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

Sat Feb 25 16:55:31 PST 2012

Looking forward to it, Veni!

On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Veni Markovski <veni at veni.com> wrote:

> Actually it is not nice.
> Truth is the FCC commissioner didn't really cover ALL items on the agenda
> of the ITU, just some. The scariest ones were not even mentioned. More  -
> later.
>
>
> On Saturday, February 25, 2012, Joly MacFie wrote:
>
>> [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.
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>>  http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>>
>
>
> --
> Best,
> Veni
>
> == Sent from my iPhone, so sorry for any spelling mistakes, caused by the
> screen keyboard.
>

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
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