[governance] Reply to Milton's blog post

[Peter H. Hellmonds]

Thank you, Olivier, for sharing your very passionate and personal, yet balanced experience and viewpoint on the happenings and the mood on the ground in Dubai. 

Peter H. Hellmonds
<peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu>
+49 (160) 360-2852

On 15.12.2012, at 22:55, "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <ocl at gih.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I've been asked by several people to post my reply to Milton's blog post
here, to widen the discussion. Please find below.

--- snip --- snip --- snip ---

Dear Milton,
many of us on the ground were really sorry not to see you in the room in
Dubai. Perhaps then would you have actually understood the situation and
tension that was present in the room.
Without wanting to go into details, several parts of the ITRs were
deeply flawed.
5A needs to be read along with ITU Standard Y.2770 which makes it
mandatory to implement deep packet inspection (and not even a mild case
of DPI) to all “next generation networks” which could be easily
interpreted as the IPv6 network. As a standard it is far from mandatory.
But 5A and 5B bring this much closer to make it mandatory – and you’ll
notice that the language in Y.2770 is very close to the language of 5A
and 5B.
5B is an absolute NO-NO when the beginning of the document says that the
ITRs are not about content. In fact, in it is unclear whether later
recommendations take precedence over earlier recommendations in a
document as is the case in some legislatures. Indeed, you should have
seen the opposition from some countries to having the “no content”
clause included – which completely killed any remains of trust between
the two “sides”.
Then you have the Resolution at the end which is a real provocation for
some and not enough for others who would have wanted the Internet to be
included in the ITRs, including taking over numbering and addressing by
States.
The EU came very close to signing although many countries had serious
reservations about ITRs which simply did NOT make any sense. How can
Spam not be content? The Spam debate was fuelled by claims that it
flooded some country networks yet email traffic is less that 5% of
Internet traffic, less that 3% of all telecom traffic (estimated) and
therefore with Spam being at, say 50% of email traffic, countries were
arguing for a Regulation to filter traffic and perform DPI on maximum 2%
traffic gain? It simply did not make sense.
So the strategy of the EU countries, after having made a lot of
concessions, was to wait and see the final proposal from the Chair,
which although it had all of these inadequate articles, was a real
improvement.
But for some governments this was not enough! They insisted on the right
of States to telecommunication services and put it on a par basis with
Human Rights. They argued the Rights of States was the same as the
Rights of individuals. One of the most balanced Countries, Switzerland,
expressed its outrage. Tension was rising fast. We got lectured by some
countries that oppress their people about Human Rights. And then Iran
called for an abrupt end to the discussion, after having intervened more
than any country in the past 2 weeks, and called for a vote — when I
remind you that on many many occasions Dr. Touré and the Chair has
assured us there would be no vote.
This derailment was self-inflicted and this was the drop that got the
vase to overflow. Where the heck was the consensus? What kind of shotgun
tactics are those? It was obvious by the numbers that the countries
opposing the aggressive manner in which this was conducted, would lose a
vote.
For me, sitting in this room, this was Game, Set and Match. My country,
the UK, did not sign and I am ever so glad they did not. Yes, I had a
say in the matter since I was a full UK delegate, one of the many
countries which brought multiple stakeholders at the table and guess
what, most of these countries have not signed. Does this not tell you
something?

So that is my personal assessment of what happened and I was at the
heart of it. I saw some very ugly stuff going on there, stuff which I
would really like the Internet to be preserved from.

But I am sad too. I am sad because I also heard some very valid concerns
from developing countries that they were not able to participate in the
multi-stakeholder model because of lack of funding, lack of
understanding and a lack of proactive work from our “own” side.
I am planning to report fully to ICANN on the matter – we should do more
to bridge the gap. At the moment, these countries only have two fora in
which they can participate and that’s the IGF where nobody listens to
them and the ITU where they have a voice. During the hour that followed
the dramatic vote, I went to see my “opponents”. Many of us did – and
whilst not apologizing for not signing, we exchanged business cards and
I intend on following up. In fact, many European countries are intent on
following up with countries that do not appear to have hidden intentions
are are genuine about the level of despair they displayed at this
conference. Because sadly, there was despair too. This is the start of a
better dialogue, one which we must make efforts in promoting, reaching
out, building capacity.

In closing, I’d say that this was not only a failure of the ITRs and the
ITU, it was a failure of Internet Governance too. Civil Society has the
ability to bridge the gap – and I know of several governments that have
understood this. Let’s work together to ensure we will never live again
a similar WCIT full of mistrust and despair.

Olivier
(speaking entirely on my own behalf)


-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html


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