"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Indian government has formally proposed a government takeover of the Internet at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In a statement sent yesterday, India argued for the creation of a new body to be called the United Nations Committee for Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) which would develop Internet policies, oversee all Internet standards bodies and policy organizations, negotiate Internet-related treaties, and act as an arbitrator in Internet-related disputes.

The CIRP would exist under the United Nations, comprise of 50 Member States, be funded by the United Nations, run by staff from the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) arm, and report directly to the UN General Assembly.

Despite the proposal representing an extraordinary shift from the status quo to a single, purely government-run Internet body, India’s spokesman, Mr Dushyant Singh, argued that the proposal “should not be viewed as an attempt by governments to ‘take over’ or ‘regulate and circumscribe’ the Internet.”

In a nod to the multi-stakeholder model of decision-making that currently defines much of the Internet’s processes - and where all actors from business to academia to the technical community and governments are given equal say in decisions - the Indian proposal foresees the creation of four “Advisory Groups” that would represent civil society, the private sector, inter-governmental and international organizations, and the technical and academic community.

Those groups would provide recommendations to the CIRP. The CIRP would consider them, along input from the existing Internet Governance Forum, at an annual two-week conference at the UN building in Geneva and then present its own subsequent recommendations to the UN General Assembly.

A very similar proposal to that proposed this week was published by a joint group of the Indian, South African and Brazilian governments just prior to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Nairobi last month and caused some controversy when it clearly implied that the proposal came with the support of civil society and the technical community.

Its recommendations, which also foresaw all Internet organizations being pulled under the control of a new government-run United Nations body, were disowned by civil society and they then received a definitive thumbs-down from the broader Internet community during the IGF open session on “critical Internet resources”, during which the Indian government representative stated that the paper had only been put out for discussion.

Despite the very negative response to that paper, however, the Indian government pressed ahead with discussions on the exact same lines at an IBSA Summit on 18 October in Durban, South Africa. And the result of that meeting was the proposal put to the UN General Assembly yesterday.

If a UN Committee for Internet-Related Policies, adequately linked to multi-stakeholder public sphere, were able to set global norms for the Internet in an adequately open and inclusive manner, then neither the US government, corrupted by big-pocketed IP rights-holders, nor repressive governments such as China, would be able to regulate the Internet in isolation from these norms.

Now, some might say that governments have no role in setting policy norms for the Internet, even if it is in consultation with other stakeholders. In the long run, I agree: we should be able to develop a multi-stakeholder transnational governance mechanism that is not grounded in the nation-state. But we are far from that position now, and it is those most opposed to Internet governance reform who make this point most often, when opposing a norm-setting role for the IGF. They insist that the discussions at the IGF should merely inform norm-setting processes that take place at higher levels.

But where are those norms to be set, where no authoritative transnational institution already exists to set them? Unless an expansion of the IGF's mandate can be considered, then clearly some new mechanism is required. This was recognised at WSIS [World Summit on the Information Society] in 2005 when an "enhanced cooperation" mechanism was mandated, and it remains equally true today. The Indian proposal for a UN Committee for Internet-Related Policies is the first serious attempt by any government to propose such a mechanism, and for this it is to be welcomed. Civil society ought not to fall into the trap of rejecting this proposal out of hand, if the alternative is to leave existing more narrow Internet governance hegemonies unchallenged.

some of the most important areas of public policy online are not governed by multi-stakeholder networks at all, not even by any existing intergovernmental organisations, but by individual national governments and big businesses. The most blind to this seem to be representatives of technical community, who for practical purposes maintain a very narrow pre-WGIG [Working Group on Internet Governance] definition of Internet governance that excludes vital issues such as intellectual property enforcement, privacy and data protection, online filtering and censorship and network neutrality.