[ NNSquad ] WashPost: Protecting the open Internet may require defunding the ITU. Here's how to do it.

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

Protecting the open Internet may require defunding the ITU. Here's how
to do it.

http://j.mp/18dz8AZ  (Washington Post)

    "For years, governments unhappy with their limited influence over the
     governance of the Internet have gone to the ITU to air their
     grievances and seek relief. They have proposed to make the ITU the
     preeminent standards-setting and governance body for the Internet,
     pushing aside the non-governmental Internet Engineering Task Force
     (IETF) for standards and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
     Numbers (ICANN) for governing the Internet's domain name system. These
     changes would enable governments to have greater control over content
     on their "national Internet segments," as well as the ability to
     charge high rates for international Internet traffic, just as they do
     for telephone traffic.  For its part, the ITU Secretariat would love
     an expansion of authority because it would bring back some of the
     relevance the ITU lost in the rise of the Internet. The vast majority
     even of today's international telephone traffic is routed and billed
     according to a special loophole in the treaty that governs
     telecommunications, and 100 percent of Internet traffic is exempt from
     the treaty's provisions.  These issues came to a head last year at the
     World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai.
     Governments came together for the first time in 24 years to
     renegotiate the telecommunications treaty. A number of countries,
     including Russia, China, UAE and Saudi Arabia, proposed sweeping
     changes that would have created significant obligations for member
     states with respect to the Internet. While the liberal democracies
     were able to keep the worst provisions out of the final treaty, it
     still contained objectionable provisions, and it was bundled with a
     resolution giving the ITU all the excuse it needed to start working on
     Internet policy. The United States and 54 other countries refused to
     sign."

  - - -

The primary reason countries push for ITU control of the Internet is
specifically to facilitate fragmentation and censorship of the Net on
a massive scale.  It's all about politicians who don't want their
populations to have access to open information.  Don't be fooled by
their dissembling along other lines -- it's a smokescreen, nothing more.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren 
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Founder:
 - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org 
 - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein 
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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