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Editorial: Just what does this U.N. agency want to do to the Internet?

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The International Telecommunication Union, an arm of the United Nations that oversees global communications networks, has alarmed tech advocates by debating whether to extend its authority to the Internet. Although it’s chilling to think of the U.N. asserting jurisdiction over an area that has been open, innovative and largely unregulated, the chances of a hostile takeover of the Internet are slim. The ITU can, however, use its long-standing role in telecommunications standards to help extend access to the Net to the millions of people around the world who cannot log on today.

The Internet has grown into a global communications platform thanks to voluntary standards developed by engineers and academics, not regulators or elected officials. Governments have a say on some issues — for example, the creation of top-level domains, such as .com and the forthcoming .buy — as do Internet service providers, equipment vendors, consumer advocates and many other stakeholders. In recent years, however, some governments have pushed for actual control over how the Internet is governed. Among them are authoritarian regimes and developing nations that want more influence over the content and services offered online.

This faction is trying to persuade the ITU, which is run by U.N. member governments, to assert itself as a policymaking body for the Internet, taking on such issues as cybersecurity, the prices charged for transmitting data and the ability to communicate anonymously online. But as much expertise as the ITU may have on how networks connect and how wireless frequencies are shared, it has no business meddling in how information flows through those networks and frequencies.

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Happily, the ITU can’t simply impose its will on the world. The international agreements it adopts aren’t binding unless individual countries change their laws and private networks change their contracts to align with the ITU’s wishes. That’s not to say the United States shouldn’t push back, hard, against any effort to expand the ITU’s role beyond its usual oversight of telecommunications standards. But the real threat comes from countries that already can and do assert power over the ISPs and websites within their borders, Balkanizing or censoring the Internet to support their regimes.

This week, more than two dozen public interest groups from around the globe offered the ITU a sensible list of do’s and don’ts. For example, they urged the agency to encourage the spread of low-cost approaches to wireless Internet access. The ITU should be working on that and other efforts to expand the reach of the Internet, not the reach of its own authority.

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