There has been a lot of heated rhetoric about the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which is wrapping up its meeting in Dubai this week. Last week, the US Congress unanimously declared its opposition to giving the UN body increased control over the Internet. Congress is prone to making melodramatic gestures, but even more sober-minded entities such as Google and Mozilla seem to agree that WCIT is a danger to the open Internet.

That's puzzling, because the ITU as an organization doesn't have any direct regulatory powers. It can't fine anyone or put them in jail for defying its rules. Moreover, the proposals under discussion at Dubai, including last week's draft by a coalition of authoritarian regimes and a Tuesday proposal by the ITU's chairman, don't give the Geneva-based ITU Secretariat new powers. They merely declare that "member states" shall have the power to regulate the Internet to promote security, fight spam, and so forth.

But the "member states" are sovereign nations. They've been regulating the Internet for years without the ITU's blessing and are going to continue doing so regardless of what is decided at the conclusion of this week's conference.

So why is there so much controversy over a treaty that will largely say governments have powers they're already wielding? A big reason is that in the Internet's consensus-based governance model, precedents and symbolism matter. The ITU can't force the world's governments to sign on to, or abide by, any treaty that's negotiated in Dubai this week. But if the world signs on to a treaty that purports to govern the Internet, it will help establish a precedent that the ITU is the appropriate forum for setting Internet standards.

For instance, right now, rates for carrying data are worked out through private negotiations in which both "ends" of the network bear a share of the cost. The nature of those negotiations could change if ITU were to endorse a "sender pays" rule, which we have argued is a bad idea.

The Internet already has standard-setting organizations that are inclusive and transparent, inviting participation from private companies, non-profits, and others with a stake in the Internet's future. The Internet's existing consensus-based standards-setting process works well.

In contrast, the ITU's deliberations are largely carried out behind closed doors, with only governments and major telecommunications incumbents invited to participate. There's no danger of a "UN takeover" of the Internet in the short term. But in the long run the ITU could emerge as a rival to the Internet's established standard-setting institutions. And that could harm the open Internet by politicizing the development of future Internet standards.

Rule by consensus

No single institution controls the network of networks we call the Internet. Most important decisions are made by individual network owners who negotiate the terms of interconnection between themselves. But certain organizations play a key role in setting standards and conventions that make the Internet run smoothly.

Probably the most important is the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit organization that runs the domain name system. It's important for the world's computers to have a unified domain name system, but ICANN's authority over that system is purely a matter of consensus. The organization can't compel anyone to pay attention to the root servers it controls. Yet the world does, in fact, pay attention to those servers.

Some nations resent ICANN's dominance. They perceive it, with some justification, as a US-centric institution. And the same point applies to other institutions, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force that sets key Internet standards. While these organizations are formally open to the world, their strong US ties raise suspicions in some world capitals that the organizations are biased in favor of Western interests.

Some governments also resent the implicit ideology of these organizations. Many Western engineers make technical decisions with an eye toward making surveillance and censorship difficult. That's a cause for dissatisfaction for authoritarian nations like China and Russia.

For all these reasons, US rivals would like to promote the emergence of alternative governance institutions. And they see the ITU, a government-dominated organization with a 150-year history of setting telecommunications standards, as the ideal candidate. Over time, they hope to build up the ITU as a rival to ICANN and the IETF—an alternative platform from which they can promote Internet standards they see as more congenial to their interests.

That's probably why the opening gambit of the United States was to propose that key aspects of Internet governance be excluded from the ITU negotiations. The US likes the status quo, and so they hoped to establish the precedent that the ITU isn't the right place to discuss Internet governance issues, reinforcing the legitimacy of the organizations who currently perform those functions.

The heated rhetoric of the ITU's critics is another key part of this strategy. It's hyperbole to warn of an imminent UN takeover of the Internet. But that hyperbole serves an important purpose: it ensures that any Internet-related provisions will emerge from the negotiating process tarnished by controversy.

What ultimately matters about this week's negotiations is less the specific proposals—none of which are going to significantly change how the Internet works—but how the process affects public perception of the ITU as an institution. If the treaty includes provisions related to the Internet, Russia, China, and other US rivals will portray it as a natural extension of the ITU's existing jurisdiction over telecommunications. Western powers have pushed for a treaty that doesn't focus on the Internet. And if they fail to exclude the Internet from whatever deal the ITU approves, then they'll likely portray the treaty as an illegitimate power grab.

That drama continued to play out late on Wednesday night as the ITU chairman took the "temperature" of the assembled delegates on an Internet-related resolution. A majority of nations voted for the resolution, but the US and its allies objected that they had been surprised by the informal vote. They also accused the chairman of reneging on his promise to proceed on the basis of consensus rather than majority rule.

The US hopes to preserve the "home court advantage" provided by the existing, open Internet governance institutions by preventing the emergence of the ITU as a rival standards-setting institution. Advocates of a free and open Internet and opponents of authoritarianism should hope that they succeed.