[governance] RE: [IP] Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet"

Fri Dec 21 11:07:06 EST 2012

The comments are worth a read too, with 'AndyFatBastard's' take sparking most discussion;

 andyfatbastardArs Legatus Legioniset Subscriptor
about 19 hours ago Reader Fav
I still think it's wrong that the US holds exclusive control over so many of the "keys" to the internet, but right now the alternative looks much, much worse. 

________________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Lee W McKnight [lmcknigh at syr.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 10:29 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: [governance] FW: [IP] Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet"

FYI, 'WCITLeaks' co-founder's assessment.
________________________________________
From: DAVID J. FARBER [farber at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 8:25 AM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet"

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne at warpspeed.com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet"
Date: December 20, 2012 11:47:09 PM EST
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net at warpspeed.com>
Reply-To: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com

Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted "takeover of the Internet"
Conflicting visions for the future of the Internet collide in Dubai.
By Eli Dourado
Dec 20 2012
<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/behind-closed-doors-at-the-uns-attempted-takeover-of-the-internet/>

Eli Dourado is a research fellow with the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a co-founder of WCITLeaks, and a member of the US delegation to the WCIT. The views expressed here are his own.
DUBAI, UAE—In early December, I found myself in an odd position: touching down in Dubai with credentials to attend a 12-day closed-door meeting of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). It's a meeting I spent the last six months trying to expose.

Though the world had been assured that WCIT would not attempt to mount a “UN takeover of the Internet,” that was in many ways what happened. As the conference ended, I watched US Ambassador Terry Kramer abandon months of preparatory work and almost two weeks of intense negotiations to announce, as his words echoed through hundreds of headsets in six languages, that the US simply would not sign the resulting deal.

“Mr. Chairman, as head of the US Delegation, I wanted to start out and thank you for your tireless work and leadership,” Kramer said. “Your personal commitment to a successful outcome here is very impressive. However, I do need to say that it's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form.”

He went on to say the adopted treaty text was incompatible with the existing multistakeholder model of Internet governance. Internet policy, he said, “should not be determined by Member States, but by citizens, communities, and broader society, and such consultation from the private sector and civil society is paramount. This has not happened here.”

Fifty-four other countries took the same position, drawing sharp battle lines over the Internet and its future governance.

How did a “consensus-driven” UN process that would not, we were told, involve the Internet end up this way?

Sticky wicket

When I first heard about the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) early in 2012, I understood it vaguely as the event at which the United Nations would try to “take over the Internet.” But the experts I met with soon admitted they didn’t know what would happen at the WCIT (wicket, as they pronounced it).

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN agency convening the meeting, vigorously denied that the conference would have anything to do with the Internet at all. The purpose of the meeting, claimed ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, was simply to update the treaty that governs international phone calls; it had last been revised in 1988, when most phone companies were state-owned monopolies. Claims that the conference would implicate the Internet were part of a misinformation campaign pursued by unnamed opponents of the ITU, Touré said. In any case, the ITU was just a convener of the WCIT, and actual decisions would be made by member states on a non-voting, consensus-driven basis. The ITU, it was said, had no agenda of its own.

[snip]

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