An agreement to update 24-year-old United Nations telecommunications rules was approved against the opposition of countries including the U.S. and the U.K., whose delegates walked out on the talks on concerns about Internet regulation and censorship.

The new pact includes measures that would give countries a right to access international telecommunications services and the ability to block spam, which delegations that declined to sign the amended text argued would pave the way for government censorship and control over the Web. Canada, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia and others followed the U.S. in refusing to sign on these grounds. The treaty is not binding for the countries that didn’t sign it.

“It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunity that the U.S. must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in its current form,” the U.S. delegation said in a statement at the plenary after the final changes were adopted last night. “We candidly cannot support an ITU treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model.”

Talks at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai this week were marked by disagreements between anti-regulation countries, including the U.S. and many European states, and a group that argued for some Internet measures to protect and advance networks, including Russia, China and several Middle Eastern nations.

Google Opposition

The conference had attracted criticism because of its one- country-one-vote model that ignores population size. Internet companies, including Google Inc. (GOOG), have complained that they don’t get a voice in the negotiations. While technology groups are allowed to participate in the discussions and have joined as parts of delegations, they don’t get a vote in the proceedings.

“What is clear from the ITU meeting in Dubai is that many governments want to increase regulation and censorship of the Internet,” Google said in a statement. “We stand with the countries who refuse to sign this treaty and also with the millions of voices who have joined us to support a free and open web.”

The International Telecommunication Union, an UN agency, had agreed that no measures would be adopted that gave the body increased control over the Web or the member states the ability to censor content.

Tax Changes

Other articles that were passed address changes in the way telecommunications companies should be taxed and compensated in a system that has moved from phone companies that were largely government-owned monopolies to one with private mobile-phone companies. They also address access to communications for people with disabilities and in less developed markets.

Web addresses are currently controlled by two non- governmental organizations, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

“A majority of the ITU member states, including many countries that purportedly support Internet freedom, chose to discard long-standing international consensus to keep the Internet insulated from intergovernmental regulation,” Robert McDowell, Commissioner at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, said in a statement today. “By agreeing to broaden the scope of the ITU’s rules to include the Internet, encompassing its operations and content, these nations have radically undermined the highly successful, private sector, non- governmental, multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance.”

The U.S. needs to prepare for an “even more treacherous ITU treaty negotiation” that is scheduled to take place in 2014 in South Korea, he said.

Emergency Calls

The last time the ITU drafted a treaty on world regulation in communications was in 1988, only a few years after the debut of the first mobile phone, which weighed the equivalent of seven Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone 5, and long before Google was founded. The original treaty set principles on topics such as international telecommunications services, emergency calls and trans-border charges.

In the final discussion, a proposal was put to a vote that would have given governments the right to access international communications networks and it divided the member states along similar lines. The U.K. said the measure, which was approved by 77 votes to 33, opened the door to “Internet and content issues.”

The sessions have been running since Dec. 3 and are scheduled to end today. Terry Kramer, an ambassador and one of the heads of the U.S. delegation, said in an interview this week that the key issue for the delegation was ensuring that the amendments didn’t include language around Internet regulation.

“The conference was really supposed to be focused on the telecom sector,” Kramer said. “We feel there have been a bunch of proposals which have come in from the outside to hijack the conference.”

 LordofHats wrote:
Am I the only one that noticed the countries that didn't sign the bill are also ones with large numbers of server farms?

A firestorm is brewing over the recent proposals from the United Nations-sponsored meetings regarding the new Internet treaty that the United States is refusing to sign. The treaty would entertain censorship, which we cannot tolerate despite the fact that the Internet is incredibly censored already.

Let me quote some of the assertions made in the media about all this. Then I'll try and explain what it all means.

From SFGate.com: Western countries led by the United States are pushing back. Washington has made it clear it won't sign a treaty that leaves room for censorship and government control. It's a simple and direct message: Leave the Internet alone.

From ZDNet: When I spoke to Ambassador Kramer, I asked him what happens now? Will other countries route around the U.S. desires for an open Internet? And, I also asked, could this lead to what might essentially be two Internets, one open, and one closed?

From CNET: ...a key concern is that putting topics related to Internet speech and surveillance to a majority vote of ITU's 192 member nations may not end well. Many delegates to the ITU summit have less-than-favorable views toward Internet freedom...according to Reporters Without Borders's ratings, suffer from significant "problems" with press freedom...U.N. and ITU meetings often result, of course, in more rhetoric than substance. During a U.N. conference in Tunisia in 2005, for instance, Iran and African governments proclaimed that the Internet permits too much free speech, with Cuba's delegate announcing that Fidel Castro believes it's time to create a new organization...

For years, ICANN, the independent Internet overseer, has been telling anyone who will listen that the UN is going to try and wrest control of the Internet and create some sort of über-organization to supposedly make the Web more fair. There seems to be some belief that the dominant player, the United States, is using the Internet to foment revolutions around the world and the mechanism in and of itself needs to be better controlled.

Let's try and understand the problem using a realistic analogy. Say a closed society like Saudi Arabia clamped down on public discourse. In so doing, it regulates all news outlets, whether in print or on TV. For some crazy reason, it allows the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, and the Oregonian print and distribute papers freely within the boundaries of the country.

That's not going to happen, but that's exactly what happens if we see the Internet as a distribution device, pushing those same publications into the country in electronic form.

The nations that want more control and oversight are closed societies that cannot tolerate all this miscellaneous material pouring into the country. So, they set up elaborate monitoring, site blocking, and other systems just like Net Nanny on steroids. They successfully block most of it, although some sneaks through just as would happen with print, too.

The problem with blocking is that it makes the public suspicious. Why is Saudi Arabia preventing me from reading this? The real goal of these countries is to become part of an onerous overlord running the DNS servers and blocking further down the pipe so their citizens cannot blame them. They kill the New York Times further up the pipe and make it close to impossible to burrow through the network to get it.

Ideally, an international treaty would also incorporate cooperation agreements where you would have to adhere to local laws. When you have a country where it is illegal to criticize the almighty king of the place, then American content would have to obey the same laws online. The idea is to make the international media even more namby-pamby.

I can assure you that any attempt to change the Internet with some sort of treaty will stifle more than a few revolutions or even things as mundane as consumer protection. It'll all heading toward local filtering and the creation of balkanized Intranets pretending to be the Internet.

Nobody likes that idea, but it is the only thing that makes sense. Every other solution is too arduous.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Acts of defiance towards the UN will be met with lethal force and or invasion. America should tread warily.

Relapse wrote:
I've always had a mixed bag of feelings about the U.N., mostly thinking they aren't much more than a forum for countries that hate the U.S. and Great Britain.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Didn't they do that thing in that country with that warlord dude?

Or am I thinking of the plot of every action film from the 1980s to present?

Relapse wrote:
I've always had a mixed bag of feelings about the U.N., mostly thinking they aren't much more than a forum for countries that hate the U.S. and Great Britain.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Good, glad to see common sense prevailed.

Now there's only the UN Small Arms Proliferation treaty to be concerned about.

I'd guess just off the top of my head that the US, Russia and China won't sign it, simply because those three nations are the largest arms manufacturers and distributors in the world.

I'd also guess that the more rightward inclined individuals who own guns in the US will be freaking out about said Arms Treaty no matter what it actually says for awhile. I mean come on! Gun bans, registration, confiscation, violating the Constitution AND the UN! It doesn't get much better then that.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Good, glad to see common sense prevailed.

Now there's only the UN Small Arms Proliferation treaty to be concerned about.

I'd guess just off the top of my head that the US, Russia and China won't sign it, simply because those three nations are the largest arms manufacturers and distributors in the world.

I'd also guess that the more rightward inclined individuals who own guns in the US will be freaking out about said Arms Treaty no matter what it actually says for awhile. I mean come on! Gun bans, registration, confiscation, violating the Constitution AND the UN! It doesn't get much better then that.

 Captain Fantastic wrote:
What braindead, troglodyte moron would want censorship? Do they realize that essentially the entire online world is against them? Absolutely no one wants censorship, or any sort of limitations on their use of the internet. Does that mean nothing? Why should we surrender and yield to lawmaking bodies that don't have our genuine interests at heart?

It warms my heart to know that we still shine as a beacon of freedom and liberation though. For once, it actually seems like capitalism did us a favor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Good, glad to see common sense prevailed.

Now there's only the UN Small Arms Proliferation treaty to be concerned about.

I'd guess just off the top of my head that the US, Russia and China won't sign it, simply because those three nations are the largest arms manufacturers and distributors in the world.

I'd also guess that the more rightward inclined individuals who own guns in the US will be freaking out about said Arms Treaty no matter what it actually says for awhile. I mean come on! Gun bans, registration, confiscation, violating the Constitution AND the UN! It doesn't get much better then that.

I'm worried about this too, and any other political talk about firearms. Politicians know nothing about guns. They know nothing about gun culture, they know nothing about sport or hobbyists. They only know the numbers. Death rates, proliferation, profits, importation., etc. They make uneducated opinions whenever the topic is brought up, and they can't be trusted to do the sensible thing.

Romney brought up "assault weapons" at the town hall debate. He genuinely did not know that fully automatic weapons were legal, and he seemed to be convinced that a Semi-Automatic, military style rifle was somehow more dangerous than any other rifle.

 Frazzled wrote:


What are you talking about? Lots of people love censorship. Governments love it. Corporations love it. People love it. Censorship is a growth industry.

 Frazzled wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I've always had a mixed bag of feelings about the U.N., mostly thinking they aren't much more than a forum for countries that hate the U.S. and Great Britain.

You would be right.

 Frazzled wrote:

Outside of the World Health Organization, what major achievements has the UN done in the last 20 years?

 Frazzled wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I've always had a mixed bag of feelings about the U.N., mostly thinking they aren't much more than a forum for countries that hate the U.S. and Great Britain.

You would be right.

Outside of the World Health Organization, what major achievements has the UN done in the last 20 years?

 dogma wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I've always had a mixed bag of feelings about the U.N., mostly thinking they aren't much more than a forum for countries that hate the U.S. and Great Britain.

You would be right.

It is a forum for all nations, including the US and the UK.