Will the UN control the Internet?

At the upcoming world conference on international telecommunications in Dubai this December, the agreement on regulating international communications , adopted in 1988 in Melbourne, will be revised. In particular, the issue of control over the Internet will be considered. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is a UN specialized agency that defines standards and recommendations in the field of telecommunications and radio, will probably play a similar role on the Internet.

Now the main regulators of the Internet are organizations such as IETF , ICANN , W3C . All of them are formally independent of governments and intergovernmental organizations, but in practice the US authorities have a great influence on them. Many believe that too much. Among the countries supporting the expansion of ITU powers are Russia, China, Brazil, India, Iran. In the US, they fear that these countries, having the opportunity to influence Internet regulatory policies through UN institutions, will restrict freedom of speech and promote censorship. In particular, a member of the Federal Communications Agency, Robert McDowell, in his article in the Wall Street Journal stated: “The centralized international bureaucratic superstructure contradicts the very architecture of the Internet, as a global network of networks without borders.”

In fact, the independent Internet is now between two fires. On the one hand, the organizations that regulate it today are based in the USA and are subject to the influence of the American authorities, on the other hand, if countries like Iran, China or Saudi Arabia gain the right to vote, the Network is unlikely to become freer.

Source: Mashable .
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