Vint Cerf Calmly Explains Why You Should Stop Freaking Out About NTIA Handover Of ICANN

from the it-doesn't-mean-crap dept

Back in March, we wrote a story explaining why the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) decision to "relinquish" what little "power" it had over ICANN was no big deal. It's sort of an accident of history that NTIA (a part of the US Commerce Department) even had any "mandate" over the IANA functions -- which manages domain name allocations. The "control" over ICANN/IANA has always been mostly a paper thing. ICANN is really run by a large group of folks -- the so-called "multistakeholders." I think many of us can agree that ICANN policies are currently a mess, but that has nothing to do with the NTIA's technical connection to it.

If anything, the NTIA's paper link to ICANN only served to undermine the goals of good internet governance, because it allowed other countries to falsely imply that the US government "owned" or "controlled" the internet -- opening up dangerous attempts for foreign governments to try to really take control of the internet, wiping out the multistakeholder process and replacing it entirely by governments. That would be dangerous.

Unfortunately, as we expected when we wrote our original "this means absolutely nothing" post, some people decided to freak out about it. They've insisted that NTIA's move is the US handing over the internet, potentially to foreign governments. That those same individuals have previously insisted that things like "net neutrality" are the "government taking over the internet" -- and the inherent contradiction therein -- is never really mentioned. Unfortunately, some in Congress are trying to make a big deal out of this by totally misrepresenting what's been going on.

In response, the NTIA has told everyone to calm down, but the absolute best response has to be from the "father of the internet," Vint Cerf, the guy who set up ICANN in the first place, giving his best "knowing uncle storytime" explanation of why everyone should calm down about all of this, and how, if anything, it should lead to better oversight of the ICANN IANA process. Oh, and if you watch all the way through, you might just see Vint Cerf riding a grumpy cat under a double rainbow. Because this is the internet.

Filed Under: congress, department of commerce, iana, internet governance, ntia, vint cerf
Companies: icann

India Wants To Take On 'US Hegemony' Over The Internet... By Renaming It The Equinet

from the smokescreens dept

The battle for countries wishing to take control over internet governance (either to increase control and censorship or to "reward" local state-owned telcos) didn't end with the whole WCIT debacle a year and a half ago. It's an ongoing process. This week is NETmundial, or the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Governance, and the usual countries are making the usual noise about changing how internet governance works. There will be lots of talk about how meaningful these discussions will be, or if they'll just be a "farce" to enable authoritarian governments more control. Either way, there are some important proposals and discussions happening at the event.

And some nutty ones.

Take, for example, India's proposal that we rename the internet as the Equinet as a way to "challenge US hegemony." Because that will do it.

In a major diplomatic initiative, India is all set to challenge the U.S.’ hegemony of the World Wide Web at a global meet on Internet governance in Sao Paulo (Brazil) next week. India has decided to propose renaming of Internet as ‘Equinet’ so that all nations can have equal say in its operations, besides calling for “internationalisation” of core Internet resources.

Of course, the naming bit is the smokescreen attention-grabber for the other point. Setting up so that "all nations" (note: not all people) can have a say in the operations of the internet is a specific attack on the so-called "multistakeholder" model that is currently in place, in which it's not government entities making these decisions, but a broad group of folks from different backgrounds and specialties (including, many technical experts). Hand the internet over to "governments" and you have a recipe for disaster. If you want more evidence of how troubling this is, look at who India is "aligning itself" with in this proposal:

India is likely to side with Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa and Iran to make its point.

Brazil, which organized this event, has been pushing for stronger internet freedoms lately, but also has a history of going in the other direction. Russia, China and Iran, of course, are very much focused on greater control and censorship of the internet, not greater freedom.

There are lots of important things worth discussing concerning internet governance, but renaming the internet as a challenge to US control (which isn't actually US control) is pretty silly. What's much more concerning is the underlying attempt to give some authoritarian countries with long histories of censorship more direct control over the internet. Equinet sounds ridiculous, but Censornet may be more accurate.

Filed Under: brazil, equinet, india, internet, internet governance, multistakeholder process, netmundial

Rep. Mary Bono Freaks Out Both About 'Gov't Takeover' AND 'Gov't Handover' Of The Internet

from the hypocrite-much? dept

On Friday afternoon, we wrote about the basic non-story about how NTIA (a part of the Commerce Department) will be relinquishing what little "control" it had over ICANN's IANA function. The US government already had little to no actual say over anything that ICANN was doing. The organization has been almost entirely independent from the beginning, and this move really just helps to clarify things, while actually taking some pressure off of ICANN so that other countries can't whine and complain (incorrectly) that the internet is "under US control."

Still, with headlines everywhere screaming about how the US is "giving up control" over the internet, you had to know that it was going to become some sort of political issue. And, indeed, a bunch of politicians are up in arms about this, with the most vocal (by far) critic of this move being Rep. Mary Bono, who tweeted angrily on Friday about how we should all be concerned about this and how we need to "keep the internet!"

Of course, since some of us have memories that go back more than a month or so, it's not that difficult to remember Rep. Mary Bono was also one of the most vehement politicians against net neutrality. In fact, just three years ago, in launching an attack on net neutrality, this very same Rep. Mary Bono was screaming about stopping the "government takeover of the internet." Sadly, that tweet is now deleted (gee... wonder why?).

Still, we're curious about all of this, and are hoping that Rep. Bono can answer this basic question. If we needed to "stop the government takeover of the internet" a few years ago... and yet, today, it's an incredibly important job for the government to "keep the internet," what, exactly, is Rep. Bono's position on US government control over the internet? Or is it just whatever bogus talking point she can use to fire up constituents into believing the government is about to do something bad?

Filed Under: government takeover, iana, internet, internet governance, mary bono, net neutrality, ntia
Companies: icann

US Relinquishing What Tiny Control It Had Of The Internet... If UN Isn't Allowed To Take Over

from the not-that-big-a-deal dept

This was rumored for a while, but the Commerce Department has now said that it will be "relinquishing" its "control" over ICANN's IANA, which administers the basic structure of the internet domain system. You can read the details here. Of course, the US government's "control" over ICANN/IANA has always been a lot more on paper than in reality. From the beginning, while the Commerce Department technically had oversight concerning ICANN, it had always been careful to live up to its promise that ICANN was to be independent of the US government. So, while some are making a big deal over this, it's unclear if it will really matter that much.

The big fear over the past few years was that certain foreign interests -- lead by authoritarian regimes in China and Russia (with long track records of censoring the internet and stifling dissent) -- would take control of the internet away from ICANN via the ITU, an organization that's a part of the UN. That was extremely problematic on a number of levels, given in part that the ITU process is entirely controlled by country governments without input from other stakeholders, such as technologists. ICANN is far from perfect (very, very, very, very, very far from perfect), but the ITU would be significantly worse.

However, from what's being said, it appears that the Commerce Department's plan is conditional on the UN/ITU not getting control, and for internet governance to remain a multi-stakeholder process, rather than one solely controlled by governments.

U.S. officials set strict conditions and an indeterminate timeline for the transition from federal government authority, saying that a new oversight body must be created and win the trust of crucial stakeholders around the world, said Lawrence Strickling, a top Commerce Department official. The announcement essentially ruled out the possibility that the United Nations would take over the U.S. role, something many nations have advocated and U.S. officials have long opposed.

That's a good thing. From what's being said, it sounds like the Commerce Department would like ICANN to continue more or less the way it has been running, just without the official claim to being overseen by the Commerce Department. Could that lead to troubles down the road? Sure. But, frankly, the US more or less forced itself into this position with its idiotic decision to let the NSA spy on everything. Before that, plenty of other countries were happy with de facto US "control" over the internet. But once it became clear just how deep the NSA's claws were within the internet, even former allies began to demand changes.

While the ICANN model can be improved upon (greatly), it can also be much, much worse. So where this goes will need to be watched closely. But, on a first pass, simply taking the Commerce Department's name off of things should have little direct impact for the time being. And, of course, it's worth remembering, that before ICANN, the internet was more or less governed (benevolently) by this guy.

Filed Under: commerce department, iana, internet governance, itu
Companies: icann

Key Internet Institutions Ditch US Leadership; Brazil To Host Global Summit To Draw Up New Governance Model

from the payback-time dept

Here's a hugely important story that brings together three major threads. First, the continuing wrangling over the form that Internet governance should take. Second, the fact that NSA's massive surveillance operations around the world have included economic espionage. And third, Brazil's increasingly angry reaction to that spying. As a post from the Internet Governance Project explains:

the Directors of all the major Internet organizations -- ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society, all five of the regional Internet address registries -- turned their back on the US government. With striking unanimity, the organizations that actually develop and administer Internet standards and resources initiated a break with 3 decades of U.S. dominance of Internet governance.

Those directors have issued what they call the "Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation," which includes the following:

They called for accelerating the globalization of and functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing.

That's a fairly clear call for the US to relinquish its dominant role. Another section hints at why this is happening now:

They expressed strong concern over the undermining of the trust and confidence of Internet users globally due to recent revelations of pervasive monitoring and surveillance.

But this isn't just some vague but meaningless statement of annoyance: those involved have already started working on ways to replace current structures, as this story on the news24.com site reports:

Brazil, which has slammed massive US electronic spying on its territory, said on Wednesday it would host a global summit on internet governance in April.

President Dilma Rousseff made the announcement after conferring in Brasilia with Fadi Chehade, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

"We have decided that Brazil will host in April 2014 an international summit of governments, industry, civil society and academia" to discuss Brazil's suggestions for upgrading Internet security, Rousseff said on Twitter.

Once again, we see the NSA's reckless disregard for the consequences of its global surveillance -- far beyond what could be regarded as reasonable or proportionate -- is now having massive adverse effects on America's standing and influence in the world. The Internet Governance Project post puts it well:

Make no mistake about it: this is important. It is the latest, and one of the most significant manifestations of the fallout from the Snowden revelations about NSA spying on the global Internet. It's one thing when the government of Brazil, a longtime antagonist regarding the US role in Internet governance, gets indignant and makes threats because of the revelations. And of course, the gloating of representatives of the International Telecommunication Union could be expected. But this is different. Brazil's state is now allied with the spokespersons for all of the organically evolved Internet institutions, the representatives of the very "multi-stakeholder model" the US purports to defend. You know you've made a big mistake, a life-changing mistake, when even your own children abandon you en masse.

And before anyone tries to blame this latest development on Snowden, let's be clear that the problem is not that this activity has been revealed, but that the NSA was doing it in the first place.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: brazil, internet governance, nsa, nsa surveillance
Companies: icann, ietf, internet society, w3c

Authoritarian Governments Still Trying To Seek More Control Over The Internet

from the well,-duh dept

There was plenty of attention paid to the failed WCIT meeting last year, in which some countries effectively sought greater control over the internet, leading many countries to refuse to sign on. There has since been plenty of reasonable concern that the end result of this is a fragmented internet, with one internet for those who believe in internet freedom and openness... and one for those who don't.

And, of course, the whole ITU WCIT process was never going to be the end of such discussions. Eli Dourado, who has been following this stuff closely for a while, recently had a good report about how various authoritarian governments made a bit of a power play for more control over internet governance. The issue may seem bureaucratic and messy, but that's also why it's important to pay attention. Because mixed in with all that bureaucracy are some key decisions.

The short version is that countries agreed, nearly a decade ago, at the World Summit on Information Society, that governments shouldn't have too much control over the internet. This was initially directed at the US, since it really did have an awful lot of power over the internet. So, an agreement was reached with the following language on a "multi-stakeholder model."

"The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations."

As Dourado points out, "note the four classes of stakeholders." They were chosen this way to avoid governments having too much power. Except that certain countries are using these various international gatherings to try to change the meaning of "multi-stakeholder" to basically minimize everyone but government, while still pretending to support the concept.

Authoritarian governments have been quick to remind the world that they are stakeholders, too. Since the Tunis Agenda urges all stakeholders to work together "in their respective roles," the most illiberal countries have simply argued that national governments should have the biggest and most pre-eminent roles, while other stakeholders should have smaller subordinate ones. Russia in particular is aggressively pushing this definition for the role of governments. Its proposed edits to the multi-stakeholder opinion invites member states "to exercise their rights on Internet Governance ... at the national level," by which it means that national governments should preempt ICANN.

In other words, Russia -- and its allies like China and Saudi Arabia -- are adopting the language of multi-stakeholderism to support something rather like its opposite. The position they are advancing is virtually indistinguishable from one which accords no role to other stakeholders.

Dourado also points out that having governments make decisions on internet governance is a recipe for disaster in a number of ways, including the fact that current internet governance is earned through trust and respect -- but governments swooping in don't seem to care about any of that.

... it is worth reflecting on one fundamental difference between Internet institutions and sovereign governments. In the Internet technical community, authority is earned. Internet institutions have legitimacy because it is freely given by a wide array of stakeholders. For example, the non-governmental Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) maintains and develops the core technical standards that are the sine qua non of the Internet. People are free to disobey the recommendations issued by the IETF, but they usually follow them because it has earned its authority through competence, transparency, and inclusiveness. The system of state sovereignty is at odds with the earned authority of Internet institutions. Governments punish their subjects for failing to comply with their orders, and they do not accept challenges to their territorial authority. Governmental authority is not earned; it is imposed.

Neither the authoritarian regimes nor the ITU seem genuinely invested in earning the authority they are eager to assert on the Internet. Instead, they are using the vagueness of the nominal consensus on the multi-stakeholder model as cover to impose authority.

Filed Under: internet, internet governance, itu, stakeholders, wcit

ITU Boss In Denial: Claims Success, Misrepresents Final Treaty, As US, UK, Canada And Many More Refuse To Sign

from the this-is-not-consensus dept

The ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is now over... and it played out almost exactly as many had predicted. After going back on explicit promises that the treaty would (a) not be about the internet and (b) would only be completed by consensus, rather than by majority vote -- the US lived up to its promise not to support such a treaty by officially stating that it would not sign. A number of other countries quickly followed suit including: the UK, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia, Greece, Finland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Qatar (though some apparently said they could not sign because they first had to consult with their own governments -- so it's possible that some of these may change their mind, but many viewed such statements as a more diplomatic way of refusing to sign).

The US, on the other hand, was explicit in refusing to sign:

"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," said US Ambassador to WCIT Terry Kramer. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years. All without UN regulation. We candidly cannot support an ITU Treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance," Kramer added.

The US delegation also laid out the specific reasons why it refused to sign, and they're the same issues we've been talking about all along: (1) the attempt to expand the definition of the types of entities covered by the treaty from the big telcos to just about everyone running network (2) the explicit inclusion of internet and internet governance in the treaty (3) the claim of a mandate over cybersecurity and (4) the official regulation of spam. That last one hasn't received as much attention, but the US found the rules put forth for dealing with spam going way too far, and putting in place rules that would violate the First Amendment.

Of course, with so many countries bailing out, the ITU's promise that this would all be about consensus look positively laughable in retrospect. But, perhaps even more laughable is the response from ITU boss Hamadoun Toure whose claims read like those of a bureaucrat in complete denial. First he claimed complete "surprise" that the US and other countries walked away:

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t sign it. I especially was surprised by the reasons that were put in place. I had made it clear from the opening that [Internet and content were not a part of the discussion]. I invited ICANN to show that we want to build bridges. The telecoms society and internet society need to work together. I made an appeal to please help us build bridges. The fighting will not help the consumer that we are trying to reach here.

He kept going on and on insisting that the internet and internet governance were not a part of the agreement, even though they are. Of course, he then effectively admits that part of the goal is to be the key player in the internet

I have been saying in the run up to this conference that this conference is not about governing the Internet. I repeat that the conference did NOT include provisions on the Internet in the treaty text. Annexed to the treaty is a non-binding Resolution which aims at fostering the development and growth of the internet – a task that ITU has contributed significantly to since the beginning of the Internet era, and a task that is central to the ITU’s mandate to connect the world, a world that today still has two thirds of its population without Internet access.

So it's not about the internet, but the internet is central to the ITU's mandate. Of course, this claim is also a lie. The ITU's mandate does not cover the internet, but telecom infrastructure. One of the more nefarious moves by Toure and the ITU in this whole process was to continually blur the lines between telecom infrastructure and the internet, as if they were one and the same.

The word “Internet” was repeated throughout this conference and I believe this is simply a recognition of the current reality – the two worlds of telecommunications and Internet are inextricably linked. I demonstrated that from the very beginning by inviting my friend Fadi Chehadé, the CEO of ICANN, to address our conference at the beginning.

So... again, he's saying two different things. First, he claims that the treaty has nothing to do with the internet, and then insists that telecommunications and the internet are "inextricably linked," which explains why the treaty pretty clearly would impact internet governance -- which is why so many nations are refusing to sign.

Finally, there's this bit of self-aggrandizing bullshit:

History will show that this conference has achieved something extremely important. It has succeeded in bringing unprecedented public attention to the different and important perspectives that govern global communications. There is not one single world view but several, and these views need to be accommodated and engaged.

WCIT has shown us this truth and we have worked hard together to find a way that is acceptable to all. Let WCIT be the beginning of this dialogue. As our two worlds increasingly converge so must we increasingly converse and find a common way.

To be honest, this feels like a speech that was written before the events of the past two weeks, perhaps at that secret meeting to plan its media strategy. To sit there and claim that WCIT was about finding a way "acceptable to all" and one in which the focus was on "finding a common way" is especially laughable, given how the whole thing concluded. History may very well show that something extremely important was achieved, but it may just be that the achievement was demonstrating clearly what a charade the ITU is, and making it clear that it is not the right organization to have anything to do with internet issues. The ITU has been shown, once again, to be an out-of-date, out-of-touch, obsolete organization searching for relevance.

The simple fact is that the world does not need an ITU to "enable" the internet. The internet was built and expanded rapidly through other means, driven by demand and what it enabled people to do. The current system is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it has been working, and shifting to a model driven by international bureaucrats was never in the cards.

The internet does not need the ITU. The ITU needed the internet to remain relevant. The internet, however, does not work that way, and any attempt to move it into such a system of bureaucratic oversight was doomed from the start.

Filed Under: bureaucrats, free speech, governance, hamadoun toure, internet, internet governance, itu, treaties, wcit

White House: We Will Not Support An ITU Treaty That Blurs Telecom Infrastructure With The Info That Crosses Over It

from the good-for-them dept

While the US's position on the ITU discussions at the World Conference on International Telecommunications has been pretty clear from the beginning, to put an exclamation point on it, the White House put out a statement saying that it will not support an agreement that tries to expand the ITU's mandate beyond telecom infrastructure and into the world of what happens on that infrastructure. The key paragraph:

But we should not confuse telecommunications infrastructure with the information that traverses it. The global consensus for a free and open Internet is overwhelming. Millions in the United States and around the world have already added their voices to this conversation, and their position is clear: they do not want the WCIT to govern the Internet or legitimize more state control over online content. Our Administration could not agree more – and will not support a treaty that sets that kind of precedent.

This is the key point. Many in the ITU seem to want to blur the distinction between the infrastructure itself and the information that runs over it. They believe that their mandate over "telecommunications" includes the specific "communications" that run over those networks. That's a massive rewriting of history. Their mandate is supposed to be focused on the technological infrastructure, rather than how it is used.

Filed Under: internet, internet governance, itu, telecom, us, wcit

ITU Goes Back On Multiple Promises: Makes Play For Internet Governance With Sneaky Surprise Vote

from the shameful dept

Well, well. In response to all of the earlier criticisms of the ITU, and as part of its "social media strategy" to stave off ongoing criticism, ITU officials had made a few promises leading up to the World Conference on International Communications (WCIT). Among them: (1) changes to International Telecom Regulations (ITRs) would be done via consensus, rather than simple majority vote and (2) that the whole thing was not about internet governance. In one move, the ITU appears to have proved both of those claims to be blatantly false. Late into the night in Dubai, as there was continuing "negotiations" over whether or not any new regulations would cover internet communications, Mohamed Nasser al Ghanim, the ITU summit's chairman, claiming he wanted to get "a feel for the room" took what initially looked like an informal vote on whether or not the ITRs would cover the internet, backing a proposal brought forth by Algeria (and backed by Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Nigeria). After the vote showed a majority agreed to expand the ITRs to cover the internet, al Ghanim announced:

"The majority is with having the resolution in...The majority agreed to adopt the resolution as amended."

This took a lot of people in the room by complete surprise, given that there was repeated insistence that the focus was on consensus, and not a simple majority vote. This clearly went against promises by ITU boss Hamadoun Toure. As Declan McCullagh summarizes in the article linked above:

"In the true tradition of the ITU, we will not vote on any issues," Toure told reporters over the summer. "Voting means winners and losers, and this is not simply acceptable. And we believe that we'll come to an agreement on all of the issues." Toure had said last week that the summit "is not about Internet governance."

As the reality of what al Ghanim did began to set in, some delegates began to protest. Spain, in particular, noted "had we known that it was a vote, we might very well have acted differently." al Ghanim then, ridiculously, tried to pretend the vote was not a vote:

But after Spain objected, al Ghanim responded by saying, "no, it was not a vote," and that he had instead been looking for a "feel of the room."

That, obviously, is completely ridiculous, since he then used "the feel of the room" to say that the resolution was adopted, despite significant concerns about it.

The folks at the Internet Society are, quite reasonably, not at all happy about the situation, and called out not just the sudden and unexpected vote, but the secrecy surrounding it as well:

The Internet Society came to this meeting in the hopes that revisions to the treaty would focus on competition, liberalization, free flow of information and independent regulation - things that have clearly worked in the field of telecommunications. Instead, these concepts seem to have been largely struck from the treaty text. Additionally, and contrary to assurances that this treaty is not about the Internet, the conference appears to have adopted, by majority, a resolution on the Internet. Amendments were apparently made to the text but were not published prior to agreement.

Given that the ITU's moves here more or less confirm many of the fears that have been raised about the whole WCIT process all along, and show that Toure's statements were simply untrue, why is it that anyone believes that the ITU has any credibility on this subject any more? The whole idea that we're now allowing countries with horrid human rights records, and with little to no experience in supporting innovation-enabling technologies, to control direction of these discussions suggests that the entire ITU process is broken beyond belief.

Filed Under: albania, consensus, hamadoun toure, internet governance, itu, mohamed nasser al ghanim, votes, wcit

US Denies That It's Ready To Dump The ITU Over Internet Regulations

from the get-a-backbone dept

Last week, we covered the key fight at the ITU's World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT) and it was all over just one word: would any new international telecom regulations apply to "recognized operating agencies" or just "operating agencies." The difference may sound minor, but it could mean a world of difference. If it's just recognized operating agencies, then the rules are limited to giant national telcos. If it's all "operating agencies" then the rules could apply to, well, just about everyone who runs any kind of internet service. This is a huge difference. As the debate rages on -- and even as the worst proposal from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others is now off the table -- reports started circulating that the US had announced that it was prepared to walk away from WCIT entirely if there was continued movement towards significant changes in internet governance. That was seen as a pretty big threat, because a US rejection of the overall process might doom it from any sort of acceptance. However, in an emailed statement, US ambassador Terry Kramer is claiming that the reports that he's made such a threat are simply untrue (and not particularly helpful):

In the past few days, a small number of media reports have characterized the United States as “threatening” to withdraw from the WCIT negotiations. These speculative reports are inaccurate and unhelpful to the Conference. The United States has made no such threat, and it remains fully committed to achieving a successful conclusion to the WCIT.

To be honest, whether or not it's "helpful," it seems like it might actually be a lot more effective. As some are beginning to point out, almost everything about the ITU is a mess, and it's time that the US stood up and told it to stop messing where it doesn't belong. That article quotes former White House CTO Andrew McLaughlin describing why the ITU has no business regulating the internet.

"What is so bad about the ITU?" Mr. McLaughlin asked in a speech to the New America Foundation in Washington on Nov. 29. "It's just simple things like the nature, structure, culture, values and processes of the ITU. They are all inimical to a free and open Internet, and they are all inconsistent with the nature of the technical infrastructure that now characterizes our communications networks." Voting rules let repressive governments "engage in horse trading that has nothing to do with the technical merits of the decisions under consideration."

Indeed. So why are we even playing the game?

Filed Under: diplomacy, internet governance, itu, negotiations, terry kramer, wcit