While there is growing concern in Washington and elsewhere over the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), scheduled to meet in Dubai in December, and a move to regulate the Internet, State Department Official Richard Beaird said it’s too early to push the panic button. Beaird, senior deputy U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, said compromise is likely. But other speakers laid out their concerns during a FCBA seminar
Russia export controls and sanctions
The use of export controls and sanctions on Russia has surged since the country's invasion of Crimea in 2014, and especially its invasion of Ukraine in in February 2022. Similar export controls and sanctions have been imposed by U.S. allies, including the EU, U.K. and Japan. The following is a listing of recent articles in Export Compliance Daily on export controls and sanctions imposed on Russia:
GENEVA -- Submissions in advance of a July ITU Council meeting suggested the organization’s work on international Internet-related public policy matters should move toward a “cybersecurity convention,” that a working group on the issues should be opened up to those with a stake, or that participants meet certain criteria to participate only in consultations to be developed by the working group of member government officials. A long-time ITU participant leading cybersecurity work in the organization said the idea of conceptualizing the global Internet as a “common heritage of humankind” isn’t a new one. The concept in the past has been used to extend jurisdiction by a global intergovernmental organization, he said.
Threats to Internet freedom are “real” and must be taken seriously, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said in a speech in Rome to the Associazione EGO and Puntoit. The comments are some of the strongest yet from McDowell, who has long warned about creeping regulation of the Internet. McDowell cautioned companies about the dangers of using intergovernmental bodies to regulate their rivals.
GENEVA -- Revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) later this year should maintain a high-level focus on boosting investment and innovation, a group of 45 operators in Africa, the Middle East and Asia told an ITU Council working group in a submission to a meeting this week on conference preparations. Submissions variously called for boosting confidence and security in using networks, provisions to address cybersecurity, calling line identification, the availability of routing information, international Internet connectivity, naming and numbering, taxation of gear and services, and proposals to address fraud and cybercrime, which have raised past opposition. The submissions were made to a June 20-22 ITU Council meeting preparing for a December world conference, but they aren’t official conference proposals.
STOCKHOLM -- “The multi-stakeholder self-regulating system of Internet governance … has served the system and the world exceedingly well,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt Friday at the European Dialogue (EuroDIG) conference. Bildt pointed to the success of the Internet and the parts that organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) played.
As the telecom industry transitions to Internet Protocol, traditional regulatory approaches will have to be totally rexamined, and government should enact policies that encourage investment in new broadband infrastructure, speakers said Friday at a Wiley Rein workshop on the “IP Transition as Grand Challenge.” Industry stakeholders discussed strategies for the transition away from the TDM, as some wondered what to do about what they called “corrupt” state public utility commissions that want to apply legacy regulations to a world of new technologies.
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.
Philip Verveer is optimistic U.N. proposals to regulate the Internet can be defeated. The State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy spoke at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Thursday. Subcommittee members reaffirmed their opposition to any U.N. proposals that could, as Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said, “break the Internet."
GENEVA -- Trade officials are beginning to float ideas on how to classify and describe additional goods for tariff-free treatment under the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA), officials said following the start of informal talks. The World Trade Organization ITA Committee meeting in May (CD May 16 p6) agreed to begin meeting bilaterally and in small groups to start discussions on expansion, John Neuffer, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council, told us May 23. “So the train is moving forward.”
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.