Pledge to support a free and open Internet

[menotu]

Vint Cerf, Google's Internet freedom guru and considered by some to be a "father of the Internet," writes: "Some 42 countries filter and censor content out of the 72 studied by the Open Net Initiative. This doesn't even count serial offenders such as North Korea and Cuba...Some of these governments are trying to use a closed-door meeting of The International Telecommunication Union that opens on December 3 in Dubai to further their repressive agendas."

“A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.”

Some of these governments are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is bringing together regulators from around the world to re-negotiate a decades-old communications treaty.

Proposed changes to the treaty could increase censorship and threaten innovation.

Some proposals could permit governments to censor legitimate speech — or even allow them to cut off Internet access.

Other proposals would require services like YouTube, Facebook, and Skype to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders. This could limit access to information — particularly in emerging markets.

http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.freeandopenweb.com/#loc=3/8.0000/22.0000

https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/what-you-can-do/

https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/whats-at-stake/

http://opennet.net/blog/2012/04/global-internet-filtering-2012-glance

[ebvt]

Here's Cringely's take on it:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/the-end-of-the-internet-we-know-it-208169?page=0,1&source=IFWNLE_nlt_notes_2012-12-03

ebvt

[agmg]

And another one I have posted some days ago: Protect Global Internet Freedom

[menotu]

By Matt Smith and Joseph Menn, Reuters, 5 Dec 2012

US fails to win early limit on net regulation at global summit. Efforts to impose tighter controls over internet users fail to win overseas backing.

A US and Canadian proposal to protect the internet from new international regulation has failed to win prompt backing from other countries.

The idea, also supported by Europe, would limit the International Telecommunication Union's rules to telecom operators and not internet-based companies such as Google and Facebook.

That could reduce the prospective impact of efforts by other countries including Russia and some in the Middle East and Africa to obtain more powers to govern the internet through the ITU, an arm of the United Nations.

Those efforts, slated for discussion next week, could make net anonymity - or the ability to remain anonymous online - more difficult to maintain and could bolster censorship, critics say

"We want to make sure (the rewritten ITU treaty) stays focused squarely on the telecom sector," said US Ambassador Terry Kramer. "We thought we should deal with that up-front."

Kramer had been hoping that a committee comprising representatives from six regional bodies would give quick approval to the American request on Tuesday. But that failed to happen.

An ITU spokesman said late yesterday that talks were continuing and the issue would only return to the main policy-making body on Friday.

About 150 nations are gathered in Dubai to renegotiate the ITU rules, which were last updated in 1988, before the internet and mobile phones transformed communications.

http://bit.ly/UFnpVe

[Yankee]

Some of these governments are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet.

A year back there was a proposal to put free wifi on ALL the telephone poles.
To me now that's freedom.   But, international business shouldn't mean
freedom at the subordination of common sense and responsibility.    The
positives and negatives are there whether they've been personally seen or
not.   Unregulated internet...I don't know if I can fathom that today.

.02

FF