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发帖数: 29846 | 1 U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet
Daniel Halper
November 26, 2012 2:48 PM
Next week the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union will
meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives
from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to
news reports.
"Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months
have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional
resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have
focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet.
Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works,
threatening its smooth and open operations," reports the Wall Street Journal.
"Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a
Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that
interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering
messages and other digital content among more than two billion people
around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day. ...
"Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages. One idea is
to apply the ITU's long-distance telephone rules to the Internet by creating
a 'sender-party-pays' rule. International phone calls include a fee from
the originating country to the local phone company at the receiving end.
Under a sender-pays approach, U.S.-based websites would pay a local network
for each visitor from overseas, effectively taxing firms such as Google and
Facebook. The idea is technically impractical because unlike phone networks,
the Internet doesn't recognize national borders. But authoritarians are
pushing the tax, hoping their citizens will be cut off from U.S. websites
that decide foreign visitors are too expensive to serve."
Even Google has already come out against the ITU.
"The ITU is the wrong place to make decisions about the future of the
Internet," says Google. "Only governments have a voice at the ITU. This
includes governments that do not support a free and open Internet. Engineers
, companies, and people that build and use the web have no vote."
"The ITU is also secretive. The treaty conference and proposals are
confidential," adds Google. | c*******7
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