Is the U.N. now somehow regulating the Internet now that its International Telecommunications Union—after a two week meeting in Dubai that centered largely on whether it should include the Internet in its telephone-centric regulations—has today declared the existence of a new global telecom treaty?
No. First, the United States, Canada, and many European nations declined to sign the new International Telecommunications Regulations. Some 89 countries were in favor and 55 opposed or abstained. If you go to the actual new wording of the regulations–which haven’t been changed since 1988–and search for “Internet” you find it mentioned in fairly bland language within a one-page nonbinding resolution.
The fact that it’s even mentioned at all might be read as the first effort to bring the Internet – currently overseen by private sector and engineering groups— under governmental and U.N. control in the future. But governments don’t need any U.N. language to exert a great deal of control, as they do already by filtering and other means such as those documented here by academic researchers.
Don’t settle for half the story.
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.
