The United States is refusing to sign a telecom treaty being negotiated at a UN gathering in Dubai because it opens the door to governmental regulation of the Internet, the US delegation chief said Thursday.
“The United States today announced it cannot sign (the treaty regulations) in their current form,” Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications, said in a teleconference from Dubai.
“The US has consistently believed and continues to believe that the (UN treaty) should not extend to Internet governance or content,” Kramer added.
Kramer said a formal vote at the Dubai gathering was not expected until Friday but that the proposal on the floor in Dubai, where representatives from 193 nations have been meeting since December 3, was unlikely to change.
“The version that’s out there now looks like the near-final one,” he said. “It looks unlikely it will materially change.”
Kramer said the treaty under the auspices of the UN’s International Telecommunications Union included some language “seeking to insert governmental control over Internet governance.”
The conclusion suggests a deep divide between the US and its allies, which seek to keep the Internet open and unregulated, and some authoritarian regimes which seek to impose controls over online use and content.
At least 10 other countries also announced in Dubai that they would not sign the treaty or would express reservations about some aspects, Kramer said.
Kramer said the outcome in Dubai is unlikely to have any immediate impact on how people use the Internet because countries are already able to regulate online activities within their borders.
But he said the United States did not want to send a signal that nations would be authorized by a specific treaty to impose new Internet regulations.
“Countries have national sovereignty rights, so they can do what they want” internally, he said.
“What we don’t want is a set of global agreements where countries say this treaty gave us the right to impose conditions.”
US rejects UN telecom treaty over Internet rift
