The EU Parliament’s recently-adopted resolution on the World Conference on...
The EU Parliament’s recently-adopted resolution on the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is based on a “flawed understanding” of the conference and the ITU, said Richard Hill, secretary of the ITU’s Council Working Group tasked with preparing for WCIT,…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Monday in an ITU blog post. The EU Parliament resolution, adopted Thursday, says the European Commission and council should block changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that would hurt the open nature of the Internet and multistakeholder Internet governance (CD Nov 23 p8). Freedom of expression and a right to communicate are already included in the U.N. Declaration of Rights, the ITU Constitution and Convention and many other U.N. treaties, Hill said. “Since the ITU Constitution prevails over the [ITRs], nothing in the ITRs has the power to result in a reduction of freedom to communicate,” he said. “It is imperative that the Internet is open for all people, in order to continue to leverage the social and economic benefits of access to information and knowledge” (bit.ly/UMoqcl). The ITU also criticized a Google-sponsored campaign that asks its users to sign a petition that opposes changes to the current Internet governance structure (CD Nov 26 p3). The petition’s text says: “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.” The ITU noted Friday that the U.S. WCIT delegation includes Google representatives. “We regret that Google did not take the opportunity to choose to join ITU as a member, which would have enabled it to participate in its own right in the WCIT-12 preparatory process,” the ITU said (http://bit.ly/Ta6eb2).