Bevil Wood­ing

The re­cent­ly held World Con­fer­ence on In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions (WC­IT) in Dubai end­ed in dra­ma, dis­cord and for many, dis­ap­point­ment. Mem­ber coun­tries of the UN's In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (ITU) could not reach con­sen­sus on the fi­nal word­ing for the re­vised In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tions (ITRs). The de­bate over whether the ITU should have a pol­i­cy defin­ing role on In­ter­net mat­ters re­mains un­re­solved. In the af­ter­math of WC­IT the pos­si­bil­i­ty of glob­al con­sen­sus on the fu­ture of In­ter­net gov­er­nance seems even more re­mote.

The ob­jec­tive of WC­IT was to mod­ernise a se­ries of reg­u­la­tions draft­ed in the pre-in­ter­net era of 1988. At the meet­ing, up­dates to glob­al tele­pho­ny rules proved rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward. By con­trast, at­tempts by some na­tions to put the in­ter­net at the cen­tre of the WC­IT agen­da proved high­ly con­tentious.

The Sto­ry of WC­IT-12: Map show­ing of­fi­cial WC­IT sig­na­to­ry and non-sig­na­to­ry states. Sig­na­to­ries are in black. Non-sig­na­to­ries are in red. Source: http://www.ipv.sx/wc­it/.

At it is con­clu­sion, a to­tal of 89 coun­tries en­dorsed the new glob­al treaty on tele­com reg­u­la­tions, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Chi­na, Rus­sia, and most African and Latin Amer­i­can na­tions. The new treaty will come in­to ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2015. But 55 coun­tries did not sign, in­clud­ing Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Egypt, France, Ger­many, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

The num­ber of key states that did not sign is a clear in­di­ca­tion of the grow­ing po­lar­iza­tion over the fu­ture of the In­ter­net. The map paint­ed by sign­ing coun­tries and non-sign­ing coun­tries re­flects the new di­vide in In­ter­net pol­i­tics. The di­vide is not of de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, nor is it of the con­nect­ed and the dis­con­nect­ed. The new di­vide is be­tween coun­tries that val­ue an open In­ter­net, gov­erned un­der a mul­ti-stake­hold­er mod­el that has al­lowed the In­ter­net to flour­ish, ver­sus coun­tries that want the ben­e­fits of the In­ter­net but with tighter con­trols and in­creased gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty over its gov­er­nance.

The un­re­solved con­tentions over mo­tive and in­tent of states, post-WC­IT, to­geth­er with ques­tion­able pro­ce­dures em­ployed to ar­rive at the re­vised treaty, have cre­at­ed an at­mos­phere of dis­trust. It has al­so served to fur­ther widen the gulf be­tween those who want to main­tain the cur­rent mul­ti-stake­hold­er ap­proach for In­ter­net Gov­er­nance and those ad­vo­cat­ing for greater UN in­volve­ment and state con­trol.

The open camp has tak­en a prin­ci­pled stance to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of the mul­ti-stake­hold­er gov­er­nance mod­el, dri­ven by the In­ter­net user com­mu­ni­ty. The closed camp is be­ing de­fined by states in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about the un­prece­dent­ed ca­pac­i­ty the In­ter­net has to em­pow­er cit­i­zens, am­pli­fy dis­sent­ing views and cir­cum­vent gov­ern­ment con­trol over how and what in­for­ma­tion is re­leased.

There are re­al eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions at stake. In the Group of 20 coun­tries alone, a Boston Con­sult­ing Group study es­ti­mat­ed that the in­ter­net econ­o­my will be worth $4.2 tril­lion by 2016. The an­nu­al growth rate in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries is pegged some­where be­tween 8 to 18 per cent.

There are sig­nif­i­cant so­cial as well as eco­nom­ic gains for those coun­tries that get In­ter­net gov­er­nance right. The In­ter­net now reach­es over 2 bil­lion per­sons and it is es­ti­mat­ed that over half a mil­lion new users con­nect to the net­work each day. Pre­serv­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of the In­ter­net's phe­nom­e­nal growth is im­por­tant. But so too is pre­serv­ing in­tegri­ty of it mas­sive, pos­i­tive im­pact on so­ci­ety. The In­ter­net has ush­ered in an era of in un­prece­dent­ed in­no­va­tion, so­cial em­pow­er­ment and glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The loose, bot­tom-up, in­clu­sive mod­els dri­ving the In­ter­net's tech­ni­cal stan­dards, re­source man­age­ment, in­ter­con­nec­tions, and con­tent pol­i­cy have play a ma­jor role in its glob­al growth. It would be gross­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble to now un­der­mine the ten­ants that fa­cil­i­tat­ed the In­ter­net's re­mark­able suc­cess.

Some coun­tries may have un­wit­ting­ly found them­selves on the wrong size of the di­vide. In sign­ing the re­vised ITRs, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go, for ex­am­ple, cast their lots with Rus­sia, Chi­na, Iran and a host of oth­er regimes with a his­to­ry of ex­er­cis­ing con­trol over cit­i­zens' ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion; re­strict­ing free-mar­ket eco­nom­ics; dis­re­gard­ing cit­i­zens pri­va­cy rights and en­act­ing re­pres­sive laws un­der the guise of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty or spam pre­ven­tion. What should In­ter­net stake­hold­ers in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries that have signed make of their gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tions? What mes­sage does this send stake­hold­ers in these coun­tries who val­ue open, un­fil­tered, In­ter­net ac­cess?

The In­ter­net may have sur­vived the WC­IT bat­tle for greater state con­trol over its gov­er­nance. How­ev­er, the meet­ing's out­come leaves many unan­swered ques­tions about the re­al vic­tors and vic­tims in the on­go­ing war for fu­ture of In­ter­net gov­er­nance.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion NGO.