The Heroes and Villains at This Week’s UN Internet Conference

The entire Internet is gearing up for a showdown this week as the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) gathers for a 12-day conference in Dubai. The event is organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a 147-year-old organization originally set up to regulate telegraphs and now part of the United Nations, and expects to host over 2,000 delegates from the 193 member states. On the top of the agenda is the consideration of several updates to an international communications treaty that stands to regulate access to the Internet, and that hasn’t been updated since 1988.

Right now, the treaty says almost nothing about the Internet, which was still a baby when it was drafted. And that’s exactly how most Western powers want to keep it. After all, the Internet’s done a pretty good job of becoming awesome in the 25-odd years that the ITU treaty’s been in place. Not everybody feels that way though, namely the countries who haven’t built up multi-billion industries around the Internet and a few that hardly have access at all. Most controversial of the proposals due to be considered at the conference is a “sender pays” measure that would effectively charge the content creators to send their data to the user. In other words, it would make the Internet operate a bit like long-distance phone calls. Again, this is one of many new ideas for regulating the Internet.

This in mind, the cast of characters at WCIT conference can be split into two groups: heroes and villains. Let it be known that this isn’t just our read on the various proposals and opinions. The unpopular proposals to the ITU treaty are very unpopular, not just in the United States but pretty much any country that’s not backing them, and longtime Internet heroes like Vint Cerf are standing up very publicly to protest them. Lucky for the villains with the unpopular ideas, though, the ITU only requires a majority vote to pass any of the measures, though the head of the organization has insinuated that it will take more than that on this historic occassion. 

Before blood is shed, though, let’s get you familiar with said heroes and villains. Feel free to switch sides anytime you want. Just be aware that Reddit might attack and destroy you if you happen to switch to the anti-free Internet side of things (a.k.a. the villains’ side).

Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré – Meet Hamadoun Touré (@ITUSecGen), the head of the ITU. A former satellite engineer from Mali with a Russian education, this guy is essentially the unwitting Magneto of the conference. He could use his power for good — and maybe he thinks he’s trying to — but inevitably, Touré’s tacit approval of new regulations on the Internet are being read as an assault on humanity. Touré is in favor of “light-touch regulation” that all of the world’s nations can agree on. “Because you own the roads, you don’t own the cars and especially not the goods they are transporting. But when you buy a car you don’t buy the road,” Touré explained to Reuters. “You need to know the number of cars and their size and weight so you can build the bridges and set the right number of lanes. You need light-touch regulation to set down a few traffic lights.” Sounds nice, Hamadoun. Good luck talking the U.S. delegation into it.

Terry Kramer, head of the US team

U.S. Delegation – If I can stretch the X-Men metaphor a bit further, this would be Charles Xavier’s contingent at the conference. Led by the seldom seen but all powerful Vint Cerf — more on him in a second — the 100 U.S. delegates are in Dubai representing the interests of a very large and very profitable Internet industry that’s more or less headquarters within America’s borders. New regulations, especially the so-called “sender pays” initiative, could serve as a major threat to the dominance of American companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter. The Yanks don’t seem too worried about resistance, either, probably because they’re so powerful and influential. “We’re a strong voice, given a lot of the heritage,” said U.S. delegation chief Terry Kramer. “A lot of European markets are very similar, and a lot of Asian counties are supportive, except China.”

Sun Yafang, chairwoman of the board of China’s Huawei Technologies (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

China and Russia – These are the bad guys. With support from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, these two countries are hellbent on prying control of the Internet from America’s hands. The “sender pays” model would help their cause, as would their proposed “International Code of Conduct for Information Security.” This measure would establish “international norms and rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information and cyberspace.” While it sounds okay in principle, in practice, it would leave room for national governments to challenge and possibly censor their citizens. Which is something both China and Russia already do.

Vint Cerf – This guy is just pissed. And as one of the founding fathers of the Internet as we know it, he has a right to be. Cerf was at the table when the early infrastructure of the Internet was being put into place and, as he wrote in a spirited New York Times op-ed, was careful to “keep the Internet open and free for the next generations.” The ITU puts that principle in jeopardy if it hands control of the Internet over to the United Nations. “The Net prospered precisely because governments — for the most part — allowed the Internet to grow organically, Cerf wrote. “In contrast, the I.T.U. creates significant barriers to civil society participation.” He was a little bit more explicit in an interview with Reuters: “These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn’t figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn’t travelled up their long necks,” Cerf told the newswire service last week.

The Arab Nations – In August, 17 Arab states — including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates but not, curiously enough, Iran — submitted a draft proposal for the week’s conference that would basically give government “identity information” of every Internet user. At present, the Internet is fairly anonymous, with only an easily modified IP address to identify specific users. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the governments in the region now want to be able to identify each and every dissident person online. This is exactly why the rest of the world wants to keep governments out of the Internet regulating business.

Image via Flickr and ITU