Global row as UN body vies for internet control

Updated

A global row has broken out over who should control and profit from the internet, after a draft proposal by a United Nations body was published online.

The little-known UN body, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is pushing to regulate the internet, and has suggested a range of reforms which would potentially stifle free speech and make users pay extra to use things like Skype and email.

Australia and the United States have already signalled their concerns about the plan, which experts say could allow countries to shut down the internet if they felt sensitive information might be made public.

The ITU's proposals so far include creating regulations to reveal where a user is based, taxing richer countries to fund the internet, creating infrastructure in poorer nations, and changing how companies pay each other to move traffic around the internet.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he is not convinced by the proposals.

"We don't believe the existing system needs any significant or radical change," he said.

"We don't believe a case has been made at all."

Australia is not the only country worried.

In late September both the US Senate and Congress passed a resolution condemning the proposals, saying they limited freedom of expression in favour of government control.

Sharan Burrow from the International Trade Union Confederation has written to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urging him to stop the proposals from going ahead.

"Frankly a group of countries you wouldn't trust with democratic freedoms or political freedoms - China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others - [are] proposing internet restrictions," she said.

Electronic age

The ITU last changed its regulations in 1988, when data communications was in its infancy.

But 24 years later the internet has become unavoidable in the electronic age of online shopping and communications.

Currently there is no central internet governing body or regulator.

It works on a so-called "multiple-stakeholder" model, where everyone from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to the owners of undersea cables to companies like Google work out between them the best way to move traffic around and who should pay what.

Dr Paul Twomey is a former chief executive of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is the non-profit organisation which runs the internet's domain name system.

"International ISPs and others will have to really change the way they do their business, which makes the network work less efficiently and less fluidly and openly," he said.

Mr Twomey says so far negotiations have been behind closed doors, "to try to basically get a change in international law that suits what they want to do both internationally, and more importantly domestically, to control how the internet is used."

The ITU is fighting back against critics of its plan.

In an online opinion piece, the ITU's secretary-general, Hamadoun Toure, says only the UN can create an accessible, globally connected world.

Topics: internet-culture, internet-technology, australia, united-states

First posted