UN Telecom Treaty Approved Amid U.S. Web-Censorship Concerns

An agreement to update 24-year-old United Nations telecommunications rules was approved against the opposition of countries including the U.S. and the U.K., whose officials walked out on the talks on concerns about Internet regulation and censorship.

The new pact includes measures that would give countries a right to access international telecommunications services and the ability to block spam, which delegations declining to sign the amended text argued would pave the way for government censorship and control over the Web. Canada, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Costa Rica, Serbia, Greece, Finland and others followed the U.S. in refusing to sign on these grounds. The countries who won’t sign the new treaty will continue to be bound by the 1988 version, said Sarah Parkes, a spokeswoman for the International Telecommunication Union. Other articles that were passed address changes in the way telecommunications companies should be taxed and compensated in a system that has moved from phone companies that were largely government-owned monopolies to one with private mobile-phone companies. They also address access to communications for people with disabilities and in less developed markets. “It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunity that the U.S. must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in its current form,” the U.S. delegation said in a statement at the plenary after the final changes were adopted last night. “We candidly cannot support an ITU treaty that is inconsistent with the multi-stakeholder model.”