Regulatory Threat to Internet Through ITU Treaty Said to Extend Well Beyond December Conference

NAPA, Calif. -- A December ITU conference could lay the groundwork for far-reaching regulation of the Internet by treaty, though it probably won’t be any “absolute catastrophe” in its concrete results, said Ed Black, Computer & Communications Industry Association president, Thursday. The one-country, one-vote World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai takes international pro-regulatory discussions of recent years “to a whole new level” because it’s dealing with proposals for binding obligations, said Sally Wentworth, Internet Society senior manager-public policy. They spoke at the Tech Policy Summit.

Efforts to regulate reflect a recognition by governments of the Internet’s ability “to disrupt existing power structures, business models, governmental control,” Black said. “Conscious and willful” work by governments such as those of Russia and China to extend online the kind of control they exert over their societies are compounded by others’ well-meaning or innocuous-sounding efforts to achieve “social goals” with “careless disregard of the consequences” of fettering cyberspace, he said. Ghana’s, for instance, involves green energy, Black said.

Some officials, like those in French-speaking Africa, have gotten the misimpression that the best way to finance broadband networks is by imposing telecom style per-minute billing for Internet use, said Robert Pepper, Cisco vice president-technology policy. “There are countries that want to make … technical standards binding,” he said. “Think how restrictive that would be.” If this came to pass, “you'd probably send lawyers” to meetings of standards-setting bodies, “because you're developing something that would be an obligation,” Wentworth said. Other proposals involve information security and spam, she said. “One country’s spam is another country’s free speech.” To be broad enough to cover the 193 participating countries, any treaty is bound to include “loopholes to do a wide range of things” in national regulation, Black said.

But the U.S. cedes the high ground because its “do as we do record is poor,” Black said. Intellectual property “is a cutting-edge, wedge issue here.” It’s easy for other countries to use high-minded social goals to justify regulation when they see the U.S. as “willing to sacrifice freedom for dollars and copyright,” he said.