The UN fought the Internet — and the Internet won
December 14, 2012
Main Conference room at Day 4, WCIT 2012, Dubai, UAE (credit: ITU)
For the last two weeks some of the planet’s most oppressive regimes have faced off against some of the most powerful Internet advocates in an effort to rewrite a multilateral communications treaty that, if successful, could have changed the nature of the Internet and altered the way it is governed, Forbes reports.
On Thursday night that effort failed, as a U.S.-led block of dissenting countries refused to sign the proposed updates, handing the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union a humbling defeat.
The United States, which framed its dissent as defending “the open Internet,” was joined by more than 80 other countries, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Kieren McCarthy, who runs the internet consultancy dot-nxt, has published ITU planning documents that would otherwise have been kept out of sight. He criticized the conduct of the meeting: “Attendees were stunned to find a conference style and approach stuck in the 1970s,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Writing on the dot-nxt site, he said: “A constant stream of information was available only in downloadable Word documents; disagreement was dealt with by increasingly small, closed groups of key government officials; voting was carried out by delegates physically raising large yellow paddles, and counted by staff who walked around the room; meetings ran until the early hours of the morning, and ‘consensus by exhaustion’ was the only fall-back position.”
Statement from Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary General of the ITU. Dubai, 13 December 2012.
Comments (38)
by dayhawk
I feel we have enough problem as it is.I am glad the internet won..
by Gary Gapinski
The ITU does seem to lack the transparency and inclusion that the IETF for example demonstrates. Perhaps over the coming years it can adopt the practices of the organizations who have successfully fostered and guided the modern day Internet so that the next ITU WCIT is regarded in higher esteem than that with which WCIT-12 appears to have been.
When the ITU strays from frequency allocations and transit protocols, as appears to have been partially the case, it risks irrelevance, particularly when it attempts to regulate the nature of information, rather than simply the conveyance thereof.
The difference is that of network engineering versus notwork engineering. The latter should be eschewed, as it is evil.
by paulwhois
The proposal to give greater control of the Internet to individual countries was DEFEATED in the United Nations by MEMBERS of the United Nations. Were those countries opposed to the initiative not members, it would have carried. I’ve never heard so much negative, uninformed, knee-jerk weenie-whining in one forum than I‘ve heard here on this issue, and all directed against an organization that had just voted to PROTECT our liberties. Please, grow up children and get an education. We join organizations because the alternative, anarchy, doesn’t serve us well. If there were some intelligence here, we might be hearing proposals like how can we use the UN to push for eliminating country codes from IP addresses, an unfortunate custom that has given governments and organizations like RIAA arbitrary, pernicious control over us.
by Mr.X
@Paul:
“We join organizations because the alternative, anarchy, doesn’t serve us well.”
That’s something which all those anti-government fanatics will never understand.That’s what happens when a people thinks emotion and reason are equally valuable.
by Mortran
“We join organizations because the alternative, anarchy, doesn’t serve us well.”
This is just an unproven claim without any point to back it up. It shows how common the sheep mentality is nowadays.
by Mr.X
@Mortran:
“This is just an unproven claim without any point to back it up.”
Let’s first take the redundancy/noise out of your statement.
So your claim reduces to: This is just a claim.
“It shows how common the sheep mentality is nowadays.”
No.Did you have math at school?No offense intended.
I like how so many people throw around the word proof.
Consider/ google this: “science can only disprove”
Just to give one historical example: Do you know Somalia?Do you want to live there!?
by Mike
Actually, Somalia is thriving now compared to how it was a decade (or 2) ago.
by Mosaic Browser User
I’m sure they are all well-meaning people at the UN.
Aren’t you – and if not, why?
by MrFriendly
China, Russia, and Islamic nations are behind this. The internet helps inspire uprisings like the Arab Spring, along with protests of corrupt leaders like Putin and China’s ruling party.
by Dr. X
Those regimes wont give up and will keep trying…
Anyhow censorship of internet already implemented in Russia, plus internet service providers there HAD to install specialized hardware provided by government agencies for traffic monitoring purposes…
by dayhawk
indeed
by rob falgiano
The Russian backslide is a huge disappointment.
by Jim Mooney
I read the ITU secretary general’s lying statement that “all views should be considered.” If one of those views is to shackle the net, forget it. The net was created by the US govt and developed at first, by its citizens. It doesn’t belong to them so they can go to hell.
by Teri Greene
I was struck by the complaint about physical vs. electronic voting. If I’d been there and they were voting electronically, I would have started yelling, “NO! Use a physical voting system! Colorful paddles and human counters!”
Here’s a room full of people many of whom want to take control of the internet, and they have secret meetings. How could electronic voting be considered okay? Especially after the voting machine nightmare in the US, I would not trust these power grabbers to not hack the vote.
by GAUSS
Nobody else got the Sonny Curtis reference??
by GAUSS
“I fought the law and the law won…”
by Gabriel
What a magnificent year it’s been for Internet Rights and rights in general!!! We lost Megavideo, unfortunately, but I’m happy that everytime something like this happened, it was deterred at every chance.
Cynicism may say that they may just find a more subtle way, or that (within the USA), monitoring and control already take place…but Privacy and Liberty are always things to fight for and I’m happy that the Internet, relatively speaking, remains open and free as it ever was.
by sTEEVEE
Dude…yo, dude… yeah, you. The one with the laptop upside-down. GET A F()@#EN LIFE! The genie’s been outta the bottle here for what…about 40 years? BTW- the keyboard goes on the bottom.
by asiwel
Honestly, all the babble about the “awful” UN and how it is trying to take over the world and should be disbanded, etc., always seems to me to be adolescent and historically unaware at best. The UN (and World Bank, IMF, and WTO, etc) is for sure a “severely compromised” organization – no matter what your perspective is. However, it is much better than “nothing” and it provides a forum for raising all sorts of issues to a level of “transparency” – I mean, we knew they were meeting about this, even if behind closed doors, so we could marshall strong international “assent” or “dissent” for or against it. It didn’t “just happen” all of a sudden by decree. That’s a good thing. Besides other parts of the UN do good work often – such as UNICEF.
by enrique
the UN is the most estatist intitution, when we will learn?
by Locke
What a surprise, the bureaucratic behemoth that is the UN tries to take over as world government one little step at a time, but fails under its own weight and antiquated ideas and methods.
When will we learn to not listen to them? Any organisation who will let countries like Iran and China have an equal voice in the human rights debate has to be disbanded.
Unfortunately the only way to rid ourselves of their influence now is to consistently vote for political leaders who are not enamoured with this type of out of touch world government.
by Mr.X
@Locke:
“Any organisation who will let countries like Iran and China have an equal voice in the human rights debate has to be disbanded.”
Not to mention the USA!
About the rest: I agree with your assessment of the UN.
by Jim Mooney
Really – after starting an oil war based on bald lies (that didn’t even get us any oil) in Iraq, that killed hundreds of thousands, including children, we really can’t talk much about human rights. The government can’t with any credibility, anyway. We citizens who didn’t go along with that worthless war certainly have the right to do so.
by Mr.X
@Jim:
Sadly most citizen go along with all this.
by James Bergstrom
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment and advice. The power is slowly but surely going back to citizens in all countries.
by daleziemianski
Prepare to be assimilated —
http://d-alien.com/images/The_United_Nations_Building.jpg
by Daniel
What this issue proves is that we we don’t need is the UN and all of its bureaucratic bull$hit.
Read the statement by Toure…it will make you want to throw up. As someone else pointed out, people with no experience with the technology, no business experience, no skin in the game, in other words people who have zero to offer in any productive way are abrogating to themselves power that we should cleave from their grimy, corrupt, malevolent hands.
by Mosaic Browser User
Just tell me one reason, or by all means more if you have, why is it a bad idea that we have an intelligence test for our leaders and policy makers?
Below IQ 120-140 or whatever it is that’s necessary to be considered normal by intelligent people, you’re not even considered.
Isn’t it strikingly stupid that we don’t have the smartest available people in our governments? Democracy yes, but let the voters vote only those whose minds function normally as judged by uncheatable, impartial tests.
by dayhawk
yea the UN needs leave internet alone.. let the people like us shape the net and lead the furture
by Gorden Russell
‘consensus by exhaustion’ was the only fall-back position.”
That’s an old fashioned method used by criminals to take over unions back in the early days of the labor movement. They would keep everybody awake until those with day jobs just had to go home to sleep. Then those who remained, who weren’t going to work in the morning, voted in their cronies and then voted themselves big raises and offered loans out of the union strike fund.
This is such an old criminal tactic, very few people remember it.
by Marcos Marin
The Brazilian government, and I’m sure many others, can still do that — using modern electronic voting technology — and be out before lunch, spending their new raise on tourism.
by Fernando Barrera
Marcos Marin: After the scandal on Rio voting electronic system, I wouldn’t say so.
by bg
voting machine contribute to winning in Indian elections sopecially to the party in power
by Stepan Chizhov
There’s much older papal election tradition =))
by Mosaic Browser User
They can’t even use today’s technology? Wow. Just wow. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Soo, people who had (have, and never will) nothing to do with a technology (internet), just decide that they should decide how it should be used. Seems like the definition of the word government.
Now tell me what’s wrong with this?
by Marcos Marin
word government? Micro$oft Word Government? lol
simple, it would be TOO IRONIC, to use the internet there. =)
by Bri
Obviously the machinations of the UN need to be updated. All material being discussed needs to be open to the public, even if that country isn’t an open style government. A country like China encourages cyber warfare, but the very same tools can bring it down. As hackers learn to defeat the security systems, they also learn to have access to the very information that The Chinese government wants to hide. One way or another, dissident information will get through. Even if it’s by a network of faxes. Open access to information and governance is what we are evolving toward.
by Marcos Marin
As I said a few months ago, humanity is quite lucky their evil doers are so incompetent. You may have to wait for me to wake you out of your boredom.. maybe de Garis is right after all…