The ITU In Dubai And All That

Téléphone ancien (Photo credit: zigazou76)

The Twelfth ITU World Conference on International Telecommunications is currently taking place in Dubai, with much international fanfare. The ITU is proposing to debate the re-writing of its 1988 regulatory framework for international telecommunications (ITR), allowing its members to contribute towards creating a new framework for 'the Internet age'.

Oh dear.

Cue spirited PR campaigns from Google (which has gone as far as to use the hallowed homepage to drum up support for it's 'Take Action' campaign for a 'free and open Internet') and others, pointing out that we shouldn't be letting governments decide on the future of the Internet. This is interesting, as that's precisely what governments think they not only have the right to do but, working on behalf of their respective peoples, should be doing.

Dubai, meanwhile, gets a win for hosting the event and racks up some nifty international publicity.

Of the many aspects of the 'Internet age' being discussed (in many cases, I fear, by people whose understanding of telecommunications is rooted firmly in yoghurt pots and string) is how telcos can share in the enormous revenues being derived from companies using the Internet to provide services to users. These people, argue the telcos, should be paying to use our networks.

It's not only absolute tosh as a proposal, it would be laughable if it weren't being actually listened to at the ITU. Telcos built the rods for their own backs long ago - they built roads and then insisted in charging tolls for the use of those roads which were calculated by the minute. Now they're trying to charge by the value of freight or the transaction you're travelling to close. With precious little innovation on offer, they're now challenged by the fact they have simply become bulk data providers, irrelevant to us in the main and certainly no active part of the thriving, active and profitable ecosystem of the Internet.

So what they want the ITU to do is grant them a charter to continue doing what they have done so well in the past - sit back and tax network users for using their networks, charging unfairly high rates for minimum quality service and contributing not one jot of value to the communities they are meant to serve.

For me the debate regarding regulation is of little interest - governments already regulate effectively enough at the state level and if they all decide to do more regulatin' I suspect there's little we can do.

But the telcos and their bid to pass a cash cow's charter? That's the one that'll affect you and me the most, I suspect...

@WeAreUAE

The Flag of the UAE (shown as artistically waving) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've sort of been too busy with book posts over the long weekend to tell you, but the lovely people behind the co-curated '@WeAreUAE' Twitter account had a massive brain fit and lapse in judgement and handed the account over to me on late Wednesday night, lock stock and barrel. They even bust out with an Instagram account! It's mine, all mine precioussss, until next Wednesday!

What is @WeAreUAE? The idea is that someone new tweets from the account each week, opening up a kaleidoscope of different viewpoints, experiences and voices from the people who inhabit a given country. One of the world's more famous co-curated national Twitter accounts was @Sweden, which popped into instant notoriety when curator Sonja Abrahamsson used the account to ask a number of questions about what a Jew was. The questions were, as the New Yorker pointed out in its piece on her tenure, not so much anti-Semitic as childlike and born out of genuine curiosity. Nevertheless, she caused a storm that saw @Sweden draw followers like a follower drawing thing. Rather wonderfully, the Swedish Institute, one of the bodies behind the account, pointed out that Sonja was merely exercising the right to free speech that characterised Sweden - and apparently many of the people who arrived, drawn to the controversy, found Sonja actually quite charming and endearingly kooky.

I'm already having great fun with it all - and just in case you're waiting for me to do a Sonja, I'm actually taking the opportunity to celebrate the many things I enjoy and treasure about the country I have called home for the past  19 years.

See you at @WeAreUAE!

Anti Social Media

Khanjar, Saidi-type, circa 1924, from Oman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oman's National Human Rights Commission has come out against the online commentators and activists who have been irking the government to the point where there have been a significant number of arrests recently.

The Commission's statement, linked here, is a model of clarity. For instance: "NHRC pointed out that there is a difference between the freedom of opinion as a right and the practice of this right in reality. The dividing line makes the practice of this right legal and going beyond it a crime punishable by the law. The rule in this issue is that the freedom of individuals stops when the freedom of other individuals starts."

Right.

The Omani public prosecution issued a statement last week that clarified its position on the issue of opinion expressed online and "calls upon all citizens on the importance of following the legal methods and means for the expression of opinion in line with the legal concept for the freedom of expression."

The problem is, of course, as Omani columnist Susan Mubarak points out in Muscat Daily, there is no official 'line' that defines quite where " the freedom of individuals stops" and "the freedom of other individuals starts". Her excellent piece on the issue is balanced by the Uriah Heep tones of the Oman Tribune.

Article 29 of Oman's 'Basic Statute of the State' guarantees "The freedom of opinion and expression thereof through speech, writing or other forms of expression is guaranteed within the limits of the Law." Those limits are, of course, nowhere defined.

Further clarifying its statement, the NHRC said that "It affirmed that it supports the freedom of opinion, which seeks to achieve the public interests rather than those harming or insulting others."

The 'About Human Rights' page on the NHRC's lovely, retro-style website is "under construction". You'd have thought it would have been 404, wouldn't you?

(Update: I've just learned from @muscati that a female member of the NHRC has resigned from the commission as a result of its decision to make this statement.)