Vint Cerf, a revered pioneer of the Internet, has been spending the last few months campaigning against this week's ITU conference in the United Arab Emirates, known as WCIT-12, at which it will consider a range of so-called "International Telecommunication Regulations" for adoption or amendment. Member countries will be required to implement them in national law if the body votes to approve the proposals from its 193 member countries.
In an editorial penned for CNN, Cerf says the process is opaque, the intentions dubious, and the likely outcomes inimical to the freedom that is the hallmark of the information society.
In a similar piece for the New York Times, he writes: "Like almost every major infrastructure, the Internet can be abused and its users harmed. We must, however, take great care that the cure for these ills does not do more harm than good. The benefits of the open and accessible Internet are nearly incalculable and their loss would wreak significant social and economic damage."
Hamadoun Tour'e is the secretary-general of the ITU. Like many self-important bureaucrats, he styles himself "Dr", but unlike a medical doctor, there's no earthly reason why a random degree from a Soviet "technical university", said to be equivalent to a PhD, should merit such a formal appellation. One New York tabloid similarly disdains such artificial marks of respect, and refers to him - admittedly sounding a trifle overwrought - as "a Soviet-trained apparatchik from Cold War days", and to his UN organisation as "thugs".
But Soviet-trained or otherwise, Tour'e says there's nothing to worry about. He says the ITU process is entirely open, although the treaty negotiation is formally confidential, and individual country proposals have to be leaked to... the Internet.
If the ITU needs any better evidence of how remote it is from the true concerns of the people, consider that the Guardian reports that its requests for public comments have garnered a princely 29 submissions, worldwide. The WCIT-12 site devoted to these submissions returned error messages, last we checked.
By contrast, a Web site dedicated to oppose WCIT-12 rules and edicts has amassed 36 895 signatures, representing 1 481 organisations from 178 countries.
The ITU proposes to impose new rules on the Internet.
Tour'e's clever but rhetorical answer to this problem is that only a third of the people on the planet have access to the Internet, so their views on Internet freedom don't really count. Which is a bit like saying that because books aren't universally read, governments ought to regulate, censor and tax books, or because newspapers aren't sold to all seven billion people on the planet, governments should regulate the press. Or because only 36 895 people register active opposition to a policy, the other 6 999 963 105 people on earth can be presumed to favour it. In rebuttal, we'd observe that such logic shows 6 999 999 971 people are opposed to the WCIT-12 process.
Ironically, the unregulated nature of the Internet is what spread the phenomenon from a handful of academic and government users to more than two billion people worldwide in only 20-odd years. Cerf writes: "Within a few years, the Net is predicted to be serving four billion users -- more than half of humanity!"
The Internet, less burdened by state-owned monopolies, government regulations and international treaties than any network before it - notably the telephone and television networks that the ITU regulates - has attracted vast amounts of private investment. Its global standards and protocols have been set almost entirely by means of voluntary agreement and private co-operation. Its most conspicuous successes, and the failures necessary to improve quality and lower prices, were born of free market competition.
In South Africa, likewise, mobile communication raced ahead of fixed-line telephony penetration in only a few years, in most part because government policy mandarins thought cellphones to be merely a toy for the wealthy few, and that they could safely be left to private profiteers. By contrast, the government's grand plan to bring traditional telephony to the masses has, perversely, resulted in a decline in the number of fixed lines in the country.
Despite all this private progress and public failure, Tour'e believes it is his job to build all this infrastructure. "My job is to set the infrastructure right when the traffic comes," he told the Dubai-based newspaper Gulf News. That'll be news to the companies and standards organisations that actually built that infrastructure.
Now, under the pretence that on one hand its astonishing progress isn't sufficiently broad or inclusive, and on the other that it is too inclusive because wicked libellers, pornographers and anarchists are able to use the Internet without asking their government overlords for permission, the ITU proposes to impose new rules on the Internet.
Worryingly, ITU country delegations include bureaucrats from countries that actively oppose freedom, both in broad political terms and in terms of censoring speech. According to Cerf, almost 60% of countries surveyed by the Open Net Initiative censor or filter content online, and one in five countries in which his employer, Google, operates, have at one time or another blocked access to its services.
Regulations imposed by such a grouping cannot possibly increase freedom, but must necessarily limit speech. They cannot possibly make Internet communication cheaper, but can only raise its cost - especially if cross-border tolls are levied on some services, as seems likely.
An editorial by Andrew Couts warns it isn't the United States that should be worried, but the rest of the world. The Centre for Democracy and Technology reports the adoption of traffic sniffing standards that truly should worry not only the few cyber criminals online, but also the vast majority of Internet users who have legitimate reasons for keeping their communications confidential, and especially if they live in countries less free than the democratic and prosperous West.
The ITU is a useful body inasmuch as it promulgates global standards for technical interoperability. It is useful inasmuch as it serves as a forum to negotiate interconnection agreements between rival companies and different countries. It is useful inasmuch as it oversees programmes to promote access to communities that remain under-served, because of geographical, political, cultural or economic constraints.
And yes, there are a host of such issues that need discussion, and can use more equitable resolution than the present Internet governance model offers.
However, the ITU is not useful when it starts regulating the Internet as if it were a telephone network that requires cross-border tolls, as if governments should have the capacity to cut off Internet users for real or imagined offences, or as if equipment should be capable of decrypting private communication. That does not "set the infrastructure right". That restricts infrastructure to people who enjoy the freedom to pursue their political and economic ambitions without having to fear the jackboot of the state. It will be a drag on both economic and political progress, rather than a boost.
No matter the stated intentions of the supranational bureaucrats, Internet users would be wise to be deeply suspicious of them. Seldom in human history has there been a better example than the Internet of Henry David Thoreau's well-known adage: "Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way."
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