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For the last two weeks some of the planet's most oppressive regimes have faced off against some of the most powerful Internet advocates in an effort to rewrite a multilateral communications treaty that, if successful, could have changed the nature of the Internet and altered the way it is governed.

On Thursday night that effort failed, as a US-led block of dissenting countries refused to sign the proposed updates, handing the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union a humbling defeat.

The United States, which framed its dissent as defending "the open Internet," was joined by more than 80 other countries, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Sweden and the United Kingdom. (Some of the non-signers seemed to be seeking to avoid making too overt of a political statement, saying, regrettably that they could not sign because they had to "consult with capital.")


Like other U.N. agencies, the ITU strives for consensus, and it's within that consensus that the ITU derives its authority. The ITU can't force a country to abide by its treaties, but if representatives of all member countries agree to a global telecommunications framework, and subsequently pass laws enforcing the framework, the ITU itself grows stronger.

In contrast, the collapse of negotiations around the treaty update exposed the ITU as woefully out of step with the most technologically advanced sectors of the global society. "Efforts to bring its core telecom regulations into the Internet era had exposed the organization to modern realities that it was incapable of dealing with," writes Kieren MCarthy of "In the end, they proved overwhelming."



"We are the web," Google declared in a campaign against the ITU's treaty-writing effort. "A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future."


When it was clear that there would be no consensus, Hamadoun I. Toure, the secretary general of the ITU, issued a statement. "History will show that the conference has achieved something extremely important," he said. "It has succeeded in bringing unprecedented public attention to the different and important perspectives that govern global communications."


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