[governance] US hearing on International Proposals to Regulate the Internet

Mon May 28 11:37:41 EDT 2012

I was at the Google Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC last week, which had a surprising number of international participants. 
ITU and WCIT was a major topic there, including a debate with an ITU rep. 
The discussions there prompted me to write this analysis: 
http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/05/24/threat-analysis-of-itus-wcit-part-1-historical-context/ 

The US hearing would be of course about WCIT, not ICANN and DNS, IP addresses. As you can tell from my blog post, I find it a bit difficult to understand the level of mobilization going on here. 

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> My interpretation of the ITU's comments on the 18th was as follows:
> 
> 'If governments want more oversight and EC in IG, come to the ITU, we
> can give it to them' (paraphrased and interpreted)
> 
> It might be worth discussing which aspects of internet technical
> governance overlaps with the work of the ITU. Can someone post on this?
>  There must be some elements emerging from the convergence between
> telecoms and IP that the ITU must address?
> 
> As for the transparency. Definitely Wolfgang.. ITRs should not be
> renegotiated behind closed doors. Therefore the letter that several CSOs
> sent to Mr. Toure on 17 May.
> 
> Anriette
> 
> 
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: AW: [governance] US hearing on International Proposals to
> Regulate the Internet
> Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 10:35:37 +0200
> From: "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
> <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Anriette Esterhuysen <anriette at apc.org>,
> governance at lists.cpsr.org
> 
> Hello
> 
> my understanding is that the US Hearing is aimed less on ICANN and CIR
> oversight und more on ITU, WCIT and ITR. David Gross, who was the head
> of the US governmental delegation during WSIS II and in Tunis, raised
> this issue, by ringing the alarm bells, a couple of months ago.
> http://www.whoswholegal.com/news/features/article/29378/the-2012-world-
> conference-international-telecommunications-brewing-storm-potential-un-
> regulation-internet/
> 
> 
> I participated in the WCIT consultations during the recent WSIS Forum in
> Room 16 in the ILO Building where ITU´s Alexander Ntoko tried to water
> down the growing political debate about the renewal of the ITRs from
> 1988 which is the subject of the "World Conference on International
> Telecommunication" (WCIT), scheduled for Dubai, December 2012. The
> debate was partly bizarr. We discussed documents which the majority of
> the people in the room (around 150) didn´t know. The governmental
> representative from Iran said that "Internet Governance is not on the
> agenda of the Dubai conference". But in the next statement he said that
> IPv6 is part of the agenda and that today "the Internet is everyhwere".
>  An even more irritating position was taken by the rep from the UAE, the
> host of the WCIT. I felt that we are back in 2002, during PrepCom1, when
> CS (together with the PS) was moved out of the room. The UAE rep argued
> that the governments represent their people and there is no need to give
> access to documents to non-member states of the ITU. As a private
> company you can join ITU as a sector member, have to pay a high entrance
> fee and get access to the documents. If a CS organisations wants to have
> the documents they should contact their governments, was the
> recommendnation. As you know, all WCIT conference documents are not
> accessible. You have to have a TIED account to open the documents and
> this is reserved to member states only.
> 
> The problem with ITR is that the old treaty was drafted by the WATTC in
> Melbourne 1988 when the Internet was not an issue. It is understandable
> that such a treaty needs a renewal,. The question is HOW? The ITR are
> seen as an umbrella treaty for all kinds of transborder
> telecommunication. It needs ratification and is legally binding. The
> WCIT Prep Committee had several meetings, the final one will be in June
> 2012 just at the eve of the ICANN meeting in Prague. It is "behind
> closed doors". A key problem is that the short text of the ITR
> regulations include a lot of "definitions". By extending the scope of
> the "defined categories" for international telecommunication the risk is
> high that you extend ITRs to the Internet. With other words, if you do
> not like the existing Internet mechanisms, there is no need to attack
> them directly, it is much easier to undermine them by introducing an
> addtional regulatiry layer (in a legally binding form). With the ITR you
> give governments a legal incentive to "re-nationalize" the Internet and
> you open the door for a split into a "governmental led part of the
> Internet" (under the ITU) and a "multistakeholder led part of the
> Internet" (under ICANN).
> 
> The ITU-ICANN relationship is still unsettled and full of mistrust, The
> ITU (and ICANN) didn´t do anything to implement the ITU resolution from
> 2010 (Guadalajara) which called for new forms of collaboration. Did the
> ITU made any serious statement in the UNCSTD consultatitons on "enhanced
> cooperation"? In Geneva last week it was announced that the ITU will
> come to the ICANN meeting in Prague. So lets wait an see what they have
> to say.
> 
> 
> Here is a para. from my intervention in Geneva::
> 
> "EU Commissioner Nelly Kroes, in a speech recently in Berlin, called the
> protest of tens of thousands of people against ACTA a "wake up call for
> Brussels". The EU obviously starts to realize that in a multistakeholder
> Internet environment one can no longer negotiate issues of general
> interests, which affect two billions of Internet users, by governments
> only behind closed doors. Madame Kroes declared in Berlin that ACTA in
> its present form can not survive. The ITU should learn from this. If you
> negotiate the ITRs behind closed doors, we will probably see in 2013
> another wave of public protest around the world. Two years ago, nobody
> knew what ACTA means. Today it is a symbol for a wrong approach to
> manage global issues related to the Internet. Today nobody knows what
> ITR means. Tomorrow it could become a symbol for a wrong approach to
> regulate the Internet. Again: If you want to have a sustainable renewal
> of the ITRs, open the doors to the ITR negotiations. Otherwise the year
> 2013 could see a "wake up call for Geneva".
> 
> 
> Wolfgang
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> Von: governance at lists.cpsr.org im Auftrag von Anriette Esterhuysen
> Gesendet: Mo 28.05.2012 09:21
> An: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Betreff: Re: [governance] US hearing on International Proposals to
> Regulate the Internet
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for posting this, Jeremy.
> Not very promising. And I wonder which proposals they are going to
> discuss. Personally I don't think that any proposals to date, not CIRP
> or IBSA or IT for Change or others made on Sunday qualify as proposals
> for 'regulating the internet'.
> 
> Perhaps the Saudi Arabia comments are closest to this direction.
> 
> Countries who proposed UN oversight on the 18th, such as South Africa
> and Iran always qualified that they are arguing for intergovernmental
> oversight of internet public policy and that this role should not
> include technical management of the internet. It is in fact the 'public
> policy oversight' that I am concerned about, particularly as they are
> proposing to locate this in the ITU.
> 
> The distorted FCC reaction to talk of the ITU taking over and
> 'regulating' the internet only sets serious discussion about
> international cooperation, and rooting internet policy in existing
> international agreements, back.
> 
> It has also been clear from following this process that governments that
> were open to non-ITU options are increasingly going for a pro-ITU option
> because their concerns are not taken seriously in other spaces.
> 
> Anriette
> 
> 
> 
> On 28/05/2012 04:56, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> > Speaking of inclusive and multi-stakeholder debates on Internet
> > governance reform, this will not be happening on 31 May at the US
> > House Committee on Energy and Commerce, when there will be a hearing
> > on "International Proposals to Regulate the Internet" with the
> > following
> > (closed) list of witnesses:
> >
> > The Honorable Robert McDowell
> > Commissioner
> > Federal Communications Commission
> >
> > The Honorable David A. Gross
> > Former U.S. Coordinator
> > International Communications and Information Policy
> >
> > Ms. Sally Shipman Wentworth
> > Senior Manager, Public Policy
> > Internet Society
> >
> > http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearings/hearingdetail.aspx?NewsID=954
> > 3
> >
> > The event will be streamed at http://energycommerce.house.gov/ and it
> > may be worth at least following and tweeting about it (there is a
> > tweet box on the front page of the site).
> >
> > As an aside, the Energy and Commerce Committee site is full of
> > partisan slurs again "Obamacare", environmentalists, anti-nuclear
> > activists and the like.
> >
> > We can expect the depth of intellectual debate at this hearing to rise
> > to the level of "America invented the Internet, we don't want no UN
> > bureaucrats from Iran or China meddling with it!".
> >
> 
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------
> anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
> executive director, association for progressive communications
> www.apc.org po box 29755, melville 2109 south africa tel/fax +27 11 726
> 1692 ____________________________________________________________
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