US Calls On Brazil Internet Meeting To Stick To Principles

The United States, home to the organisation that oversees technical aspects of the internet domain name system, has advice for an upcoming meeting in Brazil aimed at revisiting the global internet governance: consider principles developed in past meetings, and don’t retread old sore spots. In other words, don’t disrupt the status quo.

“There is precedent for this effort, as other conferences, organizations, nations, and individuals have previously compiled high level principles on Internet governance,” the State Department Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. “Accordingly, we submit that a good starting point for discussions would be the consideration of principles that are common among these existing efforts and have already garnered widespread or universal support.”

The principles they highlighted from past efforts were:

1. “Commitment to the multistakeholder approach, with processes rooted in democratic values, involving the participation of all interested stakeholders, and occurring in a transparent manner.
2. Protection of human rights, which apply online just as they do offline.
3. Promotion of universal and non-discriminatory access to the Internet.
4. Promotion of the stability, security, interoperability, and functionality of the network.
5. Promotion of standard setting, regulatory, and legal environments that support innovation and avoid unnecessary duplication.”

They warned: “We believe it is wise to avoid excessive deliberation on issues known to divide participants beyond a distance that can reasonably be bridged in two days. For example, we would discourage meeting participants from debating the reach or limitations of state sovereignty in Internet policy. We are optimistic that NETmundial can meaningfully contribute to the development of Internet governance principles by focusing on those topics that enjoy broad support.”

The NETmundial conference is scheduled for 23-24 April in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

The full US State Department statement to the NETmundial conference is available here.

The domain name system oversight body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), is based in California and works under a loose understanding with the United States.

Countries such as Brazil are still reacting to the proof revealed by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden of US spying online (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 30 January 2014).