U.S. Can’t Give Up on ITU Despite WCIT, Say Goodlatte, McDowell

"The Internet has grown and succeeded because it has received a light touch of governance over its many years of growth,” Goodlatte said. “It stems out of government research and university research, but it has primarily grown by individual initiatives, people and companies in the private sector who have great ideas. … It’s important that we keep it that way.” Government has a limited role, “but there’s no question that Internet governance issues are best addressed through multistakeholder mechanisms as they have been successfully done for many years. I'm very skeptical of any attempt by unaccountable government entities to usurp control,” he said. Free speech is at stake, he said: “There’s little doubt that some countries will continue to push for more control of the Internet, so the United States must continue to be vigilant."

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who attended part of WCIT as a delegate, said he was disappointed in the results. “Walking into the treaty negotiation we were told by the secretary general of the ITU that first of all the treaty would not touch the Internet, second of all there would not be a hard vote taken, as historically … these things are achieved by consensus,” McDowell said. “Neither happened. Both of those were 180 degrees wrong."

Proponents of government control of the Internet are “very determined, they're very patient and determined incrementalists and the one-way ratchet of international regulation of the Internet has begun, in my opinion,” McDowell said. Proponents of Internet freedom “got started very late in their advocacy” prior to WCIT, though “I don’t know if the result would have been any different,” otherwise he said. McDowell said the U.S. mustn’t make the same mistake headed into the 2014 ITU Plenipoteniary Conference, which will visit the same issues: “We need to be working on that today."

Panelists agreed it would be shortsighted for the U.S. to give up on the ITU entirely, regardless of what it does long-term on Internet freedom. “There are some extraordinarily important things that the ITU does and important equities that the U.S. as a whole has in ensuring participation in this institution, which is not going away,” said Eric Loeb, international external affairs vice president at AT&T.

"There are many important functions that the ITU carries out, but the trend with the huge step forward to regulate the Internet is really a trend to take the old communications regulations, international settlements and other such things, and put that on the Internet,” McDowell said. “With any international organization that is headed in a direction that we disagree with, I think it’s constructive and positive for America’s national interest to start to rethink how we're going to approach [that organization]. That doesn’t mean you necessarily walk away from it. Obviously, we really can’t."

ITU has important functions despite its assertion of authority over the Internet, McDowell said. “ITU is going to be around for a long time and does carry out many important functions that we like, that are important to the country,” he said. “But when it starts heading in a direction that we were told it wouldn’t … I think it is in our national interest, we all have a duty, and Congress has a duty and the State Department has a duty, to reengineer our approach."

"This comes up often with regard to the United Nations in general,” Goodlatte said. “There are plenty of people in Congress who think the United States should withdraw from the entire United Nations. The fact of the matter is we have to be in the room. Even if we're outvoted, if we try to take our ball and go home we may find that we don’t have a ball anymore."

WCIT was an “extraordinarily important” conference, which received an unprecedented level of attention for an international telecommunications conference, said David Gross of Wiley Rein, a former top State Department telecom official. Gross noted that while 89 countries signed the treaty and 55 including the U.S. didn’t, the vote could have been much more lopsided. “That masks in my view a little bit about where most of the other countries really are on Internet-related issues,” he said. If not for a last-minute push by Iran for a human rights provision the vote would have been all but unanimous with the U.S. left largely on its own in opposition. “The fact for the first time, that I'm aware, of human rights being given to governments in an international treaty resulted in the fact that most of Europe, in fact virtually all of Europe, and other governments decided that they could not sign this,” he said.

"Europe almost voted for a huge expansion of the ITRs [international telecommunications regulations] into this space,” McDowell said in response. “As we go forward into this plenipot … the United States and other countries that are likeminded need to fundamentally rethink the ITU’s role.”

David Redl, counsel to the House Commerce Committee, said the U.S. was uniquely united against imposing rules on the Internet. “It was heartening to see that carried through and see competitors could be above the fray,” said. “Groups within the government that don’t always see eye-to-eye on issues of policy [were] all speaking from the same song sheet.” Redl warned that the U.S. will have to continue to be vigilant. “The Internet governance discussion is here to stay,” he said. “In our discussions with a lot of these other delegations from other member nations, you could hear they have very real concerns about Internet governance and they are not likely to stop talking because the United States doesn’t want to."

The FCC’s 2010 net neutrality rules didn’t help, Redl said. “One of the problems we faced when we were in Dubai, [where the WCIT met] and one of the things I heard from some the other member nations is that the U.S. seemed to be taking a bit of a do-as-I-say, not a do-as-I-do approach,” he said. “We were telling the world not to get the government involved in the Internet and, to be blunt, we had net neutrality thrown back in our faces. … While we may view what we do as consistently ‘white hat’ in this country, it may not be viewed quite the same way by others."

The unanimity of the U.S. delegation was noteworthy, agreed John Branscome, majority counsel for communications issues for the Senate Commerce Committee. “Everyone [was] running in the exact same direction, there was no daylight between the positions, which is very affirming and very hopeful for the future as we go forward,” he said. “This is the start. We have to remain vigilant.”