Legislation, Diplomacy Key to Snuffing International Net Regulations, Say Lawmakers.

Internet policy makers are girding themselves for future fights with those in the international community who seek to impose new restrictions and regulations on the Internet. While lawmakers Tuesday commended the work of U.S. delegates to oppose new international regulations at the recent World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), they said at a joint Congressional hearing on the topic they must redouble efforts to combat further restrictions on the Web.

The international community will again take up the debate over Internet regulations this year when the ITU hosts the World Telecommunications/ICT Policy Forum, the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS+10), and the Internet Governance Forum, said lawmakers from three House subcommittees. Going forward Congress must speak with a united voice to preserve the multistakeholder model of the Internet, and U.S. diplomats must seek allies in developing countries to oppose Internet regulations, they said.

Witnesses at the hearing said Congress and the President have important roles in ensuring that international states don’t successfully impose new regulations on the Web. “Time is of the essence,” said FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican. “The highest levels of the U.S. government must make this cause a top priority and recruit allies in civil society, the private sector and diplomatic circles around the world.” He urged President Barack Obama to immediately make appointments to fill “crucial vacancies” in the nation’s diplomatic ranks.

McDowell advised lawmakers to speak with “one loud and clear voice, as it did last year with the unanimous and bipartisan resolutions concerning the WCIT.” Last Congress, both chambers passed resolutions seeking to preserve “the multi-stakeholder governance model under which the Internet has thrived.” The bipartisan congressional resolutions “did help to strengthen the U.S. position and credibility in the process,” said Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager-public policy at the Internet Society. “It was enormously helpful for us to see the U.S. speaking with one voice,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told us after the hearing that the subcommittee is developing a bipartisan bill to protect Internet freedom that will be based on the language of from House Concurrent Resolution 127. He said witness testimony at the hearing reaffirmed that the resolutions were “effective at WCIT and influential.” A draft of the proposed bill is on the subcommittee’s website (http://xrl.us/boetqe).

But Walden told us the FCC’s net neutrality order has weakened the U.S. argument that the Internet should remain free from international regulations. “Everybody knows where I stand on Net Neutrality,” Walden told us following the hearing: When the U.S “tries to do its own regulation of the Internet, which some people including me view Net Neutrality as doing, that weakens our argument internationally.”

It’s important to marshal resources and allies to combat future efforts to place international restrictions on the Web, said Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said the U.S. needs to develop a strategy for engaging developing countries who might otherwise stay on the sidelines. Though Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said she was “deeply troubled” by the treaty negotiations at the WCIT, she said the vote there revealed that most of the world’s developed nations are seeking to protect the current multistakeholder approach. “We must send a strong message to other countries and to U.S. companies that our government will work with them to promote online freedom,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

Smith announced that he had reintroduced his Global Online Freedom Act (HR-491) which mirrors his Internet legislation from last Congress. The bill aims to require the State Department to increase its reporting on global Internet freedom and identify countries that restrict their citizens’ access to the Web. The bill also requires publicly traded U.S. and foreign companies to disclose to the SEC how they share and collect personally identifiable information with “repressive regimes.” The provision would require some foreign technology companies to disclose what steps they take to notify users when they remove or block access to online content. And the legislation prohibits U.S. companies from exporting hardware and software that can be used for “potentially illicit activities,” including surveillance, tracking and blocking.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, chairman of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade Subcommittee, said the U.S. should “reexamine” giving aid to countries which seek Internet regulations. “The idea that the U.N. should control the Internet is like putting the Taliban in charge of women’s rights,” said Poe. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.” Poe was quick to blame President Vladimir “Putin’s Russia and our good buddies the Chinese” for the resulting text of the international telecommunications regulation (ITRs) agreements. “They want to use the U.N. as a shield to protect against free speech and they want to use it as a spear, a weapon against democratic competition.”