so sanguine about protecting the ability of some governments to gang up on others using the IG regime.

Suppose that the US decided to deny access to the domain name root zone resolution to, say Iran (.ir), because of its bad HR record. And make no mistake about it, the Iranian government is about as bad as it gets with respect to human rights. But would we want ICANN/the Internet governance regime to be used as a political/strategic tool in this fashion?

Or suppose that ICANN decided to exclude Syria from the GAC. Certainly Syria is a criminal regime. But do we want ICANN to be a neutral meeting ground for all parties or not?

Serious issues at stake here.

Also, I note that the offending language "These Regulations recognize the right of access of Member States to international telecommunication services" does not include the word "Internet."

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