second, mr. baird, you said that with the countries and the member states that everyone was fearful of losing their sovereignty and something you wanted to protect. when i read i believe it was "the wall street journal" piece you had said that -- losing my train of thought now. that it seemed like there was almost a majority of member countries that were looking into these itr regulations and based on treaties, the u.s. doesn't have a veto and where we're seven or eight countries short of countries looking to make these changes. >> thank you for the question. so i had an 800-word op-ed, a statement of fact saying ahead-of-a head of delegation had not been appointed. there is as much if not more concern that also private sector or non-governmental entities had not really organized themselves. i was in europe in london and brussels back in november, and there was a great deal of panic among the private sector and non-governmental groups. not a lot of organization. so i started to encourage them to organi

some of the proposals though not fully baked as mr. baird said that we heard about, if they were to come to fruition would do great damage to the open and decentralized internet that we know and love and that is a great engine for economic growth and education and health care and all of the great things that we love about it. now, among the many reasons why this jurisdiction shouldn't expand is that the itu is highly politicized and also grossly undemocratic. one of the things, i'm not sure was mentioned today, was that in the itu, as in the u.n., it's one country, one vote. so tuvalu and butan have the same vote as china, the united states, india, and that is not very democratic when you think of the difference in populations. the other problem and the other reason why we believe the itu is quite undemocratic is that there is no role at all for civil society unless you want to pony up $34,000. and my organization and most of the civil society groups that we work with certainly don't have that kind of resources to participate. and still have