CENSORSHIP FEARS: US Tries to Stop UN From Controlling the Internet
A U.N. conference that kicked off today in Dubai has sparked fear of Internet censorship in the U.S. -- something U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer said he is doing everything in his power to prevent.
Nothing regarding the Internet do we want subject to U.N. review and regulation, Kramer told FoxNews.com.
Monday marked the first day of an 11-day conference. Kramer, who leads the U.S. delegation at the conference, said that the first day had gone well and so far delegates are still in the early stage, talking about what should be reviewed when. No specific regulations have been debated yet.
- Terry Kramer, U.S. chief envoy to the ITU
But regulations likely to come up soon are far reaching with signification ramifications, ranging from changes to the way web addresses like ".com" are distributed to charging websites for sending information (for example, a company like Google or Amazon could be required to pay cable companies a charge every time someone used their site.)
[Proposals] on content review and on pricing the transfer of content, which would essentially tax the Internet we are actively opposing those, Kramer said.
While almost all of the U.N. meeting is secret, many documents have leaked, including one proposal from the Russian delegation declaring "the sovereign right to regulate the national Internet segment."
It echoes a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin last year calling for global control over such [Internet] exchange. This is certainly a priority on the international agenda.
Kramer said the Russian proposal worried him.
Candidly, we were very concerned with the Russian proposal. I think it was the most stark in nature of all the proposals that have been put out, because it basically is proposing Internet governance managed either by the ITU or the national government. There are traffic routing proposals in there that would open the door to potential censorship, which obviously we dont agree with, Kramer said.
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CENSORSHIP FEARS: US Tries to Stop UN From Controlling the Internet