State Department, FCC Urge Telecom Stakeholders to Oppose ITU Internet Regulations

Top U.S. policy makers are unified in their opposition to any proposed international governance of the Internet by the ITU, said FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and Richard Beaird, State Department senior deputy U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy. Beaird said the U.S. position has “considerable support” in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, and in some European countries. Google and Public Knowledge representatives said at the Free State Foundation event that Internet stakeholders should lobby the other ITU member nations to oppose any proposals that would create international rules for the Internet during the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December.

The Internet is at a crossroads, said McDowell, and the U.S. must maintain a “freedom-enhancing and open Internet while insulating it from legacy regulations.” He warned of any changes “that would ultimately sweep up Internet services into decades-old ITU paradigms. If successful, these efforts would merely imprison the future in the regulatory dungeon of the past.” McDowell will echo his position on ITU Internet governance in Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing, according to his prepared testimony (http://xrl.us/bm9tyw).

Constructive reform of international telecom regulations “may indeed be needed,” McDowell said, but U.S. stakeholders should “all work together to ensure that no intergovernmental regulatory overlays are placed into this sphere.” Any reforms to the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) should take place through the “bottom-up multi-stakeholder process and should not arise through the WCIT’s examination of the international telecommunication regulations,” he said.

The U.N. is “not the place for the day-to-day technical obligations of the Internet,” said Beaird. “Nothing should be done at the conference in Dubai to slow innovation or to try to bring a top-down regulation of the Internet.” Beaird noted that none of the existing proposals suggest moving the day-to-day operations of the Internet from ICANN to the U.N. The 193 ITU members will begin sending the first tranche of governance proposals on Aug. 3, he said.

Managing the Internet is “best left to a multi-stakeholder structure where decisions are made on a bottom up basis,” said Beaird. Ensuring that the multi-stakeholder model persists will rely “heavily on the partnership between government and the private sector,” he said. The U.S. is not alone in this effort, he said: “We have considerable support out of the Asia-Pacific region” and from U.S. allies in Europe and the Americas. Furthermore there are “many in Africa that have similar positions to those that we take and we will be working to solidify that,” he said.

It’s a “rare kumbaya moment” in telecom policy making that such a broad group of U.S. stakeholders oppose the proposed regulations, said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. It’s important that all the stakeholders, including industry and civil society groups, “work from the same songbook,” she said. “But we have to be a little careful not to hold up multistakeholderism as a coin.” Ultimately the U.S. government has to “serve as a backstop” to these efforts, and it’s government’s role to make the decisions and enforce the principles that are developed, she said.

"A key aspect of this is that it cannot be the U.S. against the world,” said Google Washington Telecom and Media Counsel Richard Whitt. Business leaders, academics and civil society groups must support U.S. policy makers by engaging with other ITU countries, he said. Sohn agreed. “We need to work with our allies to show that this is about freedom of expression,” she said. “This is not some U.S. corporate plot to take over the Internet."

McDowell plans to tell House lawmakers that the “fate of the Net” will be determined by what proponents of Internet freedom do or don’t do between now and the WCIT in December, according to his prepared remarks. There’s already a “subterranean effort” to expand the United Nations’ authority over the Internet, he said. “Patient and persistent incrementalism is the Net’s most dangerous enemy and it is the hallmark of many countries that are pushing the pro-regulation agenda.” It would be a “grave mistake” to shift the administration of IP addresses “away from the bottom-up, non-governmental, multi-stakeholder model and placing it into the hands of international bureaucrats,” his remarks said. Giving the ITU jurisdiction over IP addresses would “enable it to regulate Internet services and devices with abandon,” McDowell said.

McDowell objected to proposals from China, Russia and other nations to create an international code of conduct that would set international norms and rules for countries’ behavior concerning information and cyberspace. “Does anyone here today believe that these countries’ proposals would encourage the continued proliferation of an open and freedom-enhancing Internet?” he wrote. “Or would such constructs make it easier for authoritarian regimes to identify and silence political dissidents?”

Ex-Ambassador David Gross believes “it is more important than ever” for U.S. policy makers to present a “clear and unified position opposing such attempts to restrict the Internet,” according to his prepared remarks (http://xrl.us/bm9t9e). Gross, now a partner at Wiley Rein, was U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy. It’s “critically important that the [international telecommunication regulations] not be revised in any way that provides a basis for the ITU or its member states to claim that the ITU has control or authority over the Internet,” he said. Google’s Vint Cerf also will testify.

The outcome of the WCIT could “undermine the security, stability, and innovative potential of networks worldwide,” said prepared remarks (http://xrl.us/bm9t9n) of Sally Shipman Wentworth, the Internet Society’s senior manager-public policy. Some of the member states’ proposals “would pose a direct threat to the innovative, collaborative, and open nature of the Internet itself,” she will say: It’s important that the U.S. work with “like-minded allies” to ensure that governments tread lightly with any new policies or regulations on the Internet.