Internet censorship is at stake in Dubai next week. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO The plot against the Internet

Bureaucrats from around the world will gather behind closed doors in Dubai next week to plot an end to the Internet as we know it — or so Washington would have you believe.

Hill lawmakers warn that the 120-plus U.S. delegation needs to fend off efforts by China, Russia and developing nations to use a United Nations branch organization to censor or tax the Net. Google is orchestrating an online petition drive, and even Grover Norquist is involved.


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The hype is a perfect storm for Matt Drudge: The U.N. will take over the Internet — unless you act fast.

"It was very important for the United States to send a shot across the bow and let countries like China and Russia know that we are onto the games they’re trying to play,” said Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), who led a successful effort to pass a resolution against the interference in August. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) backed a companion measure in the Senate.

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What’s more likely — almost certain to happen, really — is that the World Conference on International Telecommunications will fail to change much of anything about the way the Web works or who cashes in during the two weeks of meetings that start Monday in this Middle Eastern enclave.

But paranoia runs deep in D.C. — almost as deep as the pockets of the tech companies and front groups that don’t want to take any chance that the U.S. government would endorse a treaty that would scramble their business models.

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Bruce Mehlman, a tech lobbyist whose clients include Red Hat, said “vigilance against such incursions” of government regulation “will be the eternal price of liberty.”

Google’s petition drive asks supporters to sign this statement: “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.”

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Even Norquist is in on the act. The Digital Liberty division of his Americans for Tax Reform machine warns that China, Russia and Brazil will stop at nothing in their efforts to clamp down on the Internet.

But as it turns out, the Internet is not about to be dismantled.

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In a consensus-driven process, member states of the International Telecommunications Union, a branch of the U.N., will negotiate a new treaty on international telecommunication regulations. It’s only one vote per country, and, by definition, that will weed out extreme proposals, experts say.

At the end of the day, the U.S. doesn’t have to sign the treaty — it’s all voluntary.

So why all the hysteria about the Dubai confab?

“The concern over WCIT was never that it would be the killing blow but rather the latest, and by no means the last, effort by repressive governments to kill the Internet any way they can,” said Larry Downes, a tech consultant and one of the preeminent rabble-rousers of doom surrounding the treaty negotiations.

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As Danielle Coffey, a government affairs executive at the Telecommunications Industry Association put it: “You can kill a document, but you can’t kill an idea.”

Web and telecom companies and public officials have serious concerns about the political and economic motives of other countries when it comes to the Internet. The Dubai conference presents an opportunity for states to get buy-in to principals that could legitimize censorship, to regulate global Web commerce to boost their bottom line, or to do both.

Some countries have proposed instituting fees similar to ones in place for the traditional wire-based telephone service in which the company placing the call pays a fee to the company at the receiving end. Such a proposal for the digital age would make companies sending a lot of traffic over the Internet — such as Google, which owns YouTube — pay the receiving telecom operator part of their advertising proceeds.

“Powerful economic groups have been involved, and it’s normal because a lot of money is at stake,” said Richard Hill, one of the top staff members at the ITU working on this issue.

Some foreign governments and telecom businesses are seeking to recoup revenue streams that have dried up in the transition from telephone to the Internet, American officials say. And others are looking to finance the build-out of broadband.

But the party line in Washington is that private commercial agreements and market liberalization is the most expedient path to broadband adoption.

Should such proposals succeed, it would undermine the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance that has allowed the Web to flourish, experts say. Presently, a collection of technical bodies govern the Web, deciding issues such as domain name management and technical protocols — and do so in a manner that is mostly devoid of politics.

It has become a pet issue for Capitol Hill lawmakers who only play a symbolic role but are concerned about a U.N. “power grab.”

In addition to congressional resolutions, the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee held a hearing about the “proposed takeover” last May, and members haven’t been shy about speaking up.

“The ability of the Internet to grow is due largely to the flexibility of the multi-stakeholder approach that governs the Internet today,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). Government intervention would not only harm the Web but “endanger the global economy and freedom on a much larger scale," he said.

Conservative commentators have taken up the case. Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz this week wrote a piece with the headline “The U.N.'s Internet Sneak Attack,” arguing that “having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla.”

The ITU flatly dismisses the fears about a U.N. takeover.

“The idea that all 193 ITU member states want the Secretariat to run the Internet is ludicrous and impossible technically, legally and politically,” said Paul Conneally, an ITU spokesman, who cautions that the ITU is driven by what the member countries want. “It’s not something we are equipped to do or mandated to do, and it’s technically impossible.”

There is no mission creep going on here, Conneally adds.

“We have plenty on our plate without looking to take on this mythical task of regulating the Internet,” Conneally said.

Heading the negotiations for America in the United Arab Emirates will be Ambassador Terry Kramer, a seasoned telecommunications executive.

Kramer has a big entourage: The official U.S. delegation has more than 120 members of government, industry and public interest groups.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration Chief Larry Strickling, Ambassador Philip Verveer of the State Department and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are some of the names on that list.

Kramer acknowledges that the ITU itself is not spearheading a campaign to take over the net.

“I don’t think, per se, that the ITU is the problem,” Kramer told reporters Thursday morning. “The big issue is the member nations and the proposals they are putting forward.”

The Dubai forum "is going to be important to prevent steps that would move to the Balkanization of the Internet,” Genachowski said Friday. “On a bipartisan basis in the U.S. and interagency basis in the U.S., we're all committed to that goal.”

Even if it’s not the end of times, tech veterans argue that the threats are real.

“The United States is not alone in the online world, so simply opting out of bad ITU policies won’t make those policies any less pernicious,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of the NetChoice coalition, a group of trade groups and companies such as Facebook and eBay that pushes for choice and commerce on the Internet. “Complicated telecom-style tariff regimes will raise barriers to entry and could limit access in many parts of the world where the Internet currently offers real hope for education and economic development.”

“Nobody should be complacent about the WCIT,” he added, “just because the threats it poses can’t be boiled down into a simple sound bite.”

Jonathan Allen and Brooks Boliek contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:13 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2012.