World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT)

[Sil_liS]

The WCIT is almost over, and I got an email from avaaz.org regarding a petition to stop the internet from getting censored (again).

If you want to read more:
Proposal for Global Regulation of Web - 9 Dec 2012

An unexpected new proposal for international regulation of the internet drew warnings over the weekend of a spread of online censorship and left a global conference on the issue on the edge of collapse.

The deep divisions over treatment of the internet came after a group of Arab states put forward a plan late on Friday that would require countries around the world to explicitly regulate internet companies. The proposal, made at a conference in Dubai to agree a new international telecoms treaty, has also won the backing of Russia and China, along with a group of other countries.

The articles written at the beginning of the conference talked about this type of development but the quotes sound like they were made by people who spend their time making tin foil hats.
ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet - 3 Dec 2012

Vint Cerf, one of the "fathers of the internet" who is now "chief internet evangelist" at Google, has been campaigning against the ITU almost full-time for months, offering a seemingly inarguable combination of the economically and democratically essential open internet, and his winning putdowns.

A lengthy comment piece in the New York Times proclaimed: "The decisions taken in Dubai in December have the potential to put government handcuffs on the Net." The New York Post was rather less measured, quoting Cerf in a piece that began: "If delegates have their way at next week's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, the man in charge of the Web will be a Soviet-trained apparatchik from Cold War days."

Even Cerf himself appeared to lose his composure last week when he told Reuters: "These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn't travelled up their long necks."

The petition can be found here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/hands_off_ou...xTXLcb&v=20018

[crich70]

So some Arab countries want to censor the net and Russia and China are in agreement with them. Why am I not surprised by that? Kinda leads me to wonder what they're so afraid of that they want to have the net censored world wide?

[Sil_liS]

The author of the Financial Times article appears to be surprised.

[fjtorres]

The good news is they overplayed their hand and got swatted hard enough they had to withdraw the plan (for now).
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575...e-of-internet/

[Sil_liS]

I'm not sure that this can be concluded just yet. Following the link to the article about the leaked proposal:

As recently as November 7, in an op-ed for Wired, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure reiterated that "the conference will not examine management of critical Internet resources such as domain names and IP addresses. These functions are already performed by ICANN and regional Internet registries."

But that statement contradicted an earlier acknowledgment from Toure hat some "preliminary" proposals had indeed suggested the ITU take over some or all management of domain names and addresses.

ITU hasn't been truthful, so when I read this:

An ITU spokesman told Reuters that the coalition had abandoned the plan.

I'm looking around for salt.

[Kumabjorn]

It will become like banking, regulated in a lot of countries and then completely free in some that see the potential of providing unregulated information. Imagine what this could mean to Andorra's economy.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I'm not sure that this can be concluded just yet. Following the link to the article about the leaked proposal:


ITU hasn't been truthful, so when I read this:

I'm looking around for salt.

As I said, "for now".
The autocrats will continue to try to control/censor the internet and with bureaucrats and telecoms looking to expand their respective empires (through regulation and fees respectively) the issue isn't going away.
But *for now* they ran into enough resistance that they've pulled back.

They'll try again soon and they'll come back with more allies from the west next time, likely european telecoms and B&M retailers.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

It will become like banking, regulated in a lot of countries and then completely free in some that see the potential of providing unregulated information. Imagine what this could mean to Andorra's economy.

The biggest problem isn't regulation. We already have web pages that cannot be seen in every country. Imagine if this happened to all the foreign websites. Right now the internet is mostly without borders, and countries really like their borders.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As I said, "for now".
The autocrats will continue to try to control/censor the internet and with bureaucrats and telecoms looking to expand their respective empires (through regulation and fees respectively) the issue isn't going away.
But *for now* they ran into enough resistance that they've pulled back.

They'll try again soon and they'll come back with more allies from the west next time, likely european telecoms and B&M retailers.

I don't even trust them that much:

A series of ITU committees are meeting to draft proposals, with a deadline of December 12. The final texts will be presented on December 13, with the treaty signing scheduled to occur the following day. However, many of the meetings are being conducted behind closed doors, and key documents are withheld from public scrutiny -- the opposite of the way traditional Internet standards-setting works.

They backed down in the public eye, but meetings happen behind closed doors.