Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Threat Analysis of ITU’s WCIT (Part 1): Historical context


Threat Analysis of ITU’s WCIT (Part 1): Historical Context. Internet Governance Project, May 24, 2012.


From the article: "The relevance of the International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference of International Telecommunications (WCIT) to Internet governance is a hotly debated topic. There is an organized campaign to raise concern about it, with the latest entry being the scheduling of a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives.

What this means is that 20 years after the opening of the Internet to the public, 13 years after the creation of ICANN, 7 years after the conclusion of WSIS, we are still having an intense debate about the relationship between nation-states and the governance of the Internet…. I think that a lot of participants in the current debate would benefit from the historical perspective and theoretically grounded analysis it provides. There is no doubt that some governments, notably Russia, would like to see the ITU replace ICANN and other private sector-based Internet institutions. What most people don’t realize, however, is that certain governments have advocated that position for more than a decade – and they have repeatedly failed to realize those goals.

The history is worth recounting." Read more