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2012-12-18 10:24:59
THE International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has always prided itself on
being one of the most pragmatic organisations of the United Nations. Engineers,
after all, speak a similar language, regardless where they come from. Even
during the cold war they managed to overcome their differences and negotiate
the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a binding global treaty
that even today governs telecommunications between countries.
But the internet seems to be an even more divisive than cold-war ideology. The
World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, where the
ITU met to renegotiate the ITR, ended in failure in the early hours of December
14th. After a majority of countries approved the new treaty, Terry Kramer, the
head of the American delegation, announced that his country is not able to
sign the document in its current form. Shortly thereafter, at least a dozen
countries including Britain, Sweden and Japan signalled that they would not
support the new treaty either. (Update (December 14th, 3.20pm): Of the 144
countries which had the right to sign the new treaty in Dubai, only 89 have
done so.)
The main issue was to what extent the internet should feature in the treaty.
America and its allies wanted to keep it from being so much as mentioned mainly
out of fear that any reference to it whatsoever would embolden governments to
censor the internet and meddle with its infrastructure. For some time a
compromise among the more the 600 delegates, who were confined to an oppressive
convention hall, seemed possible: the binding ITR would indeed hardly make any
mention of the internet, but China, Russia and many Arab countries would get a
non-binding resolution on the internet (with the awkward title To foster an
enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet ).
Yet this package did not fly because for America both the ITR and the
resolution crossed several red lines. One section of the draft treaty calls for
the regulation of unsolicited bulk electronic communication , commonly known
as spam . But prohibiting spam in an international treaty, the Americans
argue, would require some definition of the kind of content intended which
could thereby limit the freedom of expression. Russia also insisted that the
relevant entities in the treaty be defined as operating agencies , which would
include internet services providers (ISPs) and other internet firms. (America
wants the entities to be classed as recognised operating agencies , code for
old-style telecommunication carriers.)
America s willingness to stand up for the internet should be welcomed. But it
has to be said that in doing so it also defended its interests: no other
country benefits as much from the status quo in the online world. Since much of
the internet s infrastructure is based in America and most of its traffic zips
through it, America is in a unique position to eavesdrop, should it be so
inclined. America s internet firms also capture most of the profit pool of the
online industry.
Only the host country had a larger delegation than America, which sent more
than 120 people to Dubai. The American representatives included officials from
the department of defence as well as from internet firms like Facebook and
Google. It was not just for fear that it might have a chilling effect on
freedom of expression that America did not want the word security included in
the treaty it also has a stake in keeping other countries from catching up in
such matters. And America s negotiators were not just worried about a digital
divide when they pushed back hard against any attempts by European telecoms
operators to introduce language about internet charges. The proposed changes
could have helped the European firms in their efforts to get big internet firms
to pay them for passing on their traffic.
The immediate impact of the WCIT s failure will be minor. Despite the
opposition from America and its allies, the ITU will have the remaining
countries sign the new treaty on Friday in the hope that the other member
states will come around eventually. What is more, the treaty may be binding,
but a new version will have to be ratified by the ITU s member states, which
can take a couple of years. And it is not clear how it can be enforced.
In the medium term, however, the outcome of the conference in Dubai will weaken
the ITU which may not be such a good thing. Among all the controversy it was
forgotten that the organisation actually does very useful work, for instance in
managing the international radio-frequency spectrum and developing technical
standards. And some of the good ideas about which the delegations could agree
may now fail to come to fruition. The WCIT reached consensus on a resolution to
create a worldwide emergency number (although this would take years to
implement). It also agreed on wording to make it easier for landlocked
countries and certain island states to get into international fibre-optical
networks.
The most important result of the conference has been to demonstrate that the
world now splits into two camps when it comes to the internet: one is comprised
of more authoritarian countries, which would like to turn back the clock and
regain sovereignty over their own national bits of the internet; the other
wants to keep the internet and its governance as it is (bearing in mind that
some of its members motives may not always be as pure as they pretend).
This sounds much like a digital version of the cold war. The funny thing is
that the leading countries in the two camps are the same two that were at
loggerheads until the iron curtain parted. One must hope that the failure of
the WCIT is not a first step towards raising a digital one.