Government delegates from 193 countries are
gathered today in Dubai for a closed-door meeting with an agenda to revise a
decades-old treaty concerning the internet. The International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) hosts the said conference from December 3-14 at the World
Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit). ITU says that there is a
need for a change to reflect the “dramatically different” technologies these
days. But Google warned that this event would bring harm to the free and open internet.
Vinton Cerf, who works for Google as the VP
and Chief Internet Evangelist, is also known as the “Father of the Internet”. He
strongly pointed out on a special edition article written by him on CNN that
this invasive move by government agencies to regulate the internet would
violate our freedom.
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| Vinton Cerf Father of the Internet |
The internet has brought a borderless
freedom to everyone. It has also become the driving force of world economy
where business happens in just a click of mouse, even reaching a global
audience of more than 2 billion. Internet empowers every individual to practice
the freedom that was outlined and pegged for all humanity after it was fought. Yes,
freedom wasn’t freely given if you would look back on what’s written on history
books. Slavery is one of the remarkable forms of depriving a “should be” innate
freedom. And now that we’re on the 21st century, our once fought
freedom is threatened with a government-led internet intervention.
Reports would say that some authoritarian
regimes proposes to ban anonymity from
the web while others want domain names and internet addresses management to be
handed over to the United Nations from the private sectors. Other also proposes
to require any internet content provider to pay new tolls just to deliver
services across the globe. All these proposals and more are voted by
governments alone. People who are directly involve with the internet,
Engineers, private companies and even the users, are totally left out.
According to a recent article in Moscow
Times, Russia already has a black list for banned sites, even without the
conformity of ITU. With this move, we’ll be expecting more government
censorship on what we see, read and create via the web. Cerf wrote that, “They
worry about the spread of unwanted ideas. They are angry that people might use
the internet to criticize their governments.” Same commentary was also aired
out when the Philippine Government passed the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 bill into law which
garnered rallies and online protests questioning its constitutionality. The said
law was dubbed to affect the people’s freedom of expression, freedom of speech
and data security.
“At Google, we see and feel the dangers of
the government-led net crackdown. We operate in about 150 countries around the
globe. Our services- including Search, YouTube and Blogger, to Gmail and Maps-
have been blocked at some point, temporarily or permanently, in more than 30
different countries,” Cerf added.
Now if this issue sounds alarming to you as it is to me,
then join Google to keep the internet free and open. Sign the petition or used
the #freeandopen hashtag on social media and let your voices be heard. This issue is certainly a modern form
of oppression and internet should be free and open.
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