[x-pubpol] Joel Hruska response to McDowell ITU OpEd.

[Joly MacFie]

[Nicely contrarian viewpoint :) j ]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/119481-fcc-fires-fud-at-the-idea-of-a-un-controlled-internet

FCC fires FUD at the idea of a UN-controlled internet

   - By Joel Hruska <http://www.extremetech.com/author/jhruska> on February
   23, 2012


In a recent editorial at The Wall Street Journal, FCC Commissioner Robert
McDowell blasted the upcoming ITU World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT-12). According to McDowell, Russia, China, and
their allies at the ITU want to monitor all internet communications, allow
foreign companies to charge for international internet traffic “perhaps
even on a per-click basis,” impose economic regulations, take over ICANN
(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), and conquer the
Internet Engineering Task Force.

McDowell reaches a bombastic
crescendo<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577229074023195322.html>by
claiming that the treaty will more-or-less destroy everything, everywhere,
writing: “Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom
everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt
as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a
global regulatory body.”

The FCC Commissioner’s threat assessment is completely out-of-step with the
US government’s opinion, as shown in a leaked
memo<http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2012/1/30/4988735.html>
from
January 23, 2012. The memo notes that while there was “great and widespread
concern” a year ago that WCIT-12 would be a battle over the role the ITU
should play in internet governance, the US spent 12 months working to limit
the scope and nature of the issues that will be considered at the treaty
negotiations. As a result, “There are no pending proposals to invest the
ITU with ICANN-like Internet governance authority. Neither cybersecurity
nor Internet governance predominate discussion in any region.”

Among the charges leveled at the ITU are claims that the treaty could
“Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates,
terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements
known as ‘peering.’” As we’ve said, there’s literally no such agreement
under consideration — but the inclusion of this point sheds light on why
certain parties are so interested in keeping this issue in the news.

[image: Internet
Map]<http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/internet-map.jpg>

Under the current unregulated peering system, foreign ISPs pay US ISPs a
fee to carry internet traffic, which means US companies make a tidy sum of
cash off foreign access. If internet servers were truly decentralized — the
“Balkanization” McDowell fears — US ISPs would end up paying considerably
more money to their foreign counterparts.

Those bright white lines aren’t just revenue sources, they’re control
linkages. If you work for the MPAA/RIAA or back laws like SOPA and
PIPA<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114411-sopa-blackouts-begin-as-mpaa-calls-foul>,
those links are absolutely vital. Any attempt to create an international
system of internet governance would weaken the RIAA and MPAA’s efforts to
implement SOPA-style censorship. Both bills were aimed at restricting and
controlling *foreign* internet traffic, which means both intrinsically
assumed that such traffic would be flowing through the United States.

An equally distributed intra-planetary internet would still take
geolocation into account for routing and access purposes, but would
effectively eliminate the concept of “foreign” websites. SOPA and PIPA were
meant to be palatable to the general US population precisely because they
exploited an us/them mentality and claimed to be protecting America. If
internet control were to shift towards nations that favored fewer copyright
restrictions, internet access as a human right, and limited punishment for
piracy, it would be a serious threat to content distributors.

[image: Stop SOPA]<http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/stop-sopa.jpg>McDowell’s
claims are factually inaccurate and hyperbolic. They paint a false
dichotomy between the idea that the internet today is a free-wheeling,
uncontrolled frontier, while the alternative is a fascist state. The
internet, as it exists today, is highly regulated. Some of that regulation
was inherited or expanded from the old laws governing telephone
access<http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/107527-att-slams-fccs-t-mobile-merger-investigation-as-lacking-all-credibility>
and
line-sharing, some of it is applied via laws like the DMCA. ICANN is not a
direct arm of the US government, but it’s a far cry from a private
corporation. The publicized debates around net neutrality and the FCC last
year are further evidence that the idea of an unregulated internet is a
fallacy.

At the other end of the equation, no one advocates handing over complete
control of the internet to the likes of Russia, China, Myanmar, and Iran.
There’s no reason not to open internet governance slowly and gradually,
unless you represent a faction who views such a process as an unacceptable
loss of control. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, McDowell’s
editorial only clouds the debate with demagoguery. It’s a blatant attempt
to fire people up emotionally with virtually no grounding in objective
fact. The internet is going nowhere, regardless of what happens at the
upcoming meeting. Ultimately, however, this isn’t a debate about whether
the internet is regulated, but an argument over who should control the
regulatory process. If US lawmakers continue pushing bills like SOPA and
PIPA, they may find an increasing number of US citizens who think the UN is
a more attractive alternative — a concept editorials like this are meant to
thwart.

-- 
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