Is there truth to this? Google firmly disagrees this move by ITU and WCIT. Facebook should disagree as well, and so should YouTube! What is going on really?
There are proposals in WCIT that may be passed and if done could cause catastrophic effects on online business as we know it. Three fourth of 193 participants (country governments) of the current ITU WCIT should agree on the proposals to make them official.
The first edition of the conference was held in Melbourne in 1988, and it made the Internet that we know today—an entity not ruled by anyone anywhere in the world, a place where people have the freedom of speech and innovation. The new conference received a number of proposals for an amendment in the ITR (International Telecommunication Regulations). If some of the new proposals are accepted, does that largely affect the overall freedom of the Internet?
The Internet came to its steady state of innovation when ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was formed in 1998. This is the main regulatory authority of the current Internet. And guess what, ICANN operates under the US government as an independent organization. The ICANN operates with input from over 111 nations worldwide.
Right now, about 2 billion people are using the Internet for information research and business. It has truly revolutionized the way we run the business.
Here come countries like Russia, looking for total domination of the Internet. Vladimir Putin the former prime-minister and current president of Russia mentioned that their goal was “International control over the Internet”. China is Russia’s ally in this.
You probably know about China’s repressive, retrograde tactics to censor the Internet. Examples are many—1989 Tiananmen massacre, sites about Tibet’s Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, a spiritual community banned by the Chinese government, etc. You cannot throw a stone in China without hitting a backward, technophobe politician keen on cracking down on others’ freedom.
Coming back to ITU: a European collaboration (clearly a lobbying type) of biggies in telecom, European Telecommunication Network Operators’ Association (ETNA), which has members like Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, etc., has proposed to ITU that certain extra taxes should be levied on services like YouTube that distribute online video content. In general, any service that takes up high band width (YouTube, MetaCafe, various other Google services, Facebook, etc.)
In other words, if you run a website, you should pay the network operator some fees (depending on the bandwidth requirement of your content) to have your content accessible in certain locations (a fee in one country, a different fee in another, etc.)
There is a huge disadvantage to this proposal. If ETNA’s proposal is accepted in the conference, it would mean YouTube paying money for enabling viewers outside the United States (especially in countries that regulate the Internet) to view their content. The telecommunication companies make the argument that it is extremely expensive to provide data connections to customers who are using services like YouTube that take up bandwidth. Or simply, if you are watching a video on YouTube, the downloaded data may be 50 MB (entirely from YouTube), while a regular web page filled with text has its size in kilobytes. ETNA argues the infrastructure for the next generation data networks supporting high bandwidth is not possible with the current revenues (what a load of bull****!)
The huge disadvantage of this tactic will be experienced by the third world nations, where people will be denied access to a number of services. For instance, imagine an African country like Kenya. YouTube may not find big business opportunities in Kenya, and for that matter it may not pay a huge sum to the operators to stream its content in Kenya. In that case, Kenyan users will not have access to YouTube site. In the same way, if there is a Kenyan website that provides YouTube-like content, they may be required to pay a big amount to have their content available in other countries. If they cannot afford it, their website will be blocked overseas.
In short, ETNA’s proposal is plain garbage; a pure money-making technique that aims at freedom of the Internet. An apt quote is made by Paul Budde, a telecom analyst from Australia:
The telecoms realize that they have lost the battle. They are saying, ‘We can’t beat the Googles and the Facebooks, so let’s try to charge them.’This is extremely disturbing truth. If it becomes law, free Internet is done for!
Major disturbing proposals in ITU include:
- Russia and certain Arab countries want to modify the ‘spam’ definition, which will enable a government body to scan emails (even private conversations).
- The section 4.3 (dealing with malware and spam) of the current ITR draft, if modified, will cause severe content penalties from any of the 193 participants, which view Internet freedom of speech differently. Addition of another section in the ITR means the formation of an inter-governmental body to scrutinize Internet communications.
- Certain modifications may make the ITU’s accepted proposals mandatory for the future implementation of the Internet.
Russia’s proposal to remove the control of Internet from apolitical private organizations (like ICANN), which are based mostly in the US, and bring it into member states (countries) which have equal rights, may sound polite and straightforward. But we doubt the intentions mainly because under ICANN and the US government, we have seen only growth and freedom of the Internet. Countries like Russia and China want total domination over the Internet, and also people will agree that there is a growing hatred of the United States.
Whatever the future, it is more than enough to have our Internet remain as it is now. It seems perfect and open for innovation in its current state. A change may make people wary of it, and may cause distress to hundreds of thousands of companies in the Internet. If you are against freedom on the Internet, do NOT vote and share these sites:
Google, Take Action!
Fight for the Future
Protect Internet Freedom
[Update: Feb 17, 2013]
I am happy to note that the various suggestions made by these rogue-toward-free-internet countries did not get enough votes to be approved.