CONTROL TUG-OF-WAR THREATENS THE WEB
IN a display of American bipartisanship rarely seen outside an episode of The West Wing , the US House of Representatives voted unanimously in favour of a resolution aimed to keep the internet free from government control.
This comes as the UN holds its World Conference on International Telecommunications, currently under way in Dubai until the end of next week.
It seeks to update the 1988 communications treaty established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The ITU is a specialised agency of the UN responsible for information and communication technologies.
The conference, which is being held behind closed doors, has reignited the long-running debate over who should be allowed control over the internet. Currently there is no central regulatory body for the internet itself, though some nations would like to see the UN assume that role.
Proposals from Asia, the Middle East and Africa have argued that an international organisation with increased control over internet activity is necessary in order to deal with issues such as cybercrime and copyright protection, as well as military threats. Several of these proposal documents were leaked ahead of their submission and published online.
On the opposite side of the fence, countries such as Canada, the US, Mexico and all of Europe maintain that the internet’s current, decentralised system of governance is vital to uphold.
They argue that giving the UN broad regulatory control over the web could hinder innovation and harm the economy, as well as pose a threat to their citizens’ privacy.
Meanwhile internet giant Google has also entered into the fray, setting up a website dubbed “Take Action” on which the company expressed its concerns that some of the proposals to overhaul the 1988 treaty could be harmful to free speech.
Another concern that Google raised was the possibility that services like YouTube, Skype and Facebook could be forced to pay new tolls in order to reach people across international borders, as stipulated by one such plan which is currently being mulled over by the some of the member countries of the ITU.
Google decried the secretive nature of the ITU conference, complaining that only governments have a voice at the ITU, while engineers, companies and people who build and use the web have no say in the matter whatsoever.
Many prominent electronic freedom activists, tech companies and scholars have urged their audiences to pay attention to the issues being discussed at the conference in Dubai, among the most notable being Sir Tim Berners Lee as well as internet pioneer Vint Cerf.