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2012-12-13 07:41:42
WE HAVE not come here to fight. The numerous statements of Kavous Arasteh, the delegate from Iran, have more than once led to widespread amusement at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. This time at least he got his timing right. Shortly after his comment, the fight over words and for the future of the internet, according to some finally started in earnest at the meeting of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). And it was about time. The 193 member countries of the UN organisation only have two days left to come up with a new version of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a global treaty on telecommunications, which was last updated 24 years ago.
A lengthy statement from Saudi Arabia culminated with the proposition that it is not acceptable that one party of the conference gets everything it wants. The implication being that if other countries continued their efforts to change already agreed language, the Arab countries would re-introduce all their old demands, essentially undoing all the compromises that had been achieved so far. A few minutes later, America reiterated its demand that for reasons so complicated as to defy explanation the word correspondence needed to be included in a definition contained in the treaty. According to some observers, the country wanted to signal that it is willing to walk out of the conference if certain red lines are crossed.
This type of bickering is likely to go on until the small of hours of Friday and perhaps even longer. The main issue is still unresolved: to what extent the internet will feature in the new treaty (or in a separate, non-binding resolution). China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries want to give governments "equal rights to manage the internet", according to a draft proposal published earlier this week. Fearing that this would lead to more censorship online and allow governments to meddle with the internet s very infrastructure, America backed by many countries in Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region is pushing hard to limit the new treaty to old-style telecoms.
The battle lines have led to a sometimes amusing, but often tiresome linguistic back-and-forth between the camps: Russia and its allies try to introduce language that would cover the internet, even without naming it and America and its backers propose wording to neutralise those attempts. Complicating things, many countries have their special requests. To get an idea of the negotiations, imagine more than 600 non-native English-speakers trying to group-edit 20 pages of highly complex legalese. At one point both Mexico and Uganda proposed edits that were each grammatically incorrect, but became grammatical when combined.
Russia and its supporters, for instance, want the treaty to apply to operating agencies , which could include internet service providers (ISPs) and other online firms. The American camp insist on calling the relevant entities recognised operating agencies , which would exclude internet companies. One clause in the draft treaty stated that Member States shall, if they so elect, be able to manage the naming, numbering, addressing and identification resources within their territories for international telecommunications. Because this sounds too much like internet regulation , the word telecommunication was introduced before naming .
Even the chairman of the WCIT, Mohamed Nasser Al-Ghanim, who has so far managed to keep the conference from spinning out of control, seemed at times lost in the nests of square brackets (ie [ ] ) that signal controversial language in the draft of the new treaty. How the exercise will end is anybody s guess at this point. But it seems highly unlikely that America and its allies will accept anything that would allow what the internet community has most feared: a government takeover of the global network.