There was plenty of attention paid to the failed WCIT meeting last year, in which some countries effectively sought greater control over the internet, leading many countries to refuse to sign on. There has since been plenty of reasonable concern that the end result of this is a fragmented internet, with one internet for those who believe in internet freedom and openness... and one for those who don't.

And, of course, the whole ITU WCIT process was never going to be the end of such discussions. Eli Dourado, who has been following this stuff closely for a while, recently had a good report about how various authoritarian governments made a bit of a power play for more control over internet governance. The issue may seem bureaucratic and messy, but that's also why it's important to pay attention. Because mixed in with all that bureaucracy are some key decisions.

The short version is that countries agreed, nearly a decade ago, at the World Summit on Information Society, that governments shouldn't have too much control over the internet. This was initially directed at the US, since it really did have an awful lot of power over the internet. So, an agreement was reached with the following language on a "multi-stakeholder model."

"The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations."

As Dourado points out, "note the four classes of stakeholders." They were chosen this way to avoid governments having too much power. Except that certain countries are using these various international gatherings to try to change the meaning of "multi-stakeholder" to basically minimize everyone but government, while still pretending to support the concept.

Authoritarian governments have been quick to remind the world that they are stakeholders, too. Since the Tunis Agenda urges all stakeholders to work together "in their respective roles," the most illiberal countries have simply argued that national governments should have the biggest and most pre-eminent roles, while other stakeholders should have smaller subordinate ones. Russia in particular is aggressively pushing this definition for the role of governments. Its proposed edits to the multi-stakeholder opinion invites member states "to exercise their rights on Internet Governance ... at the national level," by which it means that national governments should preempt ICANN.

In other words, Russia -- and its allies like China and Saudi Arabia -- are adopting the language of multi-stakeholderism to support something rather like its opposite. The position they are advancing is virtually indistinguishable from one which accords no role to other stakeholders.

Dourado also points out that having governments make decisions on internet governance is a recipe for disaster in a number of ways, including the fact that current internet governance is earned through trust and respect -- but governments swooping in don't seem to care about any of that.

... it is worth reflecting on one fundamental difference between Internet institutions and sovereign governments. In the Internet technical community, authority is earned. Internet institutions have legitimacy because it is freely given by a wide array of stakeholders. For example, the non-governmental Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) maintains and develops the core technical standards that are the sine qua non of the Internet. People are free to disobey the recommendations issued by the IETF, but they usually follow them because it has earned its authority through competence, transparency, and inclusiveness. The system of state sovereignty is at odds with the earned authority of Internet institutions. Governments punish their subjects for failing to comply with their orders, and they do not accept challenges to their territorial authority. Governmental authority is not earned; it is imposed.

Neither the authoritarian regimes nor the ITU seem genuinely invested in earning the authority they are eager to assert on the Internet. Instead, they are using the vagueness of the nominal consensus on the multi-stakeholder model as cover to impose authority.

We already noted this morning that the US, a bunch of European countries, and a sprinkling of other nations around the globe have refused to sign the new ITR agreement put together at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), even as ITU officials congratulate themselves on a job well done. Many people have asked who signed and who didn't. The ITU has an official list of signatures, which seems to slightly conflict with some earlier reports. Here's their graphic: Perhaps more useful is this map, in which the signing countries are in black and the non-signing are in red. You might notice a few patterns. Also, reporter Dave Burstein kindly sent along the full list (embedded below), with signatories in green, non-signatories in red and everyone else in white. The "everyone else" apparently includes countries who haven't paid up their dues and thus can't technically sign on yet, or who don't "have their credentials in order." In other words: bureaucratic blah blah blah. Europe, of course, dominates the non-signing countries. It's somewhat meaningless, but if you tally up population, the signatories cover 3.8 billion people, while the non-signatories cover 2.6 billion. And there are another ~600 million in play in those other countries.

So, what does it all mean? Very little right now. Even those countries that signed on still need to go through a ratification process -- and one hopes that people in some of those countries will realize that it's bad to be supporting a regime that wants political bureaucrats having anything to do with the internet, even if it's dipping a toe in the water. However, many of the countries don't much care about that, and simply want the new rules so they can try to control parts of the internet (and/or profit from it). The rules won't actually go into effect for a while. While they aren't binding, it is pretty customary for signatories to eventually adopt such rules locally.

The real story here is a world in which there are two competing visions for the future of the internet -- one driven by countries who believe the internet should be more open and free... and one driven by the opposite. Whether or not the ITU treaty is ever meaningful or effective, these two visions of the internet are unlikely to go away any time soon. The next decade is going to be filled with similar clashes as certain countries seek to limit what the internet can do, for their own political needs and desires. Seeing the initial breakdown of who's in which camp is useful, but this isn't over yet.

The ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is now over... and it played out almost exactly as many had predicted. After going back on explicit promises that the treaty would (a) not be about the internet and (b) would only be completed by consensus, rather than by majority vote -- the US lived up to its promise not to support such a treaty by officially stating that it would not sign. A number of other countries quickly followed suit including: the UK, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia, Greece, Finland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Qatar (though some apparently said they could not sign because they first had to consult with their own governments -- so it's possible that some of these may change their mind, but many viewed such statements as a more diplomatic way of refusing to sign).

The US, on the other hand, was explicit in refusing to sign:

"It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said US Ambassador to WCIT Terry Kramer. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years. All without UN regulation. We candidly cannot support an ITU Treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance," Kramer added.

The US delegation also laid out the specific reasons why it refused to sign, and they're the same issues we've been talking about all along: (1) the attempt to expand the definition of the types of entities covered by the treaty from the big telcos to just about everyone running network (2) the explicit inclusion of internet and internet governance in the treaty (3) the claim of a mandate over cybersecurity and (4) the official regulation of spam. That last one hasn't received as much attention, but the US found the rules put forth for dealing with spam going way too far, and putting in place rules that would violate the First Amendment.

Of course, with so many countries bailing out, the ITU's promise that this would all be about consensus look positively laughable in retrospect. But, perhaps even more laughable is the response from ITU boss Hamadoun Toure whose claims read like those of a bureaucrat in complete denial. First he claimed complete "surprise" that the US and other countries walked away:

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t sign it. I especially was surprised by the reasons that were put in place. I had made it clear from the opening that [Internet and content were not a part of the discussion]. I invited ICANN to show that we want to build bridges. The telecoms society and internet society need to work together. I made an appeal to please help us build bridges. The fighting will not help the consumer that we are trying to reach here.

He kept going on and on insisting that the internet and internet governance were not a part of the agreement, even though they are. Of course, he then effectively admits that part of the goal is to be the key player in the internet

I have been saying in the run up to this conference that this conference is not about governing the Internet. I repeat that the conference did NOT include provisions on the Internet in the treaty text. Annexed to the treaty is a non-binding Resolution which aims at fostering the development and growth of the internet – a task that ITU has contributed significantly to since the beginning of the Internet era, and a task that is central to the ITU’s mandate to connect the world, a world that today still has two thirds of its population without Internet access.

So it's not about the internet, but the internet is central to the ITU's mandate. Of course, this claim is also a lie. The ITU's mandate does not cover the internet, but telecom infrastructure. One of the more nefarious moves by Toure and the ITU in this whole process was to continually blur the lines between telecom infrastructure and the internet, as if they were one and the same.

The word “Internet” was repeated throughout this conference and I believe this is simply a recognition of the current reality – the two worlds of telecommunications and Internet are inextricably linked. I demonstrated that from the very beginning by inviting my friend Fadi Chehadé, the CEO of ICANN, to address our conference at the beginning.

So... again, he's saying two different things. First, he claims that the treaty has nothing to do with the internet, and then insists that telecommunications and the internet are "inextricably linked," which explains why the treaty pretty clearly would impact internet governance -- which is why so many nations are refusing to sign.

Finally, there's this bit of self-aggrandizing bullshit:

History will show that this conference has achieved something extremely important. It has succeeded in bringing unprecedented public attention to the different and important perspectives that govern global communications. There is not one single world view but several, and these views need to be accommodated and engaged.

WCIT has shown us this truth and we have worked hard together to find a way that is acceptable to all. Let WCIT be the beginning of this dialogue. As our two worlds increasingly converge so must we increasingly converse and find a common way.

To be honest, this feels like a speech that was written before the events of the past two weeks, perhaps at that secret meeting to plan its media strategy. To sit there and claim that WCIT was about finding a way "acceptable to all" and one in which the focus was on "finding a common way" is especially laughable, given how the whole thing concluded. History may very well show that something extremely important was achieved, but it may just be that the achievement was demonstrating clearly what a charade the ITU is, and making it clear that it is not the right organization to have anything to do with internet issues. The ITU has been shown, once again, to be an out-of-date, out-of-touch, obsolete organization searching for relevance.

The simple fact is that the world does not need an ITU to "enable" the internet. The internet was built and expanded rapidly through other means, driven by demand and what it enabled people to do. The current system is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it has been working, and shifting to a model driven by international bureaucrats was never in the cards.

The internet does not need the ITU. The ITU needed the internet to remain relevant. The internet, however, does not work that way, and any attempt to move it into such a system of bureaucratic oversight was doomed from the start.

While the US's position on the ITU discussions at the World Conference on International Telecommunications has been pretty clear from the beginning, to put an exclamation point on it, the White House put out a statement saying that it will not support an agreement that tries to expand the ITU's mandate beyond telecom infrastructure and into the world of what happens on that infrastructure. The key paragraph:

But we should not confuse telecommunications infrastructure with the information that traverses it. The global consensus for a free and open Internet is overwhelming. Millions in the United States and around the world have already added their voices to this conversation, and their position is clear: they do not want the WCIT to govern the Internet or legitimize more state control over online content. Our Administration could not agree more – and will not support a treaty that sets that kind of precedent.

This is the key point. Many in the ITU seem to want to blur the distinction between the infrastructure itself and the information that runs over it. They believe that their mandate over "telecommunications" includes the specific "communications" that run over those networks. That's a massive rewriting of history. Their mandate is supposed to be focused on the technological infrastructure, rather than how it is used.

Well, well. In response to all of the earlier criticisms of the ITU, and as part of its "social media strategy" to stave off ongoing criticism, ITU officials had made a few promises leading up to the World Conference on International Communications (WCIT). Among them: (1) changes to International Telecom Regulations (ITRs) would be done via consensus, rather than simple majority vote and (2) that the whole thing was not about internet governance. In one move, the ITU appears to have proved both of those claims to be blatantly false. Late into the night in Dubai, as there was continuing "negotiations" over whether or not any new regulations would cover internet communications, Mohamed Nasser al Ghanim, the ITU summit's chairman, claiming he wanted to get "a feel for the room" took what initially looked like an informal vote on whether or not the ITRs would cover the internet, backing a proposal brought forth by Algeria (and backed by Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Nigeria). After the vote showed a majority agreed to expand the ITRs to cover the internet, al Ghanim announced:

"The majority is with having the resolution in...The majority agreed to adopt the resolution as amended."

This took a lot of people in the room by complete surprise, given that there was repeated insistence that the focus was on consensus, and not a simple majority vote. This clearly went against promises by ITU boss Hamadoun Toure. As Declan McCullagh summarizes in the article linked above:

"In the true tradition of the ITU, we will not vote on any issues," Toure told reporters over the summer. "Voting means winners and losers, and this is not simply acceptable. And we believe that we'll come to an agreement on all of the issues." Toure had said last week that the summit "is not about Internet governance."

As the reality of what al Ghanim did began to set in, some delegates began to protest. Spain, in particular, noted "had we known that it was a vote, we might very well have acted differently." al Ghanim then, ridiculously, tried to pretend the vote was not a vote:

But after Spain objected, al Ghanim responded by saying, "no, it was not a vote," and that he had instead been looking for a "feel of the room."

That, obviously, is completely ridiculous, since he then used "the feel of the room" to say that the resolution was adopted, despite significant concerns about it.

The folks at the Internet Society are, quite reasonably, not at all happy about the situation, and called out not just the sudden and unexpected vote, but the secrecy surrounding it as well:

The Internet Society came to this meeting in the hopes that revisions to the treaty would focus on competition, liberalization, free flow of information and independent regulation - things that have clearly worked in the field of telecommunications. Instead, these concepts seem to have been largely struck from the treaty text. Additionally, and contrary to assurances that this treaty is not about the Internet, the conference appears to have adopted, by majority, a resolution on the Internet. Amendments were apparently made to the text but were not published prior to agreement.

Given that the ITU's moves here more or less confirm many of the fears that have been raised about the whole WCIT process all along, and show that Toure's statements were simply untrue, why is it that anyone believes that the ITU has any credibility on this subject any more? The whole idea that we're now allowing countries with horrid human rights records, and with little to no experience in supporting innovation-enabling technologies, to control direction of these discussions suggests that the entire ITU process is broken beyond belief.

Mike wrote how both Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee were concerned about the outcome of the WCIT talks currently taking place in Dubai. Those aren't the only important voices being raised. Here, for example, is the Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox browser and many other free software projects:

The Web lets us speak out, share, and connect around the things that matter. It creates new opportunities, holds governments to account, breaks through barriers, and makes cats famous. This isn't a coincidence. It's because the Web belongs to all of us: We all get a say in how it's built.

Mozilla has made it our mission to keep the power of the web in people's hands. But all this could change on December 3.

Our governments are going to meet in Dubai to decide whether an old treaty, the International Telecommunication Union, can be expanded to regulate -- to control -- the Internet.

The issue isn't whether our governments, the UN, or even the ITU should play a role in shaping the Web. The problem is that they are trying to do it behind closed doors, in secret, without us.

We believe everyone should have a voice. And this site is to help you be heard in Dubai.

As you can see, the Mozilla Foundation isn't just moaning about WCIT, it's giving people tools to help them engage with it -- despite the best efforts of the ITU to shut out the public. As a blog post about Mozilla's position on WCIT explains:

The resources we are making available today will give you everything you need to learn about the upcoming meeting and why it matters, craft an effective message to get your government to listen, and engage in the global conversation about how decisions about the future of the Web should be made.

Aside from this very practical help, Mozilla's move is important for another reason. In the past, Mozilla has tended to avoid getting involved with issues that are as much political as technical. The big exception was SOPA, when it took part in the January 18 Blackout, with impressive results:

Approximately 30 million people in the US who use the default start page in Firefox received the blacked out page with our call to action

We sent messages out to almost 9 million people via Facebook, Twitter and our Firefox + You newsletter

Our messages were retweeted, shared and liked by over 20,000 people (not counting MC Hammer’s tweet to his 2.4 million followers!)

1.8 million people came to mozilla.org/sopa to learn more and take action on the issue

600,000 went on to visit the Strike Against Censorship page, hosted by the EFF

Ultimately, 360,000 emails were sent by Mozillians to members of Congress, contributing a third of all the emails generated by EFF’s campaign site.

The action that it is taking over WCIT isn't quite so drastic, and so is unlikely to have such a big impact. But the fact that Mozilla has once again cast aside it usual apolitical position to voice its concerns shows how great they are.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Last week, we covered the key fight at the ITU's World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT) and it was all over just one word: would any new international telecom regulations apply to "recognized operating agencies" or just "operating agencies." The difference may sound minor, but it could mean a world of difference. If it's just recognized operating agencies, then the rules are limited to giant national telcos. If it's all "operating agencies" then the rules could apply to, well, just about everyone who runs any kind of internet service. This is a huge difference. As the debate rages on -- and even as the worst proposal from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others is now off the table -- reports started circulating that the US had announced that it was prepared to walk away from WCIT entirely if there was continued movement towards significant changes in internet governance. That was seen as a pretty big threat, because a US rejection of the overall process might doom it from any sort of acceptance. However, in an emailed statement, US ambassador Terry Kramer is claiming that the reports that he's made such a threat are simply untrue (and not particularly helpful):

In the past few days, a small number of media reports have characterized the United States as “threatening” to withdraw from the WCIT negotiations. These speculative reports are inaccurate and unhelpful to the Conference. The United States has made no such threat, and it remains fully committed to achieving a successful conclusion to the WCIT.

To be honest, whether or not it's "helpful," it seems like it might actually be a lot more effective. As some are beginning to point out, almost everything about the ITU is a mess, and it's time that the US stood up and told it to stop messing where it doesn't belong. That article quotes former White House CTO Andrew McLaughlin describing why the ITU has no business regulating the internet.

"What is so bad about the ITU?" Mr. McLaughlin asked in a speech to the New America Foundation in Washington on Nov. 29. "It's just simple things like the nature, structure, culture, values and processes of the ITU. They are all inimical to a free and open Internet, and they are all inconsistent with the nature of the technical infrastructure that now characterizes our communications networks." Voting rules let repressive governments "engage in horse trading that has nothing to do with the technical merits of the decisions under consideration."

Indeed. So why are we even playing the game?

We've been talking a lot about the ITU and its WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) lately, given the importance of various proposals on the future of the internet. While Vint Cerf, often considered the "father of the internet" for his early (and continued!) contributions to the core of the internet, has been quite outspoken for many months about the threats of the ITU towards the internet, now we can add the creator of the World Wide Web to the list as well. Tim Berners-Lee has spoken out against the ITU efforts at WCIT.

Sir Tim is director of a standards body himself - the World Wide Web Consortium. He said that governments can already influence changes but should resist further interference.

"I think it's important that these existing structures continue to be used without any attempt to bypass them," he said.

"These organisations have been around for a number of years and I think it would be a disruptive threat to the stability of the system for people to try to set up alternative organisations to do the standards." Accelerating access

[...] "A lot of concerns I've heard from people have been that, in fact, countries that want to be able to block the internet and give people within their country a 'secure' view of what's out there would use a treaty at the ITU as a mechanism to do that, and force other countries to fall into line with the blockages that they wanted to put in place."

When the fathers of both the internet itself and the World Wide Web are both speaking out against the ITU's efforts to have further control over the future of the internet, isn't it time to step back and ask what benefit the ITU would really provide. To date, none has been shown. Instead, we get vague talk about increasing "fairness" by diverting money from innovators to telcos who haven't innovated with the promise that this will lead to greater investment. Yet, the evidence suggests that this doesn't work, and historically, such transfers and subsidies tend to be pocketed by execs (or governments) rather than invested in infrastructure.

So, here we have two of the most visionary innovators out there -- who created the key platforms we rely on -- highlighting how the ITU process is the exact wrong way to go about things. Combine that with the key argument being made by the ITU being unsupportable based on history. And shouldn't we all be wondering why this big charade is happening in the first place?

As the ITU's World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT) continues in Dubai, a rather important "debate" has slowed any progress to a crawl. The key thing that is being worked on, of course, is new International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs). Most of the debates we've talked about to date have been about what kind of mandate the ITU might have on things outside its direct areas of interest, as indications were that they wanted to expand the ITRs to cover things like the internet, online security and more. But a key fight shows how it goes beyond even just that. The big debate at WCIT right now is over a simple definition that could have massive implications: will the ITRs apply to "recognized operating agencies" or just "operating agencies." Seems simple, right? Not really.

Currently, the ITRs apply to "recognized operating agencies" which tend to be the huge telcos, often either state owned, or formerly state owned (and often still closely aligned with the government). Basically, the big national telcos that everyone is aware of. Those are considered "recognized operating agencies." But, if they take out the word "recognized" then it would cover: "any individual, company, corporation or governmental agency which operates a telecommunication installation."

Have you set up a WiFi network in your home? Well, then, you just might be included in that definition. See how that one little word could make a massive difference in the impact of the new ITRs? Basically, it's a question of whether or not the new rules will apply to the giant national telco companies... or everyone. Countries are taking sides and there's a bit of a stalemate, as noted by .nxt:

Lined up against this measure [of expanding the coverage to everyone] are Canada, CEPT, Citel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Poland and the United States. For it are the Arab States, African States, Brazil, India, Iran, Philippines and RCC.

The conference chair is now pushing for a sort of "compromise" that certainly sounds a lot like siding with those in favor of the massively expanded definition. He's in favor of using "operating agencies" rather than "recognized operating agencies" but then trying to allow for "exclusions" to the definition by pointing to Article 38 of the ITU Constitution. Of course, that doesn't clarify anything. It just makes things more confusing.

Even if Article 38 could be used to "exclude" certain entities -- say, individuals and small businesses -- there would still be a massive problem. Beyond the fact that these rules would apply to many more companies who have no idea what's going on, it's a fundamental shift in thinking about the ITRs. It goes from rules that are limited to just a few giant telcos to ones that are de facto inclusive of just about everyone... leaving only "exceptions." In some ways, it reminds me of the switch in copyright from an opt-in system, to one in which everything was automatically covered with just a few "exceptions." That sort of thing has been a disaster on the copyright front, and would be an equal, if not bigger, disaster for telecom rules.

One thing that's been somewhat universal in the US is pretty much everyone's opposition to the whole ITU WCIT charade going on in Dubai right now. It doesn't matter what political party they belong to or what general views on technology or the internet they hold, pretty much everyone recognizes, even if there are faults with the system today, giving the ITU more control will inevitably make things worse. So it should come as little surprise that Congress has passed another resolution (they did an earlier one in August that more or less said the same thing) unanimously (397-0) telling the ITU to not even think about trying to take over any aspect of internet governance. This resolution first was approved in the Senate and this is just the House concurring.

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, should continue working to implement the position of the United States on Internet governance that clearly articulates the consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet today.

Of course, such a resolution is technically meaningless. It's mostly just a bit of warning, that if the ITU does actually lead to significant changes in internet governance, the US is unlikely to go along with them. In an age where it's rare to see bipartisan support of anything, it's nice to see pretty much everyone recognize the ITU process is dangerous and undesirable.